Just a day ago, Hearthstone community managers announced that players outside of the U.S. will see the price of card packs increased. This change will affect the majority of regions and, on average, will see an increase of around $0.50. Blizzard has explained the price increase as a necessary action caused by “local and regional market conditions." While this logic is sound and Blizzard has every right to set the prices to curb the considerable loss they would stand to suffer due to changes in conversion rates, the timing of this announcement proved disastrous.

Currently, one of the top threads on the /r/Hearthstone subReddit highlights the clashing message of Blizzard stating their concerns over new players while simultaneously making it harder and harder to obtain cards. This type of negative reaction isn’t too surprising considering the current climate of the Hearthstone community.

Players were already sore over the announcement that 2017 will no longer feature adventures and instead will launch three expansions that, while offering more cards, are only accessible through purchase. Now it seems those necessary purchases will be more expensive to players. Adventures used to be a guaranteed way to ensure the collection of every new card, and many players relied on them to complete their collection.  

As it stands now, a significant number of packs would be needed for players to collect all 135 cards in the Journey to Un'Goro expansion. Players grappling with this reality while simultaneously dealing with a stagnant meta and balance issues have made their opinions clear: raising the price of packs during such dismal times is a bad move.

Hearthstone figure and broadcaster, Kripparian seems to agree.