Blizzard Forced to Reveal Loot Box Odds

If you’re ever wondering just what the chances are of getting that shiny Overwatch legendary skin or that rare hearthstone card well a Chinese law has stated that Blizzard have to publish those odds. Well, not specifically but in essence all the odds you face every time you buy a hearthstone card pack, or Heroes of the Storm or Overwatch loot box.

The Chinese regulations that started around May 2017 state that any developer whose games offer random loot box drops are required to reveal the underlying odds.

Those not familiar with the term, either through in-game currency or by cold hard cash you can get your hands on a loot box or card back that will have a chance for a random high level, rare or legendary card. These items are mostly cosmetic and make no direct impact on the game, yet they have a high potential value as players are willing to spend a lot just for the chance of a shiny new Overwatch skin. Needless to say the most sought after items do not drop all that often, and up until recently, players didn’t really have much of an idea of just what chance they had.

The chance breakdowns are below”¦

At a very basic level, each Overwatch loot box is guaranteed to have at least one rare or better item (100%), with epic items having an 18.2% chance and legendary around 7.4%. This translates to a purple for every 5.5 boxes opened and a legendary after 13.5 boxes.

Hearthstone has a similar approach with each pack guaranteed a rare or better card. Epic cards have a 20% chance to drop while legendary items have a 5% chance. So, again roughly one for every five packs for an epic and one in twenty packs for legendary.

Heroes of the Storm – again, a ‘Rare’ or better is guaranteed every back. Epic have a 22.2% chance and legendary items have a 5.7% drop rate.

Of course this information doesn’t actually change anything, and because of the wondrous lies that statistics tell us, buying loads of packs still doesn’t really guarantee a drop of a given card rarity. I’ve had three epic cards in one Hearthstone pack before.

These figures are also for the Chinese version of the games of course, so we could be looking at different statistics for the rest of the world, though I suspect they are somewhat similar.