I have always primarily engaged with Hearthstone as a viewer rather than a player. I enjoy watching Trump and Day9 and Firebat. I have really enjoyed how much entertainment the game has given me through those channels, for free.

But as a player I definitely enjoy it less. I don't like having to spend $20 and ~2 hours playing SP content just to get the small set of new cards. I also don't like the weekly gating of those events. It seems a bit too obvious that they are artificially stringing out the content to keep players coming back. I would almost rather just pay the $20 and have the cards automatically and have the adventure as a nice bonus.

It is also frustrating to try to jump back into the meta. If I get inspired by watching a video and I want to go make the deck, often times it is disappointing to find that I don't have all the cards and my options are to 1) grind it out for weeks to get them for free or 2) buy packs with real money and hope I get the cards, but usually only get duplicates, so I basically end up spending 10-15$$ just for some dust.

When I actually get up and running with a deck, the game is a lot of fun. But the barriers to entry are everywhere.