I've had fun playing this game nearly every day since release with the goal of making it to Legend rank with a few self-imposed rules to make things interesting.

1. Warrior only. This was so I could focus on obtaining as many competitive cards as possible without giving Blizzard a dime. The only money I've ever spent on this game was for the Magni portrait when it first came out.

2. No net decks. I barely read anything at all about this game. I know what a control deck is because that's what I prefer but beyond that I couldn't tell you what ramp, or combo or tempo means. I've done a fairly good job just building my own unique decks and I regularly get to diamond 5 with my best month ever being diamond 2. I almost never see anything like the decks I'm using and I find that fun and challenging. It's also fun to see people trying to react to novel decks they're unfamiliar with.

3. Spend no money. Ever since Bobby Kotick and friends ruined the company I've had a strict rule about never feeding Blizzard a single dollar. All my cards must be obtained with in-game gold.

These were my terms for playing and for the most part I enjoyed myself. This season feels different though. Often, you'll face a deck or maybe two that feel way unfair or broken and you play around them but this season it feels like I'm playing Wild while in Standard. There are way too many ridiculously stupid mechanics at play and it makes me realize that care isn't really going into this game's design anymore. It probably hasn't been for some time which I'm sure you guys are well aware of by now. That priest shit with the zero mana healing mugs is inexcusable.

It's a shame I'll never reach my goal and it looks like I'll be just shy of 8,000 wins. Anyway, this is kind of an end of an era for me and I just figured I'd post about it to the community for closure or something. Enjoy yourselves, everyone. It's been real.