After community complaints, Hearthstone listened to the feedback and will be offering full refund for Drek’Thar and Vanndar. Why did Hearthstone devs change their mind?
Hearthstone has announced that Drek’Thar and Vanndar will offer a full dust refund after community feedback. Today, in a forum post about the next Hotfix, the Hearthstone team communicated their decision to extend the start-of-rewards-track refund logic to also apply to Vanndar and Drek’Thar. What is this all about, and what does it mean?
Drek’Thar and Vanndar dust refund story
Days ago, in our Hearthstone section, Esports.gg started covering the Drek’Thar and Vanndar story. No, this was not about the Battle for Alterac Valley. These two iconic legendaries of Hearthstone’s latest expansion became the spotlight due to a community claim. Since both Drek’Thar and Vanndar are obtainable for free, players were asking Hearthstone for full dust refunds when they were opened in packs.
During the week, Nicholas “Decktech” Weiss explained in a response to Esports.gg that this wasn’t a bug nor a problem with the Duplicate protection system. However, the community wasn’t excited about opening Drek’Thar or Vanndar instead of other legendaries and not getting a dust refund.
The community feedback that fueled this change had some sense. It wasn’t only about getting free stuff. The argument compared the case of Vanndar and Drek’Thar with Korrak, all three being free obtainable legendaries, but with only Korrak offered a full dust refund. Although it wasn’t considered a mistake originally, Hearthstone understood that there were motives for a change.
Hearthstone’s view about Drek’Thar and Vanndar
In the same forum post that includes known bugs, issues, and updates of the 22.0 patch, Hearthstone announced that Drek’Thar and Vanndar would offer a full dust refund soon.
“The team has decided to extend the start-of-rewards-track refund logic to also apply to Vanndar and Drek’Thar. Although these cards do not meet the circumstances we normally use to apply refund logic, we have heard your feedback that an exception in this instance will make for a better play experience for many players.”
Why the change? Celestalon, Hearthstone Dev and Purple expert, explained in a Twitter thread the train of thought for their original approach. Refund cases like Korrak were a band-aid solution to the Day 1 problem of opening packs before getting rewards. The Vanndar-Drek’Thar case didn’t fall into the dust refund category since the reward was delayed.
Moreover, Celestalon adds that “Part of our hesitance in reacting to this has been not wanting to set a precedent that for every reward we make in the future”. The Hearthstone team has tried their best to be consistent when giving a message. Some could argue that they are being cheap and don’t want players to have free goods. Celestalon addressed the argument even before it was written: “We love to be generous; the AV reward track and event are the most free stuff we’ve ever done. But we want to do it intentionally; we’d rather put that value into planned rewards.”
What to do now?
First of all, don’t run to disenchant Drek’Thar and Vanndar yet since the full refund is not active yet. If you got the missing copy from a pack, you will be able to disenchant for the full value probably with the next hotfix patch either at the end of December or after the Holiday season. If you have already disenchanted Drek’Thar or Vanndar, you will receive an automatic compensation as if you had done it for the full dust amount.
Moreover, Korrak’s full dust refund protection has been restored after being unintentionally cut. The new grace period is already online and will last until December 18th. Alongside this news, the hotfix includes many bug fixes and improvements. Among them, we find that as of now, Mercenaries products will now try to offer more value, prioritizing missing cosmetics before coins when buying random bundles. Also, the Alterac Valley board will finally see play after some days of absence.
If you want to check every hotfix, check the 22.0 Known Issues thread in the forums. Stay tuned to Esports.gg for more Hearthstone news and updates. See you next time in the tavern.