The Joy of Free to Play

Ah, the joys of the truly free to play game. Lets talk about one of my favorite games for a moment, Heroes of the Storm (Hots for short). Hots is a free to play moba created by Blizzard in 2015 that has micro transactions (mostly for the coolest skins and mounts) but otherwise characters can be unlocked by spending gold in the shop. Gold is acquired by logging in everyday and doing quests, which can earn you from 200 to 800 gold. Each day you get one new quest, thus giving you unlimited (but limited b/c of how the time and respawn of quests work) gold as long as you keep logging in and playing the game.

At first you would think this is time consuming or too much of a hurdle to go through to unlock characters-because of the grind. But no, this grind has brought me joy.

Its been about two weeks since I've been grinding gold and doing quests in Hots to earn the latest character Alexstraza (pictured above), who now costs 10,000 gold (when heroes first come out they are 15,000 gold). Right now I am sitting at about 9,500 gold and it feels great. The work, dedication, craft, and blood of my enemies to earn all that gold is quite satisfying. I don't think I would get this same satisfaction if I played League of Legends of Dota 2, two other popular mobas. Those games are work just to make it through a forty-five minute match. But I digress.

When I unlock Alexstraza in a few days it will be quite the reward. Rewards for playing games is something most gaming companies have to work much harder at. Sure you can earn loot boxes in Overwatch but at the end of the day the skins don't add much. A new character to your roster in a game adds much much more.

Here's a game that does free to play gaming right. I can earn every character through grinding quests and find a ton of satisfaction from it. Beat that EA.