Hearthstone's latest expansion goes live with queue errors and Classic pack bugs

Hearthstone's latest expansion, Forged in the Barrens, is now live in all regions, and unfortunately it's not going as smoothly as fans had hoped. Players have been running headlong into a rather bad bug that's preventing them from queuing for ranked games in Standard and Wild, and Blizzard has also disabled Classic pack opening because of another bug related to card drops.

It's still possible to get into games because the bug preventing queuing doesn't come up all the time, just quite a bit of the time. Unfortunately, it impacts not just multiplayer games but practice games against the AI as well, and there also appears to be a problem with decks in some game modes, as you can see in the image below, captured by our own Hearthstone expert Tim Clark.

Clark, who really ought to be working, tells me things have been improving gradually, although things are definitely still intermittent—your mileage may vary from moment to moment. Some community members are claiming that Golden Cards from the new Core Set packs are somehow triggering the issue. We haven't confirmed that ourselves, but it's something to keep in mind if you're running into trouble.

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So, you can play the new #Hearthstone expansion as long as you do not use any Golden Core set cards. The regular ones work fine. It might still take a couple of attempts to get a game. Also, Core set cards are not in the Discover pool (affects cards like Rinling's Rifle a lot).March 30, 2021

The separate issue with Classic card packs was "due to a bug where the 16 cards added to the Classic set later in Hearthstone's history can still drop." Classic pack opening was disabled until around 5:30 pm ET, when Blizzard sounded the all clear. Players who pulled the improper cards from Classic packs after March 25 will be given full-value dust refunds "in the coming days."

Classic pack opening has been re-enabled! ✅ In the coming days, we'll be issuing dust equal to a full refund for players that pulled these cards from Classic packs after March 25. ✨https://t.co/oJZJb6vlp8March 30, 2021

Blizzard said on Twitter that it's aware of the queue bug and working to get it fixed ASAP, but currently there's no estimate on when the job will be done. We'll keep an eye on the situation and let you know when more information is available.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.