So, you know how those new Chinese laws were going to force all publishers to disclose loot box odds in their games by May 1? And we were all looking forward to when that’d happen for Blizzard’s big titles? Funny story: turns out they were actually published a while ago.
Get the lowdown on what’s coming next in Overwatch with our update tracker.
Overwatch’s loot box odds were released on March 23, when this article appeared on Blizzard China. Hearthstone players, it was April 2 for you,and Heroes of the Storm followed suit on April 12.
Once again the accuracy of Google Translate when it comes to Chinese text is a devious mystery, but fortunately numbers are international.
Overwatch first:
- Every loot box will contain an item of “excellent” or higher quality – that’s rare (or blue), to you and I. That’s 100% of boxes, obviously.
- On average, you’ll get an epic (purple) item every 5.5 boxes. That’s 18.2% of boxes.
- On average, you’ll get a legendary (gold) item every 13.5 boxes. That’s 7.4% of boxes.
Hearthstone next:
- Every card pack will contain a card of rare or higher quality.
- Epic cards occur every 5 packs, on average (20%).
- Legendary cards occur every 20 packs, on average (5%).
And Heroes of the Storm:
- Again, Rare items should occur in every box.
- Epic items should occur every 4.5 boxes, on average (22.2%)
- Legendary items should occur every 17.5 boxes, on average (5.7%).
Fairly comparable drop rates, then, with Overwatch weirdly being slightly more generous with legendaries and slightly less so with epics. It should be noted that these are the Chinese drop rates, and we can’t be certain that they also apply to other regions – it’s known that they vary in League of Legends, for instance.
Interestingly, it’s only the Hearthstone article that mentions a ‘pity timer’ which raises the drop rate of higher-quality items if a player has gone a long time without receiving one. It’s widely thought that such timers exist across Blizzard’s games, and though the Overwatch and Heroes posts don’t mention one, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.