Hearthstone Adds Cosmetic Alternate Hero Skins For $10 Each

Steven Bogos

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Jan 17, 2013
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Hearthstone Adds Cosmetic Alternate Hero Skins For $10 Each

Sick of staring at Garrosh's face in Hearthstone? For $10, you can stare at Magni Bronzebeard's face instead.

Hearthstone fans have been asking for alternate skins for its nine playable heroes for quite some time (especially hardcore fans of a specific faction who don't appreciate being forced to play as "the enemy"), and now the feature is finally coming... for a price. Today, Blizzard has announced that dwarven warrior Magni Bronzebeard will be the first of nine alternate hero skins for the game, which will set you back $10 each.

So what do you get for your ten bucks? Unlike the usually static hero portraits (with the exception of the "golden" versions), Magni will be fully-animated right from the get go, and will even have a unique animation for his "armor up" hero power.

The new alternate hero skins also come with unique emotes and voices that convey their individual personalities, a new play area featuring a custom visual theme, and nifty "entering the game" animations. There's no word on whether ot not the new play areas will be exclusively available to purchasers of the new heroes or not.

Purchasing Magni will also reward you with an exclusive Magni-themed card-back to use with any of your decks.

Blizzard stressed that new heroes do not add new cards to your collection or change the classes' activated hero power and are not considered new classes.

Personally, I think it's a bit rich to charge $10 per hero in a game that is already one of the most micro-transaction heavy titles out there. I feel $10 for alternate skins for all nine classes would be fair, but as these are simply cosmetics that have no actual effect on game-play, I guess they can go ahead and charge whatever they want.

Source: Blizzard [http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/blog/19508175/heroes-emerge-new-hearthstone-heroes-are-coming-6-4-2015]

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micuu

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Mar 28, 2014
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$10 is a bit rich, but I think you get more out of it than the $20 mount they have for Heroes of the Storm, so I guess it's ok?
 

Janaschi

Scion of Delphi
Aug 21, 2012
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10 USD per hero? As much as I love Hearthstone... definitely going to pass on those prices.
 

Evil Smurf

Admin of Catoholics Anonymous
Nov 11, 2011
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If I'm going to spend 10 USD on a ccg, I'll spend money on Magic. At least that's a physical thing, because as much as I like Hearthstone, it's only installed for when I want to play magic, but am not around other junkies players.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Aug 25, 2014
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The Rogue Wolf said:
The market will speak. What I'm hoping it'll say is "lol no".
If I like the character enough (or despise the base character enough), I wouldn't mind paying that much.

In fact, I doubt most people will care; most people will buy one, maybe two skins for their favorite classes, and ignore the rest. People didn't mind droping $30 on the best League of Legends skins, so I doubt this will be any different.
 

Chaos James

Bastion of Debauchery
May 27, 2011
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While I wouldn't be keen to pay that price (unless I diehard loved the character) I don't think it sounds too crazy. I'd love to see a breakdown of all the assets to see how they estimated their costs of the art and how much is profit though.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Wait wait wait...they're selling skins for a card game now? Wow...that's just........wow....
 

Flutterguy

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Jun 26, 2011
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RJ 17 said:
Wait wait wait...they're selling skins for a card game now? Wow...that's just........wow....
BUT WAIT! You don't just get a skin, oh nonono, that'd be a ripoff! You get five, you heard me, FIVE!!! FIVE ALL NEW VOICE OVERS! Oh, but they didn't stop there..not by a longshot, you all so get an ultra rare card back!

I don't know about you friends, but I will have to whore myself out if I can't afford the wonderful deal our benevolent gaming corporation has bestowed on us!
 

Bindal

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May 14, 2012
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RJ 17 said:
Wait wait wait...they're selling skins for a card game now? Wow...that's just........wow....
Yes, so what? Where is the problem? The Hero Portrait is among the few things they can add without actually changing the game (the card back being the other thing) and considering it's a full new character in that regards - new lines for all emotes - plus some fancy looking addional animations, I don't see what's wrong with it.
Granted, 10$ is quite a lot and half would be a more reasonable price, but the whole pack itself is still fine.
 

laggyteabag

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I kinda stopped in my tracks when I saw the £7 price tag when this was announced. I like Hearthstone, and I like Blizzard, but this is a bit steep for what we are actually getting. If it was £3 or £5, it would be a lot more palatable, but right now, pass.
 

EbonBehelit

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Oct 19, 2010
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Errr..... there's actually a massive thematic issue with this:

The warrior card pool, for example, is almost entirely Horde-based. The Kor'Kron Elite even says "For the Warchief!" and "For Hellscream!"

This is also the case with every other class from what I remember, so Blizzard's going to have to change the art/names/sounds of a lot of the class cards in order for them to make any sense with a faction-swapped Hero.
 

JayRPG

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Oct 25, 2012
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This is why I hate Blizzard now. They are money hungry pieces of shit, they don't care about players anymore.

Honestly, the base game should have had a simple faction switch option for the class hero, they have literally all the assets already from their other games; and on that point, all these 'features' you get for $10 would have taken Blizzard all of half an hour to put together, they didn't have to create anything new, take some icons from WC, take some voice overs from WoW, tell the art guy to quickly sketch half the playing field slightly fancier.

Blizzard are the only company I know that uses all 3 MMO models all at the same time. Up front cost for game and expansions, Subscription fee, ludicrously over priced real money store, and we can even chuck in bordering on Pay-2-Win with the instant level ups for more than the game costs.

Hearthstone is a fun little game but the prices are absolutely insane.
 

Bindal

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May 14, 2012
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EbonBehelit said:
The warrior card pool, for example, is almost entirely Horde-based. The Kor'Kron Elite even says "For the Warchief!" and "For Hellscream!"
And then you have things like the Shieldmasta, who's horde and is a neutral minion.
The Priest has the Cabal Shadow Priest, Vol'jin or the Dark Cultist.

Just to name a few examples to show how the faction doesn't matter.

Whatislove said:
Honestly, the base game should have had a simple faction switch option for the class hero, they have literally all the assets already from their other games
And... why? The faction doesn't affect the game at all, only the class does.
 

EbonBehelit

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Oct 19, 2010
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Bindal said:
And then you have things like the Shieldmasta, who's horde and is a neutral minion.
The Priest has the Cabal Shadow Priest, Vol'jin or the Dark Cultist.

Just to name a few examples to show how the faction doesn't matter.
I'm not talking about neutral minions though, and the Priest class has an obvious Alliance faction bias with only 2 minions being of Horde races - though one is Vol'jin so it's at least a bit less of an issue for a potential Horde Priest Hero.

To be fair, I gave the class card pool a bit more of a thorough look between posts, and found that not every class actually has this problem as I had first thought. It's pretty much just an issue with Paladin and Warrior, which have heavily themed card pools - Paladin being Argent/Human and Warrior being Garrosh's Horde. Magni summoning a Kor'Kron Elite (who would then call him "Warchief") just feels super awkward to me.
 

rembrandtqeinstein

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Sep 4, 2009
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I don't like how its not buyable with gold but whatever its just pixels...it will just make beating the wallet warriors that much more satisfying.
 

Loop Stricken

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Jun 17, 2009
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I main a Warrior, and quite like Garrosh. Another 50 wins or so and I get Golden.

I like the idea of multiple heroes per class. I don't like the fact that all the non-standard heroes will have fancy animations right off the bat, and I also think they're twice the price what they should be.

Also, eww, dwarf.
 

Loop Stricken

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Jun 17, 2009
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EbonBehelit said:
Errr..... there's actually a massive thematic issue with this:

The warrior card pool, for example, is almost entirely Horde-based. The Kor'Kron Elite even says "For the Warchief!" and "For Hellscream!"

This is also the case with every other class from what I remember, so Blizzard's going to have to change the art/names/sounds of a lot of the class cards in order for them to make any sense with a faction-swapped Hero.
There's a Warrior-specific card which is a gnome. I don't recall many gnomes fighting on behalf of Garrosh.

Edit: I was going to link the images of all the Warrior-specific cards with no ties to Garrosh or the Horde, but that's quite a lot and I can't be arsed/ basically about a third of the Warrior-only cards aren't aligned with the Horde.
So I imagine they won't be chancing jack.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Bindal said:
RJ 17 said:
Wait wait wait...they're selling skins for a card game now? Wow...that's just........wow....
Yes, so what? Where is the problem? The Hero Portrait is among the few things they can add without actually changing the game (the card back being the other thing) and considering it's a full new character in that regards - new lines for all emotes - plus some fancy looking addional animations, I don't see what's wrong with it.
Granted, 10$ is quite a lot and half would be a more reasonable price, but the whole pack itself is still fine.
It's a card game...that now has skins...call me an asshole if you want but that concept is fucking nuts.
 

Loop Stricken

Covered in bees!
Jun 17, 2009
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RJ 17 said:
Bindal said:
RJ 17 said:
Wait wait wait...they're selling skins for a card game now? Wow...that's just........wow....
Yes, so what? Where is the problem? The Hero Portrait is among the few things they can add without actually changing the game (the card back being the other thing) and considering it's a full new character in that regards - new lines for all emotes - plus some fancy looking addional animations, I don't see what's wrong with it.
Granted, 10$ is quite a lot and half would be a more reasonable price, but the whole pack itself is still fine.
It's a card game...that now has skins...call me an asshole if you want but that concept is fucking nuts.
The cards themselves have always had skins, though.