Bot swarm?

Is it just me, or did Blizzard implement a matchmaking change that drastically increased the number of bot opponents they give you? It seems like any time I lose a game, it throws me a bot opponent as if to say, "Cheer up, have a freebie". Is anyone else seeing this?

Are you sure it's Blizzard's bots and not bots farming XP? The most likely theory I've heard is that with the shutdown of Hearthstone in China, a lot of players moved to other servers and either took their bots with them or maybe even started botting to build a new collection.

Not showing up in the "recent opponents" list is interesting; I don't think player bots would be able to do that unless the name would be hidden during the match as well.

Dane had some videos recently of playing versus bots in Wild. Those bots would hang if they got an unexpected discover effect; he used Suspicious Alchemist, but the Peddler is similar. Of course there could be multiple bot implementations with different bugs.

At lower MMR its possible, especially in classic.

But at higher MMR its nearly impossible to see a blizz bot. Even at bronze wild I've never encountered them much, or at least Ive never noticed it. Most of the time I'd get player bots, but not an outright blizz bot.

There's likely a trigger for it, like you'd have to have low MMR, at a losing streak, or after a certain queue time. There's also a likelihood its a playerbot masquerading as blizz bots to avoid being reported.

All I say is that if you get a freebie, just enjoy it. Wish I get some of these too, particularly after going 4 losses in a row.

I can't reproduce it in Standard on EU ladder. I lost several games in a row trying to play Questline Mage (it's too slow), but no suspicious play patterns from my opponents and all of them were visible in the "recent opponents" list.

Take the win, report as appropriate, and get a few achievements done.

I killed plenty of minions with the DK colossal against suspected bot opponents. I only report the ones I'm sure about, which is still at least one per day.