It’s been a hot minute since I traded rungs in the middle of the hearthstone seasonal ranked ladder. But some players who recently returned to Blizzard’s take on Magic: The Gathering were greeted with a generous surprise: dozens of free card packs. Before you go getting your hopes up, however, the reward-spree was only for a random set of players in Europe.
One of them was a Reddit user who goes by access547. “Come back to hearthstone and enjoy 20 Card Packs, on us!” read a message from the game they shared on the subreddit. Ten of the packs were from the core set, while the other 10 were from the most recent Voyage to the Sunken City expansion for a combined value of over $25.
But that was at the low end of Blizzard’s gift-giving. Other players reported getting 150 packs. “Saw the post earlier, thought it was fake, got mine today wtf,” wrote Reddit user Altorode. Again, they were evenly split between the newest expansion and the core set, though this time with a combined value of nearly $200.
ace PC Gamer reports, this wasn’t a glitch or someone at Blizzard going rogue. Instead, it was part of a limited-time experiment specifically targeting players in France and the UK. “We run many different limited and targeted tests such as this to better determine what drives former, new or current players’ interest, which is a common industry practice,” a Blizzard spokesperson told PC Gamer.
A subset of “relevant players” were randomly sorted into groups and then each of those groups were randomly assigned free bonus packs for returning to the game between 20 and 150. Just like what cards players get in each pack, luck alone determines how many packs the lucky winners receive. Fitting for a game where RNG can sometimes play such a big role.
The Blizzard spokesperson didn’t say anything about whether this program would eventually circulate around to other regions as well. hearthstone‘s next expansion, Murder at Castle Nathria, launches in August. In the meantime, if you weren’t one of the lucky players in France or the UK, there are plenty of other card games to try out, including CD Projekt Red’s latest roguelike twist on the witcher mini-game Gwent called Rogue Mage.
And don’t begrudge the UK’s hearthstone players’ good fortune too much. You might not have heard but their government is currently in shambles. Though who are we to cast stones.
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