If its about money, then consider this. Blizard has only asked for about $100 worth, once this year:

Microsoft Game Pass program costs $180 a year & you only get base games so you gotta pay for the extra DLC. If you only buy one games DLC, you've spent $200 to MS for one year.

PS offers a choice of three subscription plans: $19.99 per month ($239.88 per year), $44.99 every three months ($179.96 per year), or $99.99 per year. So play station basically forces you to dropp $99 all at once if you don't want to over pay for the year, and then also charges for add on/DLC content.

The last time we had a new hearthstone content was earlier in 2020 if not back in 2019. So blozzard asked for $100 of your money for one year of work. Thats already $20 cheaper than PS network (if you only buy DLC for just one game) and about $80 cheaper than Microsoft (again, if you only grab the DLC for just one game).

I don't see where blizz has gouged any harder than any other company out there for gaming right now.

a. Yes, it is ridiculous that when you pay 80$ to get not even all the cards in a card set, and then STILL have to pay another 20$ to get extra XP to get gold and packs to get your missing cards, even when they said there will be an extra 35 cards later in the expansion.

b. No, you probably aren't getting as much gold. While yes, it does give you packs and hero portraits, watch or read any source and you'll see the problem with this system. Solem, Regiskillbin, Dekkster, and Zeddy have all made lengthy videos. Hearthstone Mathmatics did the math, feel free to watch their video (yes, Hearthstone hotfix did help with gold, but again gold vastly varies player to player).

c. Free to play is very different in Hearthstone. Yes, you can technically open all the cards, but getting these packs require you to play a lot and the Basic and Classic card sets just aren't competitive or fun. Again, Solem has touched on this a lot. The best and often fun decks require specific legendaries and epics free to play players don't have, and only real chance to be competitive is playing hyper aggro face decks ( and even then, you'll get destroyed by people with legendaries that aid in face decks).

d. I don't even know where you got your information for your last few paragraphs. For starters, Playstation Plus is 60$, on sale for 45$ for one year, and this includes 24 ps4 games over 12 months (2 a month). So, choose between 24 free FULL games and access to playstation online, or about 85% of one hearthstone expansion...which won't be in standard in 2 years.

e. Again, don't know where you got this information. This is the THIRD expansion this year (Ashes of Outland and Scholomance Academy came before this year). So Blizzard has asked for 260$ this year, and yet again, YOU DON"T GET ALL THE CARDS FROM THIS!

So no, I don't think there the worst company in the industry, I buy every 80$ bundle to stay competitive, but this battle pass system is slow and not effecient for players and brings forward the vicious problem of just how expensive Hearthstone is compared to other titles.

Uh. You are Def lying about game pass. I have it. They do NOT charge you for additional DLC. I'm literally looking at something like 30-40 games in their complete edition status as I'm typing this. Do you have game pass? Because if you did you would have thought that part through