There were a lot of updates and questions about that bug with temporary item buffs yesterday, so I figured it might be a good idea to look at it in a little more detail.

Back in 1.11, Blizzard introduced a feature that allowed temporary item buffs like poisons, sharpening stones, and oils to last through logouts and zoning between instances. And there was much rejoicing, because it was a feature a lot of people wanted-- everyone entering an instance had to rebuff when they got inside, and allowing those buffs to be persistent saved time (and gold).

However, the patch didn't exactly work out as Blizzard wanted-- the hardware couldn't exactly handle keeping all of those buffs straight. So Blizzard first said they'd remove the feature in 1.12, but eventually decided to remove the feature in the hotfix yesterday (causing the bug we posted about, that we're told is now fixed). Bottom line: Because Blizzard couldn't keep up the hardware, temporary item buffs are no longer persistent, and they won't be until new hardware shows up with the expansion. Someone asked if non-expansion people would still get this feature-- Neth has said that the hardware would be put in place before the expansion, so I'd assume yes, but I'm still asking Blue to make sure.

Which leaves just one more question, which comes to us from Methodical: Did Blizzard try this fix out on the test realms before they sent it live? Why didn't they realize it would give them hardware problems ahead of time?

Tags: bug, expansion, hardware, itembuffs, persistentbuffs

Filed under: Items, Bugs, Blizzard, Expansions