We were given the opportunity to speak to Hearthstone executive producer Hamilton Chu this morning, and through the course of our interview he confirmed the non-existence, or perhaps current lack of existence, of several Hearthstone hopes, dreams, and myths.
No server transfers
For now, at least. When asked if the team was thinking of including paid region transfers like in World of Warcraft, where users can fork over $25 to move a character from one realm to another, Chu replied: “we don’t have anything to talk about along those lines right now”.
Translated: not any time soon, folks! For the record, Southeast Asia should be playing on the Americas server.
No prices to suit developing Asia’s spending power
In the Philippines, mobile phone users have a monthly average spend of $4 per user. In India, people face dilemmas of choosing between a phone app, or food for two days. So one Naxxramas wing for $6.99, in comparison, is actually pretty expensive for Asian players. We asked Chu if Blizzard would ever consider alternative pricing schemes for Asia because of that, to which he replied:
Something that’s important to us is to keep it fundamentally fair globally, and I understand that economic situations are different across the world, but one of the core philosophies [of the game] is to genuinely make it a fun, free-to-play experience.
There are no cards that are locked behind pay gates[…]. You can play Naxxramas for gold and it will take a bit of time, but not a crazy amount of time.
He elaborated on how people had options to play and grind it out, or to spend if they really wanted to.
(See: How freemium games make you pay)
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