You know what would be a great idea? In the patch which you release a new, hyped-up game mode you also make an indefensibly irrational change that guarantees a predictable, hostile fan reaction across your entire playerbase. You know, so that everyone is talking about that instead of whatever we were talking about before. I believe the technical term is “slamming your dick in a car door.”

The change in question is to Weekly Quests in Hearthstone. Specifically, the requirements for completing them increased by ~300% (or more!) whereas the reward, e.g. Reward Track XP, only increased by ~20%. The more XP, the more progress you make along the Reward Track, the more freebies and in-game currency you earn to buy more packs, mini-sets, and so on. It’s how to F2P.

Now, some of these quests are the kind that you achieve organically from just playing the game. Things like “Spend 500 Mana” or “Draw 30 cards.” Then there are ones a bit more annoying to achieve, like “Use your Hero Power 50 times” or “Play 50 Battlecry Minions.” Those can technically be achieved in the course of normal play, but only if you’re playing a deck/class that wants to be pressing the Hero Power button and/or casting Battlecry minions. You can reroll one Weekly Quest per day, so I typically rerolled those in the hopes of getting something easier to complete in Battlegrounds or in the Tavern Brawl game modes. Finally, you had the standard “Win 5 Ranked Hearthstone Games” that everyone gets at the beginning of the week.

…except now it’s win 15 games. And you now need to play 100 Battlecry minions. Or play 60 (!?!) Miniaturized/Mini minions when it was like 16 previously. In return, you get an extra 500 XP over what it was rewarding previously, e.g. 3000 vs 2500, or 2250 vs 1750.

For context, you earn approximately 400 XP/hour by playing Ranked Hearthstone without any quests at all. So, yes, technically there is more XP to be earned. But that very much depends on one’s ability to actually complete any of these Weekly Quests before they reset.

And that’s the rub. How long individual games take will depend on the individual and what decks they use, but I’d say the average for me would be 10 minutes per Ranked game and 20 (or 30+) minutes per Battleground. If we assume you are being matched with people of appropriate skill, you will only be winning 50% of the time. So the one “win 15” quest jumps from 100 minutes to 300 minutes for Ranked, and 200 minutes to 600 minutes in Battlegrounds.

If Hearthstone is your primary game, spending 10 hours a week playing Battlegrounds is probably something you were doing anyway. But if it’s not? Well, Blizzard clearly doesn’t want you playing at all.

If there is actually any other reasonable conclusion to reach, I’d love to hear it.