Collecting cards is among the most enjoyed aspects of card games. This is simply foundational, and commonly expressed by the typical fan of anything ranging from early physical incarnations to modern digital ones.

I enjoy Battlegrounds in a tertiary sense, but I fear the novelty will quickly wear thin once the lack of certain “x factors” such as obtaining a collection of cards becomes more apparent. It will already begin to become more apparent as soon as Descent of Dragons releases. I suspect most people currently playing Battlegrounds are either entirely new to Hearthstone, or else merely bored with the mechanics of the present meta.

There will of course be an ongoing “mainstay” audience for Battlegrounds, but that presence simply going to diminish with time. What you’re doing in a game is never as important as what you feel like you’re doing - and Battlegrounds just fundamentally has less of a feeling of agency, novelty, experimentation, collection, and personalization than what’s to be found in the traditional ladder format.