If you couldn’t tell from my incredibly witty title, this week’s report will not be about the meta. Not much has changed this week in terms of gameplay. Instead of our regular analysis, we’re going to talk about everything else Hearthstone related this week, including an update from Kripp, rumblings from Reddit about arena rewards, and an announcement from Blizzard.
Kripp’s Disenchant Button
For the uninitiated, ‘The Button’ refers to Kripparrian’s Disenchant button. If you’re really out of the loop, Kripparrian is the professional Hearthstone streamer, and he’s been hoarding cards for several years now, refusing to disenchant them. Kripp has said multiple times that he would only disenchant his digital treasure trove when he could make a full golden set. Unfortunately, even for someone who plays around multiple hours a day, this is impossible. Kripp is an arena streamer who came first for the arena monthly leaderboard in January. To call him “good” would be a grave understatement.
Here’s what I’m getting at: Kripp, one of the best Hearthstone players in the world, who grinds the most cost-effective format for upwards of five hours at a time, still hadn’t collected enough dust to make a full golden set. And he’s been doing this for years. That says a lot about Hearthstone’s pseudo-economy. But I digress.
Kripp started purchasing more packs in each expansion, and he’s finally got enough dust to craft a full golden set. In other words, it’s time for Kripp to push The Button. He announced that he would do it when he hits one million Twitch followers. (As of May 5th, Kripp is sitting at 987,702–he’s getting close.)
If want to watch someone 600,000 dust, make sure you follow Kripparrian on Twitch.
The best part of the story doesn’t even have anything to do with the cards he’s been stockpiling. Ben Brode, one of Hearthstone’s developers, commented that if Kripp had pushed The Button last year, it would have crashed Hearthstone’s servers.
Reddit Isn’t Happy About Hearthstone (Or Anything)
Reddit is complaining, but what else is new? That being said, the concerns voiced by the community are legitimate. With Kripp reaching his golden set milestone, rewards for arena play have come under new scrutiny, and players are less than pleased with Blizzard’s stinginess. This criticism is deserved, in my opinion–it’s hard not to feel like Blizzard is slapping you in the face when you look at the pitiful rewards for getting under seven wins in arena.
Let’s quickly go over some numbers. If you manage to get seven wins before your arena run is over, you’re guaranteed to receive 150 gold. For six wins, however, it’s common to receive 70 – 80 gold. The disparity between these two rewards is too large. If seven wins nets you 150 gold, then each win out of the seven is ‘worth’ 21.42 gold. For players who win six games, however, there’s a steep drop-off in return on investment — if you get an 80 gold reward for six victories, each of your wins was only worth 13.33 gold.
The other problem with arena rewards is the presence of commons. It’s always possible that you’ll receive a single card as a reward after you finish your arena run. If you racked up a decent number of wins, this single card might be legendary, but it’s always possible to ‘win’ a common. Yay.
It’s unclear exactly how Blizzard generates arena rewards, but it’s worth including a 2014 tweet from Ben Brode–according to Brode, getting a common means that your other arena winnings will be inflated slightly to compensate.
@EliteLeafHater if you get a common the other bags have more stuff. If we gave you more dust in that box, you'd still get the same on avg.
— Ben Brode (@bdbrode) May 22, 2014
Still, people aren’t happy about it, and have made it clear to Blizzard that the arena reward system needs a serious rework. Thankfully for the development team, there’s a simple and obvious solution: make it impossible to get commons as a reward.
Hearthstone Hits 70 Million Players
First, Blizzard has finally acknowledged that Hearthstone crashes when you exit the game. It’s about time. For the past couple months, myself and millions of others have been unable to close Hearthstone without crashing and freezing for a solid thirty seconds. Blizzard refused to acknowledge the issue until this week, when they announced that a fix is in the works.
The other announcement from Blizzard is more exciting: Hearthstone has hit 70 million players! That’s a lot of people, and as a reward, every Hearthstone player is getting three free packs. It’s better than nothing, and everyone loves free stuff, so boot up Hearthstone and grab your free packs while you can.