I have played World of Warcraft since 2007. I remember exactly how my adventure started: on a crappy computer making a mage on my ex’s account. I could barely play for 5 minutes straight without everything freezing up, but I played and I loved it.
Since then the Blizzard franchise has grown enormously, I got into playing Diablo 3 when it was released. And I knew about Starcraft (although RTS really isn’t my genre). Now next to those classic three titles we also have Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Blizzard’s empire grows.

One of the things that Blizzard has refined to an art is crossgame rewards. I don’t even know where it started exactly, but right now it’s perfectly normal to get items for all of your Blizzard games when you buy a Blizzcon ticket or a Collector’s edition of one of their games. Sometimes they will do promotions, and one of the last ones was getting a new hero portrait in Hearthstone for dinging a new character level 20 in World of Warcraft.
Being the collector that I am, I dusted off my World of Warcraft account and created a Warlock. It’s one of those classes I barely touched, and seeing as it was only level 20 I just picked up something new to keep the flavour fresh.
I think I started levelling on Thursday and I just dinged 20 about 10 minutes ago. It was fast and easy and it felt nice running around on Azeroth again, but it didn’t make me want to renew my sub.

I am happy with my reward though. Lady Liadrin is kickass and I much rather look at her as Paladin hero than Uther. Not to mention you unlock her as golden, animated hero which I just love to bits and pieces. This might actually make me play Hearthstone again, although right now I don’t really see where I can find the time to do so.

I really hope Blizzard keeps doing these types of cross-promotions. It attracts new players to some of their games, or makes old players come back. It’s nice that you can earn stuff like this without having to pay for it (level 20 character is doable on a WoW starter account, meaning you play for free) and for someone like me who likes to collect and finish everything it really scratches a certain itch.

The next crossgame goodies I get are the ones that come with the Overwatch release… And I really can’t wait to get my hands on some of them.