RuySan wrote:
Let me give you just a simple example. Webspinner is a staple hunter card, yet you must fork out for the expansion to have it. There's no way to get it from regular packs.
And no, using gold to pay for the expansion wings is not feasable.
I'm at a loss to understand what it is you're expecting or what your criticism is?
The game has been live for 18 months now and absolutely 100% of all released content/cards has been made available to all players, whether they've spent zero, or £100, or £5000, or £1000000.
If you're prepared to log in every day and do the daily quest (with a mulligan on 40 gold quests hoping for a 60/100) and win a few games on top of that, then the game gives you 500-600 gold per week, which is enough for 5-6 packs or most of an expansion wing.
On top of that Blizz have introduced the Tavern Brawl, a new and free game mode which cheerfully hands out a pack of Classic cards every week. (And they added in the 'get a pack of cards' quest for watching someone on your friends list win, which is effectively another 100 gold quest.)
My chum at work has bought all of Naxx and Blackrock Mountain with gold, and has also gathered together enough cards to have a few viable decks at high rank Constructed play. As you'd expect however, his collection isn't as complete as mine, so for example he'd love to have a crack at Echo Mage but he's missing the Doomsayers and Molten Giants, and he's been using his dust to craft key cards for other decks, and the Doomsayers are just a bit too niche for him to justify the dust outlay.
(I believe EBG has bought all of Naxx and Blackrock Mountain with gold too, so it clearly is feasible.)
What would you like Blizzard to do? Just give everyone a complete card collection for free, and convert themselves to a charity? I'm a right old-fashioned leftwing Socialist bastard, but even I understand that Blizzard are a commercial entity and Hearthstone is something they want to make money out of, and as such there needs to be a mechanism whereby people are enticed to pay for things.
That said, the game is objectively and demonstrably not pay-to-win, what I would say it is however, is 'pay-to-play', in that an investment of cash fleshes out your card collection more quickly than is possible as a F2Player, and thereby gives you the scope to play a wide range of classes and decks of your choosing.
I note you keep ignoring the elephant in the 'THE GAME IS PAY TO WIN! GRRRR!' room, namely the Patron Warrior deck, which is comprised mostly of basic/common cards, a single legendary and two rares that come out of one wing of Blackrock Mountain, two weapons out of one wing of Naxx, and a handful of other low cost rares. In fact, a player with a brand new account could put together the deck in around a month of play, without spending a penny, and there you go - they're wielding what all the top players agree is currently the MOST POWERFUL DECK IN THE GAME. You can try to twist that however you want, but pay to win it is not.
Yes there are decks that are very legendary heavy (Control Warrior for example), yes there are decks that need a lot of epics and suchlike (Hand Lock), and so on - but that comes back to the concept that there needs to be some incentive for people to spend cash, and if you want to be able to play most of the decks, you're going to need most of the cards - and that's where money can help you.
Your single example above, 'Webspinner', you get two copies out of one wing of Naxx, 700 gold, which is just over a week of play. You're saying that's not feasible?