You’re quite right, that would put more focus on opportunity and less upon outcome. I did preface my comment by saying that they as a private company should be free to exercise their own discretion however.

You don’t think that a private company is within their rights to make decisions about how they conduct their business? We as the consumer have the power that every consumer in a non-monopolised industry has: don’t buy the product. Historically this has been the mechanism that controls private enterprise and encourages good faith between producer and consumer. If you went to a takeaway shop and they tried to charge you $20 for a bag of chips you’d laugh at them and walk away, if the supplier continued to charge that rate they’d sell no product and they’d have to reform their pricing structure or cease to exist as a business. The reformation of the battle pass system was an example of this, the changes they made were widely unpopular, there was a ton of community outrage and they altered the system I presume under fear of losing out on overall sales. It’s worth mentioning that Blizzard have an advantage in this situation as money invested in the game has no value outside of the game, unlike other collectible card games. If they did decide to suddenly hike up their prices and you no longer wanted to spend the money required your collection is essentially redundant.

I should probably add at this point that I think the game is overpriced, I had several friends that used to play the game and no longer do specifically because of the pricing structure. I spend my $100 or so dollars 3 times a year and complain that that amount is not enough to play with every card in the game. Ultimately however I probably spend 10 or so hours playing the game a week and $100 dollars for upwards of 150 hours of game time is a transaction I’m willing to enter into, albeit begrudgingly.

Personally I’m onboard with Blizzard conducting their events however they desire; they’re a private company. If they want to run an all boys gig because they believe that they’ll attract the most interest in their event then go for it, similarly if they believe that they’re not reaching out sufficiently to potential female audiences and want to include more or exclusively females participants I’m also fine with that. I feel that they should operate at their own discretion as it’s their decision.

Having said that I do object to ‘equality’ for the sake of equality. It seems as if the definition of what constitutes equality is quite far reaching, my own interpretation of it leans more towards opportunity and not outcome. I have an example that a friend of mine encountered in his workplace about a year ago:

He was casually employed at the time and his employer notified him that they’d be putting on 4 full time employees, recruited from the current casual employee work pool of the time. At that point in time there was 8 male employees and 4 female employees. He discovered a few days later that of those 4 people 2 were to be women and 2 were to be men. Assuming all employees were equally competent the men applying for that full time position would have a 25% chance of gaining full time employment and the women a 50% chance, an outcome which I would consider manifestly unfair. Even when not operating under the assumption that the employees were equally skilled the system is still flawed as it leaves the potential for the 4 people employed to not be the 4 most suitable candidates for the position, be they men or women.

tl;dr: We should strive for equality of opportunity not outcome and let privately owned companies conduct their business and make their profits however they so desire, within the confines of the law.

Yeah fair shout. Had a few non-games where a crab stuck on turn 4 and landed double conviction on it the following turn which stuck out in my mind.

Surprised crab rider isn’t in the conversation

Good to know, thanks for confirming.

Ah right, didn’t actually take notice of rating before and after but that makes a lot of sense. Cheers.

Played a game last night with a friend who’s only recently started, I’m around 6400, he’s fresh so around 4000. I finished first and got 0 rating which I assumed was because of his lower rating, he finished second however and also got 0 rating. Is this something other people have encountered when queuing up with others? Can’t say it particularly concerned me but he sure wasn’t happy