Today's Hearthstone patch has brought a lot of great stuff to the game but with it also comes bugs. Let's jump right into the issues that are being experienced and what Blizzard is doing to fix em.
Mage Bundle "Nerf"
When the blog post for the new patch went live, Blizzard stated that the Mage Packs contained cards from only the Year of the Dragon sets. Well, this turned out to not be the case and they ninja-updated the blog to state that it was actually all the Standard expansions. We don't know if this means you can keep your packs and open them up post-rotation to get Mage cards from the new set, but we wouldn't count on it.
This not only lessens the value of the cards significantly due to the rotation that is about to happen, but this was also a slap in the face to anyone that purchased the bundle with the previous assumption. Below is the original post, a horizontal rule, and then the updated post. We are not aware of an announcement they have made to confirm the issue.
The solution to this problem is to not buy the bundle and to ask Blizzard why they haven't communicated that they originally made a mistake in their post. Ninja-edits are not fun.
Quote From Blizzard For the first time ever, we’re offering a class-specific pack for a limited time! From February 26 – March 4 you can get 5 Mage Packs containing strictly Mage class cards from the Year of the Dragon (Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, and Descent of Dragons) for $9.99!
For the first time ever, we’re offering a class-specific pack for a limited time! From February 26 – March 4 you can get 5 Mage Packs containing strictly Mage class cards from all expansions in Standard (The Witchwood, The Boomsday Project, Rastakhan's Rumble, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, and Descent of Dragons) for $9.99!
Mobile Patching Issues on iOS
If you're having issues patching on your Apple device, good news! The short-term workaround is to reinstall the game. Blizzard is looking to address this issue in an additional patch targeted for Thursday.
Quote From Kaeyoh Hey everyone,
We’ve identified an issue with patching up from 16.2.3 to 16.4 on iOS where players will get stuck in an endless update loop.
We are working towards bringing a client patch to fix this issue tomorrow. In the meantime, you can update to 16.4 by uninstalling and reinstalling Hearthstone. Thank you for your patience until then.
Battlegrounds Duo-Queue Failure
There's a bug when you attempt to queue into Battlegrounds with a friend. Although you are allowed to do so, the game won't be found! Blizzard asks that you don't duo-queue until they fix the issue. No current ETA has been provided.
Quote From Kaeyoh Hey everyone,
We’re currently investigating a bug that prevents queueing with friends into Battlegrounds matches. While the ability to search for a match with a friend still works, a game will not be found. For now, we advise holding off on duo-queueing to avoid getting stuck in the search.
We’ll share another update as soon as we’ve determined and scheduled a fix.
The Case of the Ghostly Mogu Fleshshaper
If you use an Evolve mechanic on a 6-cost minion, some community members are reporting that they get a Mogu Fleshshaper! Well, that can't be right... Mogu Fleshshaper is clearly a 9-cost minion, right?
Well, yes, you are indeed correct. The issue is because of a small data mistake Blizzard made in the client data. I responded to the reddit post and have included my response below to explain whats going on. I expect Blizzard will patch it out when they fix the iOS issues, so enjoy it while you can.
Quote From Fluxflashor I can explain whats going on here. Mogu is not being buffed.
So in today's patch, Blizzard added in some cards to Tavern Brawl that are clones of the originals. A special brawl comes back once a year that lets us play with decks from previous tournament champions and a part of that requires adding duplicate cards to the game with old stats.
Now, why is this only happening with Mogu Fleshshaper and not other cards they've added to the Brawl set?
HAH. Blizzard goofed. The card is flagged as collectible in their data and I imagine it'll be patched soon. There also isn't an image associated with it which is why we have the default white texture showing up.
Fun stuff.
We Don't Know What This Year Is
The patch doesn't seem to tell us anything about what the next year is or what expansion we're getting. Consider this the announcement of the announcement of the announcement, but then don't consider this an announcement since the announcement was the fact we had a Hearthstone Summit. Something, something announcement.
We really can't wait to find out what is in store. Although there's a few issues with today's patch, things are looking great so far for 2020 and Hearthstone!
This Week's Hearthstone Standard Meta Report
Be sure to check out our Meta Report for the past week!
Dragonsgrounds - Patch 16.4.0 Full Patch Notes
Looking for more information on today's patch? Check out the full patch notes!
Comments
Workaround for android: if you uninstall HS and install it again from Amazon Appstore, then you can play again.
Over 24 hours and still no fix, in fact not even an official acknowledgement that there's any sort of issue. The combination of sloppy testing, combined with the ninja update (effectively lying to your customers) is just one more illustration of how comprehensively blizzard are managing to screw things up.
What a joke.
It's getting to the stage that, when a new update is announced, I've stopped getting excited about the prospect of new features, rewards, etc., and am simply resigned to the fact that blizzard are going to screw up the game for the next few days.
Perhaps then, you should stop basing your life around patch notes then, yes? 24 hours and no fix! OMG Better alert the pentagon that a company didn't fabricate a fix in less than 24 hours!
The only thing that IS a joke is your expectations that companies deploy non-critical fixes in less than 24 hours. It's very easy to see when people (like you) have no idea how the software industry works, and spend their time complaining about *literally* everything.
Want a positive takeaway? Try to be grateful a little more. Be grateful you have internet, heating, a house, a mobile phone to screw around on at work, a job that pays you well, food in your belly. How about you stop acting like an ungrateful little cretin and you'll find that things like small bugs in video games just don't bother you as much anymore.
Wow, I obviously touched a raw nerve there!
A general principle of commerce is that, when you pay for something, it's expected to do what it's advertised to do. My issue with Blizzard at present is that, with several patches they've released recently, they have made the game unplayable for a significant proportion of their users, meaning that I've lost confidence in their quality assurance process. I also take issue with them releasing a product (mage bundle) then retroactively changing its advertising after people have bought it. As I said above, that's just not honest.
Feel free to reply, or not. If you do though, it would be nice if you were a bit more classy about it. The vitriol and name calling you gave in to in your earlier post doesn't really do much to advance the discussion. It might be worth taking your own advice and not getting so worked up about what is, after all, a pretty trivial matter in the grand scheme of things.
Wow dude. While I mostly agree, I'm not sure you are the right person to teach people about morals or how to be grateful for things life has given.
I do think however that a company like Blizzard should indeed come up with a fix for an issue not allowing half their playerbase to play on their phones in 24 hours.
Yo, quick update on the Android crash.
Seems like players who re-download HS via the Amazon app will somehow bypass the bug and be able to play today with patch added.
I'm on mobile data so there's no way I'm gonna d/l +6GBs of HS plus the Amazon thingies, but hey, it's a solution, rite?
Pretty angry here, I don't even care about Battlegrounds and the dragons on it, yet we have to endure such poor Quality Testing performance.
Glad I fought the urge to buy the Mage packs... That's a bloody slap in the face to those that did buy them.
Also having Android issues, freezes after Hearthstone, battle.net left icon and options cog appear.
Sent them feedback and log files.
Such a bad week to be a Customer Support employee for Blizz.
Oh and the mage bundle shit? I think there are better ways to burn 10$.
Come over to Legends of Runeterra, we have Poro to pet ;)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Im teally trying to stay positive for HS and im waiting to see whats the HS will cement its place for the next 10 years like Frodan said but its really hard right now. Just doing the daily quests until the big announcement.
Then we'll see
Blizzard is becoming really good at getting bad press lately..
After this patch the Mobile version doesn't work anymore
The welcome screen appears (HEARTHSTONE) but nothing happens ... any clue?
They fucked up again. See this:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/hearthstone/t/android-game-freezing-on-title-screen/25075/27
I think it took 6 weeks for the last patch induced android crash to be fixed. I guess I'm out of the birthday celebration. At least I can now find time to watch 6 hours of twitch streams so Ican earn my 2 packs; which I won't be able to open and use until around time for the next expansion.
Inset your own joke about Blizzard and 'don't you have phones' here.
Conspiracy suggestion: they knew there would be bugs resulting in an unplayable game so they added the twitch drops as a last minute bandaid.
Segfault at address 0000001f, that sounds like they're trying to access data from a struct via a null pointer. Most of Hearthstone is written in C# and should therefore not be able to crash in this way, but maybe some of its native code is missing a null check or has a fragile initialization sequence.
Irrespective of what is says in the shop, to advertise something publicly and then change it's nature after people already bought it might be illegal in the UK, and I assume so in many other countries. Perhaps they can get out of it with the terms and conditions on the website (which I am not going to check).
I didn't buy this bundle, but if you did I'd recommend politely contacting support and asking for them to resolve it. Ideally they'd offer purchasers some extra packs or a refund. (even though this will be a pain for support which I assume means they wouldn't bother trying to remove opened cards from collections). Again, I don't profit from this but it doesn't seem fair - and surely they don't want to deter people from buying future bundles.
Ninja changes like this are simply not acceptable when people are spending real money.
As for the patch bugs, I don't know if it's the resources/time they give to developers or the play/patch testers, but quality control seems systemically poor now. Please make changes whoever is supposed to fix that.
I hope Frodan is correct in that the next decade is secure for the game. But things like this makes me worry.
Hearthstone is a great game - let's not f*ck it up Team 5/Blizzard.
Ninja changes like this are simply not acceptable. Period.
I bought the mage bundle as it's only year of the dragon cards I'm missing. I mean it does say on the shop it's from standard but went there from the post and didn't read it. I doubt I have a leg to stand on but it's frustrating to have conflicting information.
Yeah, that's the big issue. There isn't much reason to read that block of text in the shop if the blog conveyed seemingly accurate information.
If anyone wants a refund, I can't imagine it would be hard to argue it. They definitely can refund Hearthstone stuff.