Blizzard just published an accompanying article about the all-new Catch-Up Packs. Read all about the details below!
Quote from BlizzardAs we celebrate BlizzCon together, we’re excited to keep making the Tavern a place that’s open and inviting to everyone. Often, when we talk to players who have been away for a while, or who are looking to try Hearthstone for the first time, they tell us they’re most concerned with building up their collections.
Today, we announced new Catch-Up Packs—game-changing packs designed to get you caught up to the new expansion. Each Catch-Up Pack contains up to 50 cards! We’re giving everybody some Catch-Up Packs for free and we’ve added a ton to both Showdown in the Badlands Pre-Purchase Bundles at no extra cost. For players with small Standard collections, this can mean hundreds of extra cards!* Come find out how.
* A player with no current Standard collection who opens 30 Catch-Up Packs will receive over 1000 cards!
What Are Catch-Up Packs?
Catch-Up Packs are a new type of Hearthstone Pack that include a variable number of cards in them—between 5 and 50 cards per pack—based on the percentage of prior Standard expansion cards you’ve already received.
These first Catch-Up Packs are specifically Badlands Catch-Up Packs. They’re designed to catch you up to our upcoming expansion by including cards from the five prior Standard card expansions: Voyage to the Sunken City, Murder at Castle Nathria, March of the Lich King, Festival of Legends, and TITANS.
These Badlands Catch-Up Packs will always include cards from those five sets, and only those five sets, regardless of when you open them. If we do Catch-Up Packs for a different set in the future, we’ll make a new type of Catch-Up Pack at that time.
Badlands Catch-Up Packs will be able to be opened with the launch of Showdown in the Badlands, on November 14!
How Do Catch-Up Packs Work?
Here are all the tasty details:
- Number of Cards: Each Badlands Catch-Up Pack includes 1-10 cards from each of the five included sets, for a total of 5-50 cards per pack. The number of cards you get from each set is based on the percentage of cards you’ve received* from that set:
- 25% or less of that set: 10 cards from that set
- 75% or more of that set: 1 card from that set
- Between 25% and 75% completion: scales with collection completion percentage
- Rarity Distribution: At least 20% (rounded up) of the cards in each Catch-Up Pack will be a Rare or better. The overall rarity distribution for Catch-Up Packs is the same as normal packs.
- Quality: All cards are normal quality (non-Golden).
- First Legendary Guarantee: One Legendary in the first 50 cards from each expansion (yes, that means you get to capture five different Legendary offering bonuses in these packs).
- Mass Pack Opening: You can Mass Pack Open up to 20 Catch-Up Packs at once.
See the full Pack Disclosure Site for more details.
* Like duplicate protection, this counts any cards you’ve received from the set, including any cards you crafted, regardless of whether you later disenchanted cards. Collection percentage only counts up to 2 copies of each Common, Rare, and Epic card, and 1 copy of each Legendary card.
How Do I Get Catch-Up Packs?
Catch-Up Packs have also been added to both Showdown in the Badlands Pre-Purchase bundles: 10 in the regular Pre-Purchase bundle and 20 in the Pre-Purchase Mega Bundle!* Everyone attending BlizzCon in person, or who purchased either BlizzCon Collection level, gets 3 Catch-Up Packs automatically added to their BlizzCon goodies. There will also be a free login reward of 2 Catch-Up Packs, and an event that grants 5 Catch-Up Packs with Patch 28.0—more details on those are coming in the 28.0 Patch Notes. Also in Patch 28.0, Catch-Up Packs will be added to the new and returning player experience. Finally, there will be bundle offers in the Shop that include Catch-Up Packs.
Badlands Catch-Up Packs unlock with Showdown in the Badlands, on November 14—that's when you’ll be able to open any Catch-Up Packs you get before then.
* These have been added to the accounts of people who already got their Pre-Purchase Bundles.
We’re really excited to see how Catch-Up Packs open Hearthstone up to all our players—those who are brand new, those who play every day, and all those in-between! We can’t wait to see you in the Tavern.
I agree. I've spent a lot on this game and I think these systems are great. I don't want HS to only be a game for people that spend a lot of money. I want to be able to recommend the game to f2p players and for them to be able to have a solid time.
I have a full collection and it took me several years to get it and it would‘nt be possible without spending some money of course. My friend is f2p and he has so much problems getting a collection where he‘s able to play at least 3 different decks. I felt always sorry for him, that there‘s no better way to get more cards for f2p.
Thanks for your heated response, great to see a passionate reply, as is expected when someone writes a remark intending to inspire discussion. However, unfortunate that you fell into the trap of being so triggered by a theoretical discussion.
You’ve missed the mark with your judgements of me because I genuinely agree with implementing these packs— the rationale is spot on. The game needs ‘this’ and could have done with it sooner. It’s awesome how it will bridge the gap for new players and I’m glad. In fact, as a F2P person myself I am over the moon about it.
You needn’t be wound up by my comparisons to socio-economic politics, I was merely enjoying the irony of the company often referred to as “Bli$$ard” giving freely what they usually charge heavily for. That is my “mindset” and I am also a non-smoker.
Righto. An arsonist is also merely enjoying the fireworks.
But even if I completely misunderstood innocent poor you, I don't think my impression of you is entirely off if you engage in dogwhistling for the fun of it. But this is going off-topic.
If you like the Catch-up packs, good for you.
You "seem" to be "reading" too "much" into "things."
(You are) weeeeeird
If you play and supported the game for the past 10 years, you get nothing (almost), congrats!
You just have the normal packs to buy. You don‘t have to buy this one. And at least you got something in this packs. Not nothing. What if all the f2p quit game cause they can‘t stand a chance or can‘t play what they like to?
It does feel a bit bad to whales. Maybe they could give some cosmetic bonus items to folks with large collections?
Just keep in mind that most of the extra cards you'll be getting will be commons and rares, and once you've got all of those you'll almost be at 75% collected and the packs won't contain anything extra.
Well, why would they bother giving you more stuff when by your own admission you spend a ton of money each expansion anyway? : ^)
The whales are always the least catered to because they'll buy everything they throw at them anyways.
It's almost like they're trying to encourage long term players to take a break from the game
I used to buy every expansion, mega bundle plus enough packs to play everything that is playable. Blizz started rewarding returning players so I've decided to game the system. I'm taking a 4 month break, I hope they do the returning experience in 2 months, because it will be 4 months for me and I'd liek to get a free pack shower.
To all the people who are going to say "why are the dedicated players not being rewarded" please look at it this way.
Blizzard doesn't owe you anything and you wouldn't be complaining if nothing was being given out at all.
If you're a returning player, you get free cards to catch up to the crowd. If your a dedicated player you get to enjoy your game with more than just bots. Everyone wins
I have been playing for about 8 years now.
The one thing I would like to see more than anything is more people playing the game. Not because the cue times are too long, it just feels nicer to have more people around, more people joining discussions, more people looking for advice, more people posting memes, etc. A big community is just more fun. 2015/16/17 were awesome years in Hearthstone, primarily because they were so many enjoyable content creators and lively forums.
And I am 100% fine with anything that would contribute to that, even when those days are over. For example, I am not the least bit sour that new players get dozens of packs from ranking up the pre-ladder, when I got a Golden Common and 5 dust for reaching Rank 20 in my first season. I have over 100k dust I never feel like spending and I still have that golden Ogre Warmaul. I have nothing to be jealous about.
Plus, after all these years I am still happy whenever there are freebies, no matter how small. It's not always been like this.
This applies to all players correct? Everyone will get the free login reward of 2 Catch-up packs.
As far as we know, yes. We don't know anything about the "patch" event, tho. I assume the typical "new expansion"-type event.
why would u ever buy normal packs again
dust the sets to zero and gain a million cards
Doesn't work that way. As it says above, this functions like duplicate protection, so it doesn't matter if you've disenchanted them or not.
but u only get full packs when the set is below 25% completion
Why would you actively run backwards to run the same distance forwards, but a little faster?