Blizzard backs down on unpopular Hearthstone change, so now weekly quests will 'only' waste twice as much of your time, rather than triple

GamesCard GameHearthstoneBlizzard backs down on unpopular Hearthstone change, so now weekly quests will ‘only’ waste twice as much of your time, rather than tripleWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Blizzard)

Whizbang�s Workshop Mage spells

As our Tim Clark wrote when he complained about live service games wasting players' timejust to boost phoney player engagement numbers, “almost everyone reading this will be familiar with games that use predatory design in order to keep players logged in, whether that be to juice those all-important Daily Average User numbers so beloved of shareholders, or just in the hope that you might crack and drop some dollars in the MTX store.”

The main example he gave was of Hearthstone’s revised weekly quest system, which tripled the targets players would have to reach to clear those quests while only offering an additional 20% boost in experience points. It was not a popular change, to say the least.

Unsurprisingly, these adjustments haven’t gone down well with the community either, as you can see onReddit. “Yeah this is still terrible number wise,” says one player, “100% more work to get like what 20% more exp? Do they even know basic math?” Another suggests that “we should demand full reversion…this is blizzards usually playbook. Make something way worse, then revert a little bit to appease us. Well blizzard I’m not gonna be appeased.” Other players are simply announcing their intent to uninstall. “I hate feeling like some weird corporate retention metric more than I like this game”, says one.

If you’re looking for an alternative, there are plenty ofdigital card games better than Hearthstone. And would you look at that, Magic: The Gathering Arena just got a new expansion—a set ofcowboy-themed cards that encourage you to do crimes.

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