Hearthstone's Whispers of The Old Gods Free Pack Promotion Ends Soon

[Steven Bogos]

Hearthstone's Whispers of The Old Gods Free Pack Promotion Ends Soon

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You only have until July 6 to claim your free Whispers of The Old Gods packs.

When Hearthstone [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/whispers%20of%20the%20old%20gods?os=whispers+of+the+old+gods] earlier this year, it came with quite an attractive launch promotion. Players could earn up to 13 free packs of cards, just by playing the game. Sadly, all promotions have to come to an end, and Blizzard has announced that this one will be ending on July 6.

For a quick refresher on how to get these packs: the first three are awarded simply for logging into the game. You can then get five more packs for completing a "win two games in the new Standard mode" quest, after which a "win seven games in the new Standard mode" quest will appear, awarding an additional five packs.

However, players will still get a free C'Thun and two Beckoner of Evil cards in the first Whispers of The Old Gods pack that they open, even after July 6.

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[OldNewNewOld]

I think Blizzard should have kept the 13 free packs for playing. Lets be completely honest, the basic cards are pure shit when compared to most classic or WtOG cards that fill in the same role. With the god awful match making, starting from scratch is already hard and tedious enough. Being matched with people that use some of the best netdecks while you don't have even all basic cards yet is discouraging. Almost dropped the game because of that.
One redeeming part is the Tavern Brawl that often put everyone on an even playing field, but those are behind the 20 level wall so it takes a while to get there. Especially if you're like me and you mix up classes to see which one works best for you and the cards you have.

13 packs isn't a lot, but it certainly is going to give the player at least a few cards they want or at worse, some dusk to craft a few rare or if they are lucky, epic cards they could use. And it's not going to cut into the sales I assume. It might even promote them. Blizzard should actually gives new player a few packs of all standard expansions to help them out. If they did that I'm sure I would be more likely to actually pay for the game and buy something than I was when I started.

You start the game, you have nothing, you're faced against a unfair matchmaking. Everything is there to make you dislike the game. Why would I pay for a game I'm not sure I will enjoy playing? It's obvious they won't ever fix their awful matchmaking, so at least they could boost up the slow and tedious start for new player.

Also the promotion ends on my birthday. It's a sign Blizzard. Listen to me!
But at least C'thun and the 2 Beckoner stay free. At least Blizzard isn't that stupid. Although they are useless for new player. Any new player should actually buy classic packs since they make most of the cards in most decks, even my C'thun druid has as many classic as WtOG cards, that's the deck with the most WtOG cards I have.

 

[MCerberus]

The 13 free promotion was great and it shows new players what to expect from Blizzard RNG.
You get 1 rare per pack, something you don't want and a whole bunch of filler often duplicates. On the off-chance you get something good, it's either useless or for a class you don't play.

Why yes, I have been playing Overwatch

 

[Fappy]

I think Blizzard should have kept the 13 free packs for playing. Lets be completely honest, the basic cards are pure shit when compared to most classic or WtOG cards that fill in the same role. With the god awful match making, starting from scratch is already hard and tedious enough. Being matched with people that use some of the best netdecks while you don't have even all basic cards yet is discouraging. Almost dropped the game because of that.
One redeeming part is the Tavern Brawl that often put everyone on an even playing field, but those are behind the 20 level wall so it takes a while to get there. Especially if you're like me and you mix up classes to see which one works best for you and the cards you have.

13 packs isn't a lot, but it certainly is going to give the player at least a few cards they want or at worse, some dusk to craft a few rare or if they are lucky, epic cards they could use. And it's not going to cut into the sales I assume. It might even promote them. Blizzard should actually gives new player a few packs of all standard expansions to help them out. If they did that I'm sure I would be more likely to actually pay for the game and buy something than I was when I started.

You start the game, you have nothing, you're faced against a unfair matchmaking. Everything is there to make you dislike the game. Why would I pay for a game I'm not sure I will enjoy playing? It's obvious they won't ever fix their awful matchmaking, so at least they could boost up the slow and tedious start for new player.

Also the promotion ends on my birthday. It's a sign Blizzard. Listen to me!
But at least C'thun and the 2 Beckoner stay free. At least Blizzard isn't that stupid. Although they are useless for new player. Any new player should actually buy classic packs since they make most of the cards in most decks, even my C'thun druid has as many classic as WtOG cards, that's the deck with the most WtOG cards I have.

I agree. Hearthstone's barrier of entry is already absurd enough. I am honestly shocked they don't fast track new players into earning a bunch of free packs early on just to give them enough of a chance to compete without being completely trampled/discouraged. Hell, how about guarantee a free Legendary too. I wonder if they're even getting any new players with how frustrating and unbalanced it is for those starting from scratch.

I have a feeling that if WotC can pull off a rebooted MtG online platform that doesn't suck they'll destroy Hearthstone. Their new CTO was apparently hired for just that reason.

 

[loa]

This whole "win games" quest bullshit is why I stopped playing.

Nothing more infuriating than spending half an hour losing games and making no "progress" in your daily psychological conditioning bollocks you have to jump through to get new cards because of course it also has to be "win 3-5 games" rather than just 1 to make it as painful as possible.

I guess just having it be "PLAY x games as y" since this is really just designed to make you come back and play anyway just makes too much sense.

 

[Tiamattt]

I have a feeling that if WotC can pull off a rebooted MtG online platform that doesn't suck they'll destroy Hearthstone. Their new CTO was apparently hired for just that reason.

They have one, sort of. Magic Duels isn't as pretty as HS and to be frank WOTC doesn't seem to care all that much about it, least not as much as Blizzard does about HS. But it does let you play with a large % of standard cards(although with rarity restrictions) and it's much, much(x1000) easier to obtain cards in that game than in HS.

I think it's main problem is that WOTC most likely doesn't want it to really compete with paper MTG or MTGO so it'll probably never get the attention/promotion it needs to really compete with HS.

 

[Colt47]

I think Blizzard should have kept the 13 free packs for playing. Lets be completely honest, the basic cards are pure shit when compared to most classic or WtOG cards that fill in the same role. With the god awful match making, starting from scratch is already hard and tedious enough. Being matched with people that use some of the best netdecks while you don't have even all basic cards yet is discouraging. Almost dropped the game because of that.
One redeeming part is the Tavern Brawl that often put everyone on an even playing field, but those are behind the 20 level wall so it takes a while to get there. Especially if you're like me and you mix up classes to see which one works best for you and the cards you have.

13 packs isn't a lot, but it certainly is going to give the player at least a few cards they want or at worse, some dusk to craft a few rare or if they are lucky, epic cards they could use. And it's not going to cut into the sales I assume. It might even promote them. Blizzard should actually gives new player a few packs of all standard expansions to help them out. If they did that I'm sure I would be more likely to actually pay for the game and buy something than I was when I started.

You start the game, you have nothing, you're faced against a unfair matchmaking. Everything is there to make you dislike the game. Why would I pay for a game I'm not sure I will enjoy playing? It's obvious they won't ever fix their awful matchmaking, so at least they could boost up the slow and tedious start for new player.

Also the promotion ends on my birthday. It's a sign Blizzard. Listen to me!
But at least C'thun and the 2 Beckoner stay free. At least Blizzard isn't that stupid. Although they are useless for new player. Any new player should actually buy classic packs since they make most of the cards in most decks, even my C'thun druid has as many classic as WtOG cards, that's the deck with the most WtOG cards I have.

I agree. Hearthstone's barrier of entry is already absurd enough. I am honestly shocked they don't fast track new players into earning a bunch of free packs early on just to give them enough of a chance to compete without being completely trampled/discouraged. Hell, how about guarantee a free Legendary too. I wonder if they're even getting any new players with how frustrating and unbalanced it is for those starting from scratch.

I have a feeling that if WotC can pull off a rebooted MtG online platform that doesn't suck they'll destroy Hearthstone. Their new CTO was apparently hired for just that reason.

To be frank, all TCGs seem to suffer from the eventual problem of seemingly everyone having established decks and new players getting curb stomped unfairly for no reason. MtG is even worse than hearthstone in this regard. There someone might as well not play anything but pauper until they got at least a grand to spend on a decent deck.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

To be fair, what I think they should probably be doing now is new players always get 5 packs of the original set. Enough to get them going. And whenever they release a new set, they have the promo they had going on again. People are saying this promo should be kept as the norm but it's an expansion set. The base set is far more robust and varied really, it's what new players should be going after. The promo is just to sell the new set. But people are right, new players do need some form of a leg up to get into the game. Lord knows it was a lot easier back in beta when people didn't even know what the good decks were to play, let alone most people owning them.

 

[Cartographer]

What a bunch of whining.

Blizz are a business and the single largest earner in HS for them is selling card packs, to expect them to keep giving away cards for free is ridiculous. What happens 2-3 xpacs from now, a new player logs on and gets 20+ packs of cards they can't use (except in wild)? The whinging would be heard from the moon ffs.

The quests are a bonus to play, if you find playing a chore then you really should be re-evaluating your choice of games.
Also, big shock I know, not everyone is supposed to climb the ladder to legend. To expect to jump in and be handed a load of advantages to make you competitive with players who have been collecting (and yes, it is a game based on getting the largest collection) for months or years, for free, is the absolute height of entitlement.

You can literally buy your way to a complete collection anyway, every card is available for money (accepting the horrible dust conversion rate).

Though I agree the lvl 20 entry to TB is a bit high, 15 or even 10 would be a lot better.