As Blizzard continue to come under scrutiny, their decision to add $50 card packs into Hearthstone for the Mercenaries event has the community comparing the game to Raid Shadow Legends.
As players are exiting Blizzard titles like World of Warcraft en masse, all eyes have turned to Diablo, Overwatch, and Hearthstone as the company’s saviors.
While the upcoming release of the highly anticipated remaster, Diablo 2 Resurrected, has some fans on the edge of their seats, Blizzard’s decision to add a $50 Diablo-themed card pack into their iconic collectible card game has set the community ablaze.
Comparing the game to Raid Shadow Legends (well known for its hefty microtransactions,) Hearthstone players are at the end of their tether.
As part of the upcoming Mercenaries event, iconic Blizzard characters such as Diablo and Sylvanas Windrunner will be crossing over into Hearthstone – for a price.
The cost of the Diablo and Lich King Mercenaries packs currently sit at a whopping $50 (£46). Usually, card packs are available for $3 (£3) or $20 (£17) maximum, making these card packs more than double that of previous ones.
As you can imagine, the backlash has been immediate. One fan hits out at Blizzard for creating “a Raid Shadow Legend[s] clone for Hearthstone,” writing that they “thought Blizzard couldn’t go any lower.”
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Another has updated the Hearthstone main menu to be “more accurate,” adding a Raid Shadow Legends tab alongside Yu-Gi-Oh and Auto Chess.
Another meme is simply entitled “Greed,” and shows a representative of the widely condemned EA passing a trophy reading “s**ttiest game company” to Blizzard.
The Reddit comments sections are also pretty harrowing places. “Desperate, and losing money. Their greed and disdain for their player base knows no bounds,” writes one upset fan.
“This to me is absolutely outrageous,” fumes another. “You can buy entire games for that price. Here they are charging that alone for a bundle of cards that results in 1% of content inside that game? This honestly should be illegal.”
Whether this backlash inspires Blizzard to adjust the pricing of the Mercenaries bundles remains to be seen, but for now, it’s $50 or nix.
