How Twist MMR Will be Calculated Going Into First Official Season

Back when Twist launched its first “beta” season in late June, players have been wondering how exactly the Twist MMR has been calculated. It was confusing, as some players started at 10/11 stars, while others didn’t have almost any bonus stars at all despite playing a lot of Hearthstone. Blizzard has reported that they based it on Wild MMR, but that wasn’t 100% correct for everyone. For example, I had 9 bonus stars in Wild while I got “only” 8 bonus stars in Twist for some reason. Some other players also reported a disproportion between those two.

This also led to some, let’s just say unfortunate situations for players who got 11 stars. Since their MMR was so high, they quickly pushed to Legend (sometimes in mere hours) but then couldn’t find matches because most of the other players were still far away. Because Wild is a less popular format and not every Wild player suddenly jumped to Twist, they didn’t have other players at their MMR and often had to wait upwards of 15 minutes to find a match. That wasn’t a very fun experience.

Chadd “Celestalon” Nervig, Hearthstone’s Feature Lead, has shared details about how the Twist MMR will be calculated for its first official season. It looks very clear now, and it seems to solve the problem above.

In preparation for Twist’s full launch on Sept 1st, we’ve set everyone’s Twist MMR to the highest of their BetaTwist, Wild, or Standard MMRs, but capped at a 9x star multiplier. Good luck climbing the Twist ladder! pic.twitter.com/UksBEyOAf8

— Celestalon (@Celestalon) August 25, 2023

As you can read, Blizzard will now take the HIGHEST of your Standard, Wild, or Twist MMR and set that as your Twist MMR, but capping at 9 stars multiplier (so the bonus stars will end when you hit Diamond 10). So if your MMR puts you at let’s say 5 or 8 bonus stars, you will get that much. But if you would land at 10 or 11, it will drop you down to 9 stars. I think it’s fair, as it makes the first Legend climbs way longer, giving more players enough time to get there naturally. Unless you absolutely rush it, you should have easier time matchmaking up there.

As a reminder, the first official Twist season (and the second in total) launches on September 1. The format will be called “Wonders” and it will feature old-school expansions, all the way from Legacy (Classic) to Mean Streets of Gadgetzan (December 2016). It will also include the new Caverns of Time cards and buffs. We’ll be posting new Twist decks after the season launches!

Update: Celestalon also clarified that copying MMR isn’t the same as copying bonus stars one-to-one. Conversions vary by format and there are also extra considerations like playing games at the rank floor (where you can’t lose ranks, but can lose MMR).

One more note: Copying your MMR from other formats doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll have the same star bonus. Since the MMR->StarBonus conversion varies by format, and copying MMR doesn’t include stuff like ranked floors.