Agh, I just got back into Hearthstone recently (JusKF#1764) thanks to coworkers playing it constantly at work on their iPads (shh, don't tell the network guys. Or the bosses.). And this seemed to be really close to my experience; on the very last day of the season, my coworkers asked if I was rank 20 so I could get the new card back, and I was like "oh, that's how you get those?" And was able to rank up to 19 or 18 from the bottom pretty quickly. Once the season rolled over however, all the miracle rogues and zoolocks came out of the woodwork and I just can't get past 19 anymore.
The Fireside Friends card back is better tho.
What made me give it up during the beta was just how incredibly awful it was if you didn't spend money. I hardly had any cards to make viable decks, and not knowing how to arena was frustrating, especially since it took a bit of time to get enough gold for an arena ticket. When I came back, I dropped a $10 bill on some packs and was able to make 2 kinda decent maybe decks, but whenever the quests ask me for Rogue or Druid or Warrior, I just flip a table, since I have no good cards there (I mean, I got the Druid legendary, but like, nothing else). Gold accrual really sped up since then with all those quests though, so it's probably a bit less ergh than I remember it being if you decide to stay completely free, but I'm still tempted to just drop another tenner to save a bunch of time. Still bad at arena though, my first one when I started playing again, I broke my record and got 5 wins, but I haven't ever come close to replicating that since.
Pretty interested in how the Naxxramas expansion is going to shake up the game. Zoolocks and Miracle Rogues in particular are infuriating, so I just wanna see new combinations.
Working on trying to make a Mage Secrets deck just because I like Secrets. When they're my Secrets. Otherwise, fuck Secrets.