Blizzard has temporarily disabled the Ranked Play mode in Hearthstone. A bug is causing issues. Players were promoted to Legend too quickly.
The new Ranked system in Hearthstone became active on March 1st, but has already been disabled.
Players rank up way too quickly
With the start of the March season, Blizzard planned to implement the new revised ranking system in Hearthstone. However, the Ranked Play mode was disabled shortly after the update due to technical problems.
Blizzard has not provided specific details about which bug it is. However, the deactivation of the mode coincides with a tweet about players in the Asian region:
Hey @Blizzard_Ent @PlayHearthstone asia ladder is bugged and its a huge mistake, there are already 23 legends in Asia not even an hour into new season pic.twitter.com/pNJF5ROflh
— Yoonjae Lee (@CapilanoHS) February 28, 2018
Apparently, some of these players received 5 stars per win, which caused them to reach the Legend rank less than an hour after the launch of the season.
The Ranked mode has thus been temporarily disabled for the regions of Asia, China, and Europe, where the new season has started.
The fix is already in progress
In the official Battlenet forums, Community Manager Aratil stated in a post that the cause of the issue has been identified and the team is already working on a solution.
We have identified the cause of the issues with Ranked Play progression, and are working on a resolution. While we continue to work on this, Ranked Play will be in extended maintenance. We will continue to update this thread with information as it becomes available.
Ranked Play back available
Update 2.3.: Blizzard has meanwhile released a hotfix for the bug, and the Ranked Play mode is available again.
As an apology for the downtime, all players will receive three card packs from “Kobolds & Catacombs,” which they will receive through the gifting feature.
The packs can be redeemed in Hearthstone starting next week.
More information about the new ranking system can be found here:
Hearthstone changes the ladder – More stars, less rank loss!
