Blizzard rolls out hotfix for Hearthstone’s Mean Streets of Gadgetzan bug [Updated]

Update: Community manager Zeriyah has announced that a hotfix to correct the issue has been rolled out, and that players affected by the bug will receive compensation. Her full statement:

"Greetings,

After the launch of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan on the Americas server, we discovered a bug with Mean Streets of Gadgetzan card packs that unintentionally made the drop rate of tri-class cards higher than intended. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

A hotfix was rolled out to all players on the Americas server at 2:30PM PST, which corrects this issue. Players on the Americas server will now see tri-class cards appear at a drop rate that is consistent with other cards of their rarity.

Any player on the Americas server who opened Mean Streets of Gadgetzan packs before 2:30PM PST will receive additional Mean Streets of Gadgetzan packs as compensation. The affected players will receive 33% of the total amount of Gadgetzan packs opened before 2:30PM PST, rounded up, to a minimum of one, regardless if the player acquired packs through gold, Quests, or real money. Since cards are generated upon pack opening and not pack purchase, packs purchased before the hotfix but opened after the hotfix will not experience this bug and will not be a part of the compensation roll out.

For example, if a player opened their 50 pack pre-purchase bundle before 2:30PM PST, they will receive 17 additional packs. (33% of 50)

If a player opened one pack of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan cards and completed a Quest that awards two packs before 2:30PM PST, they will receive one additional pack. (33% of 3)

If a player opened 47 packs before 2:30PM PST, and 23 packs after 2:30PM PST, they will receive 16 additional packs. (33% of 47 affected packs)

This fix will also be added to the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan before packs are available to open in all other regions, so players will not be affected by this bug when Mean Streets of Gadgetzan goes live in their region.

We are currently working on when the compensation will be applied to affected players. We will provide additional updates as they become available.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we worked to resolve this issue as quickly as possible."

Original story:

Hearthstone’s latest expansion, Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, is now live on the NA server—and judging by the 75k+ viewers watching Kripparian’s stream, people are pretty excited about it. A huge part of the fun on launch day is busting open new packs, and then inevitably raging at the less than stellar legendaries you pulled. But Mean Streets currently has a different RNG-related problem with its packs. 

According to several threads on Reddit there is a much higher chance of getting Tri-Class cards when opening your packs. As there are only nine Tri-Class cards out of 132 total in the set, that means you’re likely to see a lot of duplicates, which dilutes the chance of getting other cards you want. 

Blizzard has acknowledged the reports and says it’s looking into the issue. It’s unclear whether there will be any form of recompense if the pack algorithm does turn out to have been broken.  

Tri-Class cards are a new addition to Hearthstone. The expansion is themed around three crime families (the Jade Lotus, Kabal, and Grimy Goons), each of which encompasses three hero classes in the game. So, for example, Jade Lotus Tri-Class cards can only be used by Druid, Shaman, or Rogue decks. You can spot a Tri-Class card by looking for a little banner with an icon which hangs underneath the Mana cost in the top lefthand corner. 

What’s weird is that these cards already have their own rarity gems, which ought to determine the frequency with which they appear in packs. However, it’s possible Blizzard could have tweaked some settings to ensure Tri-Class cards got pulled more often in order to push the new mechanic. And if that’s the case, it sounds like the maths went awry somewhere.

Our technology editor Bo Moore has been busting open his packs this morning, and certainly ran into the abundance of Tri-Class cards issue: “In the 50 packs I opened, I got four Legendary cards—two of them were Don Han'Cho, the Grimy Goons legendary,” he says. As I type this I’m watching Kripp open more packs, and it’s Tri-Class cards for days.

My advice for now would be to sit tight on your packs until this gets resolved. Which, if you play on the EU server, you’ll have to do anyway because we’re still waiting for Mean Streets to go live. But hey, as one wag on Reddit noted, thanks for doing our beta testing NA! 

For more on Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, check out the entire card set here, find out if Sottle expects the meta to slow down, and take a look at the cards we expect to be the sleeper hits from the new set.