I think it's actually impossible to get a full collection, unless you were playing at a very specific time in the games development (one off cards for certain events etc). But that looks like some solid work on it, people will get lucky with certain RNG chances and spend less, and then there's the grinding up to get the golden variants for the classes.
Yeah, which is why people going for total deck completion need to have been playing for a while, so they can get those very specific cards. They could always have another event where they're up for grabs though.
I played a little bit of Hearthstone, but didn't enjoy it. Simulating it, though, was great fun :) And by "it", I mean the game of collecting the cards...
My estimate is slightly lower ~350 packs, but I had to guess a lot of numbers.
I'm usually against the "why is this posted on HN" comments, so can someone just clue me into why they personally find this so interesting? Is it the effort put into the calculation or the revenue angle?
It's not super-interesting, but I do find this somewhat interesting for the insight into this industry's business model. I also think it's at least more relevant than the story of Yasuke the African Samurai, which is currently outranking this on the front page and whose only comments are "I saw this on Reddit." So I guess you take what you can get on a slow news day.
Incidentally, I ran the numbers on League of Legends a while back, and it was pretty close to the numbers in this article as well. I wonder if that's the magic number for these "not pay-to-win wink wink" type games.
(Even more incidentally, I am pretty sure you can get to WoW's end-game within a couple of years of playing, so $150–$300 seems like a reasonable estimate of that game's TCO.)
550 packs costs 55,000 gold (100 per pack).
If you win 30 games a day (max) that gets you 100 gold.
the daily quest gets you minimum 40 gold. That would be 393 days worst case. However, if you play arena and can 'go infinite', that is, win at least 7 games in a given arena run, and you are guaranteed to get back more gold than you put in. You also get a free pack with every run regardless, so even if you only make back 50 gold you've at least broken even, plus you'll get dust to craft cards. I believe there are streamers out there that have full collections without dropping a dime on HS. In any case, if you are that adamant about not paying for HS it's possible to achieve a full collection within a year. Personally, I am not that adamant, and have happily spent money on the game to support it.
I'd argue that you don't need to spend $600 to play it to the end. That's just what you'd have to outlay if you wanted to own nearly everything in the game. There's plenty of top level players who've spent <$100 on the game, and have just gotten lucky with the RNG aspects or know the game mechanics so well they can force a win.
I'm going to post a gripe here because it's been on my mind. When a player drops a Naxramus card, I usually concede immediately. A player with those cards will usually win against one without them anyway. Those cards cost $20 bucks or something to get. But thats not the reason I don't upgrade. The reason is I don't want to have those cards and be matched up with someone who doesn't have them. Players with nax cards should be matched with only other players who have them. Blizzard has built in a disincentive for players like me to buy their expansion.
The same can be said for legendary cards, too: I don't have any of the great legendaries like Cairne or Sylvanas or Ragnaros, so we could argue that I shouldn't be matched against those people—but, when I do go up against those cards, I find that I have about the same win rate as against any other deck. Probably slightly lower, but not enough for me to really notice.
Some of the Naxx cards are definitely cool, but, like all the other cool cards, none of them make or break the game. Sure, Sludge Belcher is the best taunter in the game right now, but it's only slightly better than the Sen'jin Shieldmasta, which is still a fantastic card and is still absolutely free.
Access to good cards is helpful, but nowhere near as important as strategy and experience. Heck, go watch some of those free-to-play folks who start fresh accounts, never pay money, and still rank waaay up. If you refuse to concede when things look bad, you might be surprised by how well you do.
(Also, the Naxx single-player content is excellent. Even if you choose not the use the rewards, Naxx itself might still be worth the price.)
With the Nax cards there's always a weakness, Blizzard introduced them to change the meta but they made sure people could still enjoy the game without forking over too much capital. I've only done the first two dungeons, but I've always held my own against those playing the cards from it.
You can easily earn those cards without paying cash for them, the wings can be unlocked with gold earned by doing daily quests and arena. (which will turn a profit if you're good enough)
(It's just 'Hearthstone' by the way.)