For the past several hours, Hearthstone team has been diligently working to resolve a couple of major problems that arrived with the launch of the newest content patch, while keeping us posted through various updates we've been reporting on here. As a result of this labor, an emergency hotfix has been greenlighted to start going out to all regions. It might take a little while before it's available everywhere. 

A server-side hotfix means no additional downloads should be necessary, but you might have to restart your game (or retire your current run, in the case of Hearthstone Mercenaries) for everything to properly take effect.

The above issues have also slightly delayed the deployment of mobile updates across all storefronts, although everything did eventually make it through as intended: 

Update: A few other bugs still remain on the to-do list! A small client update patch recently followed to deal with another major problem:

Patch 23.2 Emergency Hotfix

Quote From Blizzard

5/10 Update:
The team is currently in the process of launching a server-side emergency hotfix that will include the following fixes:

  • Fixes a bug that caused Mercenaries crashes in the Darkshore zone. The Darkshore zone should now also be unblocked. Players who were already stuck in the Darkshore zone may need to retire their Bounty before they can continue.
  • Fixes a bug that was causing players to receive several notifications for Mercenary unlocks they already had.
  • Fixes the bug that broke Deck of Lunacy, Cheesemonger, Enchanted Cauldron, and cards with those similar effects.

The hotfix is expected to take a few hours to be distributed to all regions, but should update automatically when it hits your server. Separately, the team is still actively working on the Call to the Grave bug and the bug that is blocking some players from logging in.

Is It Working Yet? 

That's always a little hard to tell with server-side hotfixes at a glance, as it's not obvious when or if the changes might've already taken place. Although if you got locked out due to Hearthstone Mercenaries, that should be a pretty easy tell as soon as you are able to get in. Otherwise, check if the new Darkshore Zone has been re-enabled for access! 

Quote From DeckTech
There’s no “hotfix done” indicator, so I guess you can try the affected Wild cards if you still have them and see if they work.

And how do these things even keep happening? Well... 

Quote From DeckTech
This is embarrassing honestly… A bunch of cards sharing a mechanic that don't work anymore after a patch should have been easily caught in any test phase where you test every card with the patch. This clearly didn't happen, which is baffling…

You think they specifically test every single card in every single patch?

Why wouldn't they? It's a card game! Seeing the history of all the bugs that ship in a patch of Hearthstone, testing all the cards with effects when the final build of the patch is ready should be on the list of things to do… At the very least all Standard cards.

There are thousands of collectible cards, and way more than that if you look into uncollectible cards and other game modes. It would be functionally impossible and a huge waste to test them all each patch. And to your last point, the affected cards here are all Wild-only cards.

I was talking about Standard. Surely most of the tests were done in BG since it was a BG-centric patch. But to your last point : Call of the Grave is affected by a bug (It doesn't trigger the effect if you have enough mana) which makes the card unusable, and it's in Standard.

You were specifically complaining about several cards with a shared mechanic being bugged. Those are the ones that are all in Wild-only. Call of the Grave is a separate issue.

[…] Nobody wants there to be any bugs, it's just with a game as huge and complicated as Hearthstone, it's basically impossible to prevent some stuff from slipping through. They're working on fixing them, though.

It can be somewhat contentious. We all certainly wouldn't mind seeing a major patch that managed not to break something in the process! Perhaps that one ideal day.