My first video posted anywhere on the internet. It sucks, I know. Taken on a HTC Evo shift that is 5 years old, and I don’t have the steadiest hands on the planet. You know which orifice you can access if you have a problem with it.
I’m in the Hearthstone tournament as an amateur (consistently loosing but it is fun) I’m disabled and live on a fixed income. I don’t have cash to buy cards with, I do this for fun. The only way I can earn new cards is by completing daily quests in the game and using the gold rewards to buy new decks. Except I can’t complete quests. Haven’t been able to for over a week now. This bug has cost me several decks of cards at the time of this writing, possibly skewing the outcome of my tournament games. I mean, I do loose pretty consistently, but if the cards are in decks randomly, who is to know what cards I might have gotten or been able to make?
Playing on a system running Windows 7 (still) Playing in casual mode. Checked today (4/20) quests advanced in ranked play, still not advancing in casual. Seriously Blizzard, this isn’t a hard programming glitch to fix. Should have been done within hours, certainly shouldn’t have taken longer than a day. Been more than a week now.
I maintain that they owe me these card decks, and their response is that I’m just a stupid player who doesn’t know what part of the game he’s playing, since not all parts of the game give quest progress. For the record, I figured that out about two days after I installed the game and I’ve been playing for several months. Started playing sometime in beta before there even were solo games to play and earn cards. So I know my way around the game, just to be clear.
If anyone is wondering, I don’t play ranked play over level 20; and I hit level 20 about 5 days into this months season, so it’s been awhile since I switched over to casual. If this is another one of those undocumented changes, and Blizzard wants us all to now play ranked all the time, the quests should probably say that. Not that I will play ranked all the time, I’ll simply stop playing. Not really interested in the more cutthroat play that you get in ranked play.
In my back and forth with the CS department at Blizzard, I’ve also discovered that their website has a basic flaw in it’s programming. The “I still have a problem” button on ticket responses disappears when clicked. I have to start new tickets in order to respond to the previous unsatisfactory answer to a ticket they deem answered. I’ve tried this on multiple systems, in multiple browsers. Always disappears. Like the Hearthstone bug, it must be my login if it isn’t common across all players and installs of the game. It’s my breath isn’t it? Not sure how they smell it all the way over at Blizzard headquarters, but I’m at a loss to explain this any other way.
This is on top of my suspicion that there is at least one active hack that is pretty common in this game, which I also mention in the video. My tournament opponent last week was a prime example of this modification to the game. His initial deal was perfect for all three of his wins. Not only was that perfect, but he just happened to draw the perfect counter for every card that I played. Through three games. For a total of about 25 turns. The chances of this happening randomly approach the astronomical.
As the video shows, I can dispatch my opponents pretty handily when the luck of the draw runs my way. Or when my opponent obligingly concedes when the game goes against him.
So, to summarize, I don’t really think the problem is PEBKAC in this instance, even though it generally is. I’m not convinced that Blizzard programmers can find their asses with both hands, in the programming sense. I mean, if you can’t keep your website buttons from disappearing, what can you do programming-wise?
I can say one thing for certain. My script is canceled for World of Warcraft as of two days ago. I’m done paying for games that I find inadequate in programming.
Posted to the Hearthstone forums here.
The early morning maintenance on 4/21/15 appears to have patched the problem. Given the amount of time the patch took, I figure Blizzard owes me at least 4 decks of cards or 400 gold. Not holding my breath on ever getting my satisfaction out of Blizzard on that score.
Feeling a bit conflicted on the whole subject. My sense of justice is offended by games that blatantly break their own internal rules. Effort that is not rewarded offends me greatly. If I wanted to have my efforts taken advantage of, I’d waste my time working in the real world, not screwing around in a game.
When I try looking at the amount of time and energy I’ve spent arguing on this issue from the outside, I have to wonder at my own sanity. Why am I still playing Blizzard games, if I’m this annoyed by their behavior?
That is a very good question.
