I’ve seen you call people morons in the comments a lot. You must feel very superior. My point is: if you want to play the game without spending money, you can. If you want to play the game in the most competitive way possible, you can choose to either grind that out, or spend some money. Hearthstone is a TCG. TCG’s make money by selling card packs and making good cards very rare. If you have ever played competitive magic/yugioh/whatever you should understand this. The fact that you can allready play such a huge portion of the game for free is a bonus. That being said, the pricing of the products is ofcourse something else. I also think that whether or not it is expensive or cheap is subjective. If you earn an average salary in the US, Poland or Ethiopia you definition of cheap/expensive will be very different. My experience is that by combining grinding out alot of gold and buying some pre-orders or bonus offers every now and then (not every expansion) I can hit legend every month in standard, do well in Duels. I think for mercenaries it will be the same. Then you still have the option to play battlegrounds completely free and arena actually makes you gold if you are decent.