Alchemy hotfix: No more discoveries for now
by Krystalle Voecks 
Apr 25th 2007 at 11:30AM
Last night, Alchemists everywhere lost a wonderful ability. One which many (including my Druid) have not been able to savor the sweet success of. According to Tseric, there was a bug causing an exploitable situation in regard to potion/transmute discoveries. So, as was done with rogue poisons staying on when entering an instance, Blizzard has opted to temporarily remove the ability altogether for all alchemists to learn new potions, flasks and transmutes through discovery. Per Tseric on the Profession forums:
We have been working on the resolution of a serious exploit in game which has led to certain consequences that we wanted everyone to be aware of. A hot fix has been recently applied to the alchemy profession, with regards to discoveries. For the time being, we have disabled all chance of a discovery, until we can implement the proper fix through a patch , as we can not resolve this matter solely with hot fixes. We apologize for the necessary but temporary removal of discoveries, and are working to have them re-implemented with an upcoming content patch.
While disheartening for the moment, at least it is only a temporary removal and not a permanent one. I'm sad to hear that my Druid will have to wait for some discoveries (she was so close, too!) but I'm certain Blizzard will get this remedied. It's just a question of if we'll see the alchemy discovery fix patch prior to, with, or after the 2.1 patch. That is, considering the focus on everything going on in the PTRs at the moment...
[image via Mario Caruso]
Filed under: Alchemy, Patches, Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Paradoxic Apr 25th 2007 12:08PM
Interesting, anyone know what the exploit was? Infinite pots or some such?
atr Apr 25th 2007 12:07PM
This thread includes people describing the bug.
atr Apr 25th 2007 12:07PM
OK, lets try that again.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=98661222&sid=1
Krystalle Voecks Apr 25th 2007 12:07PM
According to a post on General, (pointed out by thermalnoise on the World of Warcraft LJ) the bug was when making potions with full bags, you did not actually use any mats (as nothing was being created) but you still got the chance at a discovery.
Link to the thread in question:
http://community.livejournal.com/worldofwarcraft/5476385.html?thread=91009057
Argent Apr 25th 2007 12:07PM
wow, it took them this long to actually do something about that?
dayum.
blizz is kinda late to the party on this.
ripper Apr 25th 2007 12:50PM
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=98741661&pageNo=1&sid=1#4
read the blue about it being fixed in next patch including the discovery rate going up.
Savok Apr 25th 2007 1:00PM
....
HATE
First thing Blizzard does these days when something goes slightly wrong, remove it from the game for a few weeks.
They could of, I don't know, had 2.0.13 during maintenance (which we had because I sat through my server completely vanishing off the damn realm list for hours) and had the whole thing already over with.
Great way to say sorry to the alchemists for 2.1, "hey we're fixing your discovery ability! please ignore the fact we broke it a few weeks ago just so we could have something positive for 2.1"
Sylythn Apr 25th 2007 1:17PM
Um wow - that's something that should have been in their SQA test plans. That's a boundary condition - one of the most common errors in coding. I'm really surprised they didn't catch this early on in testing.
Maedhras Apr 25th 2007 1:22PM
Savok, if you think you can do better, I suggest you apply for a job at Blizzard. It seems like really good working conditions from what I've gathered.
Sorcefire Apr 25th 2007 1:59PM
Urgh! That's how I feel about this. I am a 375 Alch and have spent a lot of time, over a year, training this profession up as I levelled and when I learned about the discovery feature I was truly excited.
Fast forward a few months and now not only is the profession being nerfed because of poor end-game design, they are just switching desirable features in reaction to an exploit they should have caught in testing!
Blizs needs to either up the quality of the content and game mechanics they implement or stop releasing content only partial (if at all) tested. Quit screwing with my profession! :)
Finnicks Daerkhiv Apr 25th 2007 2:05PM
Savok,
When you become a programmer, and learn what it's like to traul through the thousands and thousands of lines of code that probably power the Alchemy Profession, I will take your bitching semi-seriously.
Even a significant bug like this can be the cause of the most minute and insignificant error or omision in the code, and now Blizzard not only has to FIND the error, they have to fix the error, which might also affect thousands of other parts of the programming.
It's not like going through your 5th grade book report and fixing a typo. It takes time, effort, and a lot of debugging.
However, Blizzard cannot allow bug-exploiters (which is a direct and ban-worthy violation of the ToS) to continue to exploit this for their own gain! Their only recourse is to disable the Discovery feature entirely until it can be fixed.
I am a Warlock. Did anyone hear me bitching and whining like a tantrum-throwing 4-year-old when they took away the Imp's +spelldamage ratio because it was too high, until they could rebalance it properly? NO. I just didn't use the Imp in boss fights for a while, as the Felguard was out-damaging him while the cooefficient was 0.
Now my Imp's +spelldamage coefficient is balance and returned, and the Imp is useful again, but not as overpowered. Yay.
The discoveries will return.
Until then, the moral of the story is: You don't need a medical license to have patience. Just patients.
Cailleach Apr 25th 2007 5:11PM
#11 - written by a developer. #8 - written by a software tester. This, my un-enlightened friends, is a debate that has gone on as long as developers and software testers have existed. They're either both correct or both incorrect.
That being said.. FEH! My alchemist has been 375 for months, I use the heck out of my skill, and have never gotten a discovery. I'm not missing a thing if it's removed.
Guernia Apr 25th 2007 4:28PM
Possibly the worst part of this whole shemozzle is those who were guilty of exploiting will probably not face any consequences, and will get to keep their discovered recipes.
Same with the goblin engineering skill-up exploit which is still in the game as of yesterday evening. It's a double slap in the face for gnome engineering, which is already facing the loss of fuctionality against 60+ mobs in many of the cool toys that were available prior to BC.
Savok Apr 26th 2007 1:17AM
9, I don't expect they'll hire me as a tester since it's apparent that department doesn't exist.
11, cry me a river if you like but this isn't about you. This exploit has apparntly been around for ages and Blizzard had no god damn idea. Further evidence that Blizzard have no idea what the actual playerbase is doing/thinking at any given time, past or present.
This is why things only ever happen for the people who cry loudest on the official forums, only they can get loud enough for the sound to travel up Blizzard's arse, where their heads currently reside.