hearthstone Hearthstone and Twitch Prime Partner Up For Oktoberbrawl

[Zadina 923]

You can earn card backs by signing up for Twitch Prime, while at the same time you can watch two teams of three Hearthstone personalities each battle it out for the next month.

It turns out that the Light and Void card backs, that were added to the game in Patch 9.0, are indeed tied to a Twitch Prime promotion.

From tomorrow (September 11) until October 10, by signing up for Twitch Prime you can get both of the card backs you see above. That's not all, though! There will be a special Oktoberbrawl tournament going on at the same time and you can support your favourite team by winning Ranked games with the card back that corresponds to the team of your choice.

First of all, let us meet the two teams. Team Void consists of Dog, Thijs and J4CKIECHAN; team Light features Kripparrian, Reynad and Alliestrasza. They will all play for four weeks in a variation of a sealed format tournament, culminating into the finals at TwitchCon (October 21).

TEAM VOID	VS	TEAM LIGHT
Dog		Kripparrian
Thijs		Reynad
J4CKIECHAN		Alliestrasza

How is it going to work? Each player will receive a fresh account, 10 Classic Packs and a Welcome Bundle. On Monday of each week, the players will receive 10 packs from two different expansions, depending on the theme of the week. The weekly themes are Wild (GvG and TGT - September 11-15), Kraken (Old Gods and Gadgetzan - September 18-22), Mammoth (Un'Goro and Frozen Throne - September 25-29) and a Surprise Format (October 2-6).

Additionally, you can contribute to your favourite team's efforts! On Wednesday, each team member will receive a portion of packs based on the percentage of player's who won games on Ranked by using either the Light or the Void card back. Players will stream their efforts daily and each Friday there will be a grudge match, which will be streamed on the official Hearthstone channel.

Other rules of Oktoberbrawl are that players can only play their Oktoberbrawl accounts while streaming and they can spend gold earned only through quests on Classic Packs alone. You can read more about the event here.

As already stated, the finals of Oktoberbrawl will take place on TwitchCon at October 21.

[Caldyrvan 377]

Really a big show to make ppl go to amazon :D

[finsplit 1]

Happy octoberfest to us Europeans lol.

[Guest]

All this blablabla just to sell Amazon Prime and Twithch accounts?

What am I missing?

Not earning enough with selling packs anymore?

[SMOrcMan 76]

2 hours ago, WedgeAntilles said:

All this blablabla just to sell Amazon Prime and Twithch accounts?

What am I missing?

Not earning enough with selling packs anymore?

Blizzard will milk money in any way it can

[Caldyrvan 377]

They provide great games but I will never understand why people who already earn money in the millions need to be so greedy.

Edited September 10, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[mimech 24]

1 hour ago, Caldyrvan said:

I will never understand why people who already earn money in the millions need be so greedy

1. So they can invest the profit into new ventures: either expanding existing content or inventing entirely new content (such as they did with Overwatch).

2. So they can protect themselves from unforeseen future downturns in income, be they economic or legal.

3. To provide dividends to their shareholders.  

That a game development company should seek to maximize their player base (or income) shouldn't really come as too much of a surprise (assuming one is aware of the basic principals of a capitalist economy).  Imagine your employer offers you a $10 pay rise.  You would probably say yes and not think yourself greedy.  Now scale those values up.

Of course, we are both assuming that there is actually a great profit to be made from the Oktoberbrawl.  I have no idea if that's the case.

[enviousmtg 21]

Oh come on, stop being so negative. You are denied nothing by not participating, you can still watch the matches and have a good time. 

If it doesn't matter to you, just ignore it. No reason to be a grumpypants. 

[Caldyrvan 377]

I didn't want to be negative or something just my thought and where money is, or not, or being made there are always problems or something but we better leave it there :)

[enviousmtg 21]

The goal of a company is to make money. Engaging in a money-making venture is not being greedy.

If you choose not to get into Amazon Prime, more power to you. That's your choice as a consumer. 

[Dustintime 7]

just ignore it?

The players get pretty much nothing from this. This only benefits blizzard, twitch, and amazon. The pro players get more streamers, and more income from their sponsors and people donating...

 

...the average player gets a..................card back?

come on.

[enviousmtg 21]

Why does that upset you, though? 

It's not like any of the revenue Blizzard or these streamers are making from this event is coming out of your pocket. 

It's just creating free entertainment. That's all. Nobody's being forced to get Prime. 

Why is it so wrong for Blizz to do something that benefits the pro players that popularize the game? 

It takes NOTHING away from the average player. There is NO COST to  you. 

But everyone is, "Give me card packs, give me cards, or I'm not interested."

Well, maybe this content isn't for you, then. You can not watch, and not participate. You can enjoy Hearthstone just the same with or without it. 

Personally, I think it's going to be fun to watch and root for my favourite players. Just like, I don't know, watching any other sport or watching any other gaming competition. 

[Valks 2,375]

18 hours ago, finsplit said:

Happy octoberfest to us Europeans lol.

The best time of the year! 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, enviousmtg said:

Why does that upset you, though? 

It's not like any of the revenue Blizzard or these streamers are making from this event is coming out of your pocket. 

It's just creating free entertainment. That's all. Nobody's being forced to get Prime. 

Why is it so wrong for Blizz to do something that benefits the pro players that popularize the game? 

It takes NOTHING away from the average player. There is NO COST to  you. 

But everyone is, "Give me card packs, give me cards, or I'm not interested."

Well, maybe this content isn't for you, then. You can not watch, and not participate. You can enjoy Hearthstone just the same with or without it. 

Personally, I think it's going to be fun to watch and root for my favourite players. Just like, I don't know, watching any other sport or watching any other gaming competition. 

 

The point is that it seems to me like Blizzard tries to squeeze every penny the can out of Hearthtone.

There is nothing wrong with earning money - and last year they earned several hundred millions with Hearthstone.

More then with WoW or any other game of them.

And what do they do? They make Hearthstone even more expensive this year. More expansions, no adventures.

In the short run that may even work - but in the longer run? I am a sceptic here. A friend of mine already quit Hearthstone as he learned it would be even more expensive. (He never did play that much, Friday, Saturday, Sunday - and bought all the adventures and most of the times he took the special offer for new expansions - because with just the gold from daily quests (if you can only play Friday - Sunday you miss quite a lot of them) there was no way to get halfway a decent coverage.

 

This Oktoberbrawl fits just quite good in this way of thinking - who cares about the games, money, money, money.

 

I don't know if you are old enough to remember Lucas Arts.

They were a great company, they had realy great games. You could buy all of them, the adventures they made were (for adventure-fans) the best on the market. Indiana Jones - Fate of Atlantis. Fullthrottle...

And the Star Wars games obviously. X-Wing, T-Fighter, Rebel-Assault, Jedi Knight...

Then, one day, they realized: Hey, Star Wars games are way surer to earn you a profit then adventures. And concentrated on those.

Nothing wrong with this thinking.

2, 3 years later they realized: Hey, Star Wars Fans buy the games no matter if they are great or just good. Or maybe even not that good.

And again - that is not wrong. Lot's of Star Wars Fans bought the games, regardless of the quality.

So, throughout the years, LucasArts made less and less interesting games (they concentrated on Star Wars games). And these games sucked more and more. Brilliant games like in the 90th? No more.

Every single decision they made was quite rational - but in the end, where are they now?

They don't exist any more.

 

Every gaming company should keep in mind that there is a little more then just making as much money as possible this year. There is a year after this and a year after the next. And maybe, just maybe, they want to sell a few games in the next years too.

[FanOfValeera 253]

I don't understand why people are complaining about twitch prime things. Like, it is just a bunch of stupid card backs, or was a priest hero which was not so important. Or some loot boxes for Overwatch, which has skins making your characted more shiny and easier to target at, except some.

Game is getting expensive and expensive each year, because there is always more cards to get compared to past, even if you don't play wild, and getting rid of adventures could be considered 'evil' in that manner too. Yes, this part, I agree. I don't complain about anything specific, but I can understand why people do so.

If twitch prime would give you something that affects your chance of beating me, that's unfair, like a cool legendary which cannot be obtained by any other means. But twitch prime gives colorful stuff, which does practically nothing. 

That's also what happens with Heroic Brawl . Everytime it comes by, people start complaining like 'Why do I have to spend 1000 gold on something that I will not even succeed at?'. Well, you don't. Blizzard has to give something to people who wants extra stuff, and they do it w/o taking something from others. Isn't it cool?

There is 'equality of opportunity', in terms of playability. Game is getting expensive for everyone at the same time, everyone can obtain the same cards by same means and etc. That's all that matters, for most people at least.

@Dustintime If we go there, what does an average player gets from playing this game? Does everyone get back all the money they spent on game by tournaments? Who benefits from this game, and WoW, and Overwatch and HoTS? Blizzard, right? Why do we keep playing these games then?

[Caldyrvan 377]

It's totally ok to make profit. It's totally ok that players who pay have an advantage over F2P players. But making it harder every few months for the F2Ps and how fast they make it more expensive and not even hiding it is not nice.

The most money they make comes from the average player who pays some money on the game here and there not from the few who do not care about money and spend tons of $/€. Nevertheless it's this majority or players who fall behind even though they bring blizz the most profit. 

I don't want to say make everyone equal and give everything to the F2Ps, that's bullshit. But a system that rewards the average player a bit more would be good and still provide more than enough profit for blizz.

Edited September 11, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[enviousmtg 21]

Yeah, but none of that has anything to do with this event. 

If you have a problem with the health of the game or the cost of playing that's cool. But this event has absolutely nothing to do with that. So what, if they gave you one or two packs for doing this, it wouldn't solve any of the problems. 

So I don't know why people are bringing that up here. 

[Caldyrvan 377]

If you look only at this event a single thing then yes. But that's a very narrow view. It's about the whole picture.

[enviousmtg 21]

So until Blizzard solves the problem of the increasing price of the game, or whatever else you perceive to be a problem, you have to complain about every event or promotion that they do that doesn't immediately fix it? 

I don't understand. Does Blizzard get a cut of Amazon prime's revenue? Please show me evidence of that if you have any. Does Blizzard get a cut of streamers' subscriptions? How is this greedy, how is this a cash grab? It's free entertainment. As far as I can tell, they're rewarding players who have made the game popular, and are trying to engage the community in doing so. I can't see any way that's motivated by greed, or screwing you over in any capacity. 

Tell me what the solution is. Tell me what they should have done instead of this event to make the game better, in your opinion. Tell me how this event actively prevents them from doing that. 

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, enviousmtg said:

I don't understand. Does Blizzard get a cut of Amazon prime's revenue? Please show me evidence of that if you have any. Does Blizzard get a cut of streamers' subscriptions? How is this greedy, how is this a cash grab?

Oh yeah, no problem, wait a second. I'll just call amazon and Blizzard and ask them to send me a copy of their contracts.

And while I am at it, is there anything else you like to have? Admin-Acess maybe?

 

I am repeating myself - as a single event it doesn't matter in the slightest.

But it just fits quite well in the pattern in the last years. Getting more, more and more money.

That there are quite a lot of people complaining about this could maybe signal that the direction Blizzard is taking is not the best. And will not work infinitly.

And that is the problem.

From my part it is not because I hate Blizzard. It is because I used to love their games. I don't give a damn thing about Ubisoft e.g. - because I am not interested in Assasins Creed, FarCry or whatever games they develop. Because they feel boring, uninspired and are more often heavily flawed (bugs...) then not. Well - they can totally ruin themselves and their games, I don't care.

 

But Blizzard used to make great games. They had everything right.

The games were well balanced, the gameplay was perfect, the games had great flow. And the games had fantastic atmosphere, good dialogues, interesting characters and a decent story.

Well, the technical aspects are still good. But that's it. I loved to buy their games - Starcraft 1, BroodWar, Diablo 2, AddOns.

And today? Legacy of the Void isn't even worth 10 bucks to me anymore. I don't have it and will never buy it. Diablo 4? Well, if they should release it - without me.

And that is sad, same with Lucas Arts. I liked to spend money on their games, because I knew it was money well spent.

[Caldyrvan 377]

As I said, it's the whole picture. There are a lot of things we like blizz brings to us but the coin has two sides :)

Edited September 12, 2017 by Caldyrvan

[Valks 2,375]

On 9/12/2017 at 9:16 PM, Caldyrvan said:

As I said, it's the whole picture. There are a lot of things we like blizz brings to us but the coin has two sides :)

I think the main point he was trying to make is that the two departments that deal with these things are completely separate. The PR/promotions department and the balancing one will have nothing to do with each other and will work completely independently. It's not that they are ignoring balancing to work on promotions since they won't be worked on by the same person. 

 

[Caldyrvan 377]

I never thought they do less for the game while doing promotional stuff and I still think they provide great games and deserve to earn money for it. It's just the milking the cows to the max. ... and we are the cows in this  scenario. 

[Valks 2,375]

On 9/14/2017 at 8:32 PM, Caldyrvan said:

I never thought they do less for the game while doing promotional stuff and I still think they provide great games and deserve to earn money for it. It's just the milking the cows to the max. ... and we are the cows in this  scenario. 

Yeah, I know what you mean. I just thought maybe you guys were misunderstanding each other :p