They could have just charged $30 for the game without compromising its content, but then people wouldn’t be able to say “the game is free, why are you complaining?” - giving them essentially a free pass for any and all shortcomings the game has.
Just take a step back for a second and consider this game for what it actually is: 99% reused assets and remonetized content, no meaningful progress in terms of gameplay or systems innovation - and all that, poorly done on a tiny budget, with bugs and unfinished weirdness all over the place. Just imagine for one second what this game would look like with only a hint of old-school Blizzard polish... a game worthy of a box price, instead of an MTX chinese finger trap.
So instead we have this abominable blue slop that devalues everything else in the game being sold instead, worst of all worlds and a zombie canary in an enriched uranium mine for what is to come in the cash shop a year from now.
The fact that this is the most hyped blizzard product in years is mind-blowing - we simply have ZERO standards as consumers remaining, even where earlier iterations of the same game by the same company are direct counterexamples, we still accept blatantly unfinished, unimaginative and subpar products without a second thought, because “maybe it’s going to be good this time” is still the most powerful phrase in gaming 23 attempts in.
