Saturday 16 April 2016

Entitlement to an opinion doesn't necessarily warrant sharing one

Yesterday Apple announced that they had teamed up with a bunch of developers to promote an Earth Day charity in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

This promotion enables Apple customers to support the charity by making purchases across 27 games available on iOS. It's a great initiative because all of the money from these purchases is donated to WWF.

Among those games, is Hearthstone. A game which is also available on other devices and platforms. Blizzard announced the promotion on their Facebook page, and the response from their "loyal fans" has been shameful.

Note that at the time of writing this, these are the Hero skins available for Hearthstone:

Mage: Medivh
Warrior: Magni
Hunter: Alleria
Paladin: Liadrin

The first 3 can be purchased from the Hearthstone store directly from Blizzard for $12.99 AUD.

The Paladin can be earned for free, by playing the World of WarCraft starter edition and leveling a character up to 20.

Obviously Blizzard has plans to release alternate heroes for all of their Hearthstone characters in the future, with each of them able to be purchased and a few promotional heroes on the side from time to time.

As part of this Apple charity promotion, iOS users can choose to purchase an alternate Mage skin from the store (for $4.99 AUD). Doing so allows the proceeds to go straight to WWF, and the iOS customers get a shiny new skin: the Mage, Khadgar.

Why another Mage? Well, it's pretty obvious. If they introduced an alternate skin for a class which didn't already have an alternate skin, and locked it behind a limited time Apple promotion, the internet would literally implode. "Finally Blizzard introduces a Shaman skin, but I don't own an iPhone. WTF BLIZZARD?!?!" etc etc.

So instead of commending Blizzard and Apple for delivering this promotion for a great cause, we get the following:





































I guess next time Blizzard should say, 

"No, sorry Apple. We don't want to help you raise money for a good cause. Gamers don't like that."




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