It's often the case that more patches means more problems, and while the majority of Patch 5.3: Escalation is running like clockwork, there are a few hiccups popping up along the way. WoW Insider reported on one late last night: the issues with the Tyrannical Conquest achievement. This achievement, awarded when a player has earned 25,000 conquest points in a season, also allows players to purchase conquest gear for honor. It was being awarded far too early, and allowing players who weren't entitled to do so to buy that Tyrannical gear for honor. A hotfix was swiftly implemented, blocking purchases from the vendor selling Tyrannical gear for honor, and a fix to the achievement is in the works.

The devs are also working hard on a fix that allows players to resurrect inside Lorewalker Cho's Seat of Knowledge room above Mogushan -- this contested territory is the base for the first run of new scenarios, so was seeing heavy traffic from both factions, and is out of reach from the normal resurrection run.

And what's more, Deepwind Gorge, the new battleground in patch 5.3, has been temporarily pulled from the rated battleground rotation, thanks to problems with base captures. Lastly, there are also reported problems with sound-generating addons such as Deadly Boss Mods, but WoW Insider has only been able to replicate this in certain situations. For the rest of the issues, hit the break!

If you're on a PvP realm, you may have noticed that with the release of Patch 5.3 that things have gotten kind of hectic at the Seat of Knowledge, where Lorewalker Cho hangs out when he's not pushing buttons randomly in MSV. Apparently the guards at the Seat simply cannot cope with the increased volume of Horde/Alliance aggression, and players who die in the fracas are finding out that they can't easily get back to their bodies.

Rygarius, ever the helpful hippogryph, informs us that there's a hotfix on the way to smooth out these issues and allow players to get back to their bodies if they die ignominiously at Cho's feet. Or in the vicinity of his feet. His feet will be close, is what I'm saying. We're told that the hotfix may require a realm restart to take affect, so be on the watch for that.

Patch 5.3 is officially live on servers -- and of course, with a new patch, we've got a new round of hotfixes. While there are some class tweaks for druids, monks, paladins and shaman, most of the changes involve new content. Or in the case of one change, an adjustment to older content that ought to make pet collectors and Karazhan farmers very happy.

Read on for the full list of hotfixes!

I started a bit of a discussion on Twitter yesterday, rather by accident, by talking about trackpads and their use to steer your character in WoW. I was writing outside, on my laptop, and wanted to log into the game to check something. It took me an age to steer my character over to the flight path in the Shrine, hop on a kite and head over to the PvP vendor to verify what I needed to check, and I momentarily glanced back to my first ever day playing WoW, when I used a trackpad. Man, that was hard. I quickly graduated to a normal mouse, and then onto a Razer Naga, and have never looked back.

As far as keyboards go, I'm still searching for the perfect one. I play on a laptop, and love the shallow travel, small reach and flat keys of my laptop's keyboard. I have a couple of external ones, so that I can play on a larger monitor, but haven't yet found one that replaces the laptop keyboard for sheer comfort and speed. The closest I've got is a Logitech super-flat keyboard. I'd use a Mac keyboard if all the keys weren't in the wrong places.

But how about you? Do you use a trackpad? External mouse? External keyboard? If so, which ones? And are you the mysterious, as yet unseen player who has played WoW on one of those mice that is a little rubber joystick in the center of the keyboard?

Blizzard Community Manager Daxxarri has taken to the US and EU forums to explain a temporary issue that has led Blizzard to temporarily disable the Conquest quartermasters for both factions.

Daxxarri

The achievement, Tyrannical Conquest, is only intended to be awarded when players earn 25,000 Conquest Points. Due to an issue that was not detected during the PTR testing process, the achievement could be awarded much earlier than intended. We are currently in the process of working to resolve the issue.

In the meantime, we've applied a hotfix that temporarily prevents players from purchasing gear from Tyrannical PvP item vendors.

source

This achievement required a hotfix back in patch 5.2, too, as it was incorrectly calculating the points required. It seems that, with patch 5.3, things have gone from bad to worse. The reason this is an issue is that the achievement's completion, at 25,000 conquest, now allows players to purchase conquest gear with honor. Allowing players to purchase that gear with honor at a far lower points earned level than intended was clearly a bit of an issue! Hopefully the developers will be able to implement a fix very soon, so that PvPers can continue to purchase their gear.

Update: Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka tweeted WoW Insider this morning to clarify that the only disabled vendor is the one selling Tyrannical gear for honor. The Tyrannical conquest vendor is, in fact, still available.

From a PvP perspective, patch 5.3 is one of the biggest patches in a really long time. A really, really long time! WoW Insider has been covering the changes from a PvP angle to a pretty reasonable extent, from the first moment the resilience changes were announced, through the new arena and the new battleground, right up to the more recent alterations to tank damage and the like. All our coverage is collected in one easy place, so do check it out if you're searching for more information.

So we've struck upon a few changes already, but let's dig into the patch notes and provide some additional clarity. I've pulled out the PvP-specific items from the patch notes, but if you want to see them in full, that's absolutely fine too.

Patch 5.3: Escalation is finally upon us! Players in the US and Oceanic regions will already have access to this new patch, while Europe is kept waiting for another night for things to get real between the world of Azeroth and Garrosh Hellscream's cronies.

WoW Insider has been putting out a lot of coverage on all the various aspects of patch 5.3, but we've now got the official patch notes from Blizzard for your perusal. Hit the break for the full notes!