As someone who has been playing since 2015, there is no way for me to compare my experience as a new player to what new players get now. And yet I want to post some comments.
Blizzard can do a lot of things to make the game friendlier to new players. And they have in fact done a lot of things… Such as the new player ranks, where you cannot lose ranks, and where you will not play against people like me with a several-years old account. And such as giving starting players way more free cards, decks, and packs than they did when I started playing.
But what they cannot do, is stop new players from instantly whipping out their credit card to buy the “best” (according to whatever site they use) decks, so that they can get easy wins and feel smug about themselves. What they cannot do, is prevent experienced people from making a new “smurf” account to stomp on noobs - I’ve never understood why some people consider that fun, but those are your fellow world inhabitants. And what they could in theory do, but will not do in reality, is enhance the matchmaking to not only look at current rank but also at money invested. (The reason they’ll never do this is that this would essentially punish players for spending money, and no business will ever knowingly do that).
When I started playing, back in 2015, I was rank 20 (then the lowest rank, equivalent to Bronze 10 in the current system). I had the “Standard” (equivalent to what is now “Core”) cards, plus what I found from perhaps a handful of decks I had bought from gold earned from daily quests. And I, too, faced decks that were clearly heavily credit-card funded. And also faced players that were clearly more experienced than I was. I lost more than I won.
But I kept playing. When I faced the umptieth player who had all the best legendaries (Dr. Boom was renown in those days!), I made it my goal to resist the unavoidable win as long as possible, emoted “Well played” at the end while thinking “Well paid”, and took pride in my own progress if I had managed to beat them down to closer to death than the previous whale. When I got beaten down by a more experienced player, I learned from how they punished my mistakes. And when I won, especially when I won against a better (or richer) player, I was truly proud of myself - even when in some times some lucky draws were part of the reason I won.
I never stopped playing. I never stopped completing my daily (and later also weekly) quests. Without ever sinking a single penny in my account, my collection grew, my amount of free dust grew. And my gold grew in between expansions, every time enough that I could afford to buy 50 or 60 packs upon expansion release.
I played Arena, and took what I learned there to Ranked. And I played Ranked, and used my experiences there to improve my Arena games. And I always, every week (* except during Heroic Brawl weeks), would play Tavern Brawl for the free pack.
My card collection grew, my dust grew, enabling me to craft cards that I wanted for some deck. And my skill grew as well. My highest rank in the old system was 3. In the current system, my highest is Diamond 4. With perhaps three to five games played per day, distributed among Ranked, Arena, and Tavern Brawl, I don’t think I will ever reach Legend, simply because I don’t play enough games per month to get there. But I feel that if I would invest more time and effort into it, I would by now be able to reach Legend.
Hearthstone is, in my opinion, not a game for those who seek quick wins. Unless you are prepared to sink a lot of money - and those who do will typically find that even having all the cards money can buy will not take them past a certain rank, until they increase their skill.
But if you can enjoy even the games you lose, if you are prepared to look at losses to see what you could have done better, and if you enjoy a game that can challenge you to become better over time, then Hearthstone is, in my opinion, a great game.
