Are Duplicate Cards an Issue in Journey to Un’Goro, Or is the Hearthstone Community Full of It?

During the release of Mean Streets of Gadgetzan expansion for Hearthstone in 2016 there was a huge problem with duplicate tri-class cards in the first batch of packs in NA region. Back then Blizzard admitted to the bug by fixing it and rewarding the players with additional 33% of packs from their initial amount.

However, it looks like the problem may still be persisting in the newly released Journey to Un’Goro expansion that just launched on April 6. Let’s investigate and try to understand if that is actually the case.

Hearthstone Subreddit and Forums Blow Up

In the last few days after the release of the Journey to Un’Goro, a number of threads appeared on Reddit and official Hearthstone forums about the unnaturally large amounts of duplicates opened by people from the Un’Goro packs.

One of the redditors admitted that his threads on an official HS forums were deleted multiple times. But this could have been because he posted the same threads many times, and simply fell victim to typical forum moderation.

“I hit the official Blizzard forums to ask what was going on with the high number of duplicate cards I was getting from the Un’Goro card packs, because I kept getting the Volcanosaur card every 3 or 4 packs fairly consistently. […]

Well get this.. every time I posted the [thread] it has been deleted from the Blizzard forums.”

But even the players from the Chinese HS forums reported that any threads which raised the issue with duplicates was censored within minutes. So things could be trickier than they look.

Just recently, Blizzard released an official statement on the matter denying such claims:

“We have seen a number of posts from our community today regarding Journey to Un’Goro packs and the possibility that they might be distributing an abnormally high amount of duplicate cards. We want to assure everyone that we have looked into this concern and have found that Journey to Un’Goro card distribution is working properly, both at a per card and per rarity basis, and is consistent with previous Hearthstone releases.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We really do appreciate all the feedback, even when related to possible bugs or concerns around the game.”

A Conspiracy of Greedy Players?

Is it possible that players wanted more Un’Goro packs for themselves again after the last incident with Mean Streets of Gadgetzan? The confirmation bias in the HS community is a normal thing, and while some players may have instigated the “uprising”, others simply jumped on the bandwagon with the hope to get more free packs.

But this kind of reaction is understandable given the current condition of Hearthstone prices.

A couple of weeks before the release of Journey to Un’Goro, Blizzard announced a price increase for the packs. This alone made the HS community angry — and in one way or another, the reaction to possible duplicates was something to be expected. Their favorite game that wasn’t cheap to begin with, and has become even more expensive for supposedly duplicate content.

On the other hand, if you look at the stats of the opened packs on other threads at Reddit and Hearthpwn, you will see that many people are actually happy with the way their packs turned out. Some players claim opening as many as 5 legendaries (no duplicates) within 60 packs. So even if the problem exists, it hasn’t affected every player, as was the case with Mean Streets of Gadgetzan.

Most likely Blizzard will do nothing about it, as they have already claimed that there is no such issue. So will the players believe them or will they persist in their claims? Only time will tell. But it will all probably calm down as soon as everybody realizes that it might have been just another moment of unlucky RNG.

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Do you feel that there were too many duplicates in the Un’Goro packs when you opened them? Share your own stats and opinions in the comments below.