I'm using the term F2P too loosely, that is my bad. In the case of Adventures they were more economical for budget players (is that what I should call them?) to keep up. Like my friend, he would drop $50 on the expansion if I told him it'd put his collection in a good place but I know that, without the right classic, Un'goro, and KotFT cards to synergies with what he gets there will only be so much he can do. Maybe he could craft some of what he needs with dust but I doubt it, dust rewards are pretty poor in this game.

To be honest I never really liked HS single player content so I wasn't huge on the Adventures, and prefer a 3rd large set in the year anyways. But they need to find a way to reward players with cards/packs/dust more so than they are doing now. The free stuff in the weeks leading up to a set is nice but, in the grand scheme of things, don't add up to very much. Maybe some kind of daily login reward or reward for logging in so many days a month could be a nice step to take.

When it comes to the MtG comparison I was kinda thinking the same thing earlier. Why would I be upset that HS has a buy in when ALL physical games have a buy in? But I think I have two arguments about why it is valid to fault HS here. For one thing, at least with MtG you can buy specific cards, so a new player doesn't have to spend as much on packs since they can buy packs to get the commons and uncommon they need and then buy the rare cards as singles online/at a card shop. Two, as a video game advertising itself to be F2P I expect Blizzard to give more to their players. It doesn't cost them anything to give an extra card/pack here and there, they are just afraid of making less money if people decide to buy less packs because they're getting too many for free. But I think there is a balance they can find between giving away too many free packs and what they are doing now.