Of unstable servers, MIA pets and one Scarab Lord Dinosaur
by Dan O'Halloran 
Oct 20th 2008 at 9:00AM
As I mentioned earlier, my server Silver Hand was down Saturday night. All night. I gave up trying around midnight. Friday night, when I was actually able to log on, the Heroic Instance servers went down catching many in my group in a neverending loading screen that forced them to restart the game only to find their toons were not logged out, blocking them from getting back in. Other reports have been pouring in, not only of servers down, but entire Battlegroups, laggy geographical regions and in one case, the disappearance of all of Outland itself.On top of that, strange bugs have been appearing in the game such as zone-wide Wrath buffs appearing in Shadowfang Keep and Northrend lockboxes dropping off of Karazhan mobs. On the Silvermoon realm, the raid instances crashed. When the GMs reset them all they inadvertantly closed the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj as well. A packrat on the server named Dinosaur claims he had a Scepter of the Shifting Sands squirrled away in his bank and he was able to use it to bang the AQ gong to get the Scarab Lord title and claim the Scarab mount.
Speaking of mounts, how many of our trusty steeds and non-combat pets were eaten by the servers when we tried to utilize the new storage options implented in Patch 3.0.2. Many players have been petitioning to get those back. Today, Blizzard confirmed what we had been hearing in our tip line: missing mounts and pets are being mailed to characters who lost them. The process isn't complete, but it's happening. They also recommended going to any Stable Master (ask a Hunter) to claim any pets or mounts you deleted yourself before the patch.
In the same thread, class balance was addressed as well. It boils down to yes, some classes are OP and others are out of whack. Suck it up til Wrath hits and it will all smooth out. I don't know about you, but I'm going back to my OP Boomkin now. If my server is up.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Mounts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Chris Oct 20th 2008 9:08AM
Thanks for finally acknowledging this. It's been terrible - and furthermore, blizz is banning forum posters who post about the instability issues. Talk about Blizzard Gestapo!
The game is virtually unplayable on many of the US servers. World Lag, Arena Lag, instance/raid failures (ie loading screen issues), and bg problems. That leaves nothing!
This is terrible - people shouldn't have to pay for this.
SgtBaker Oct 20th 2008 12:55PM
Oh relax.
Are you honestly saying you didn't see this coming? Every major patch, expansion or upgrade (not to mention the launch itself) has always resulted in some sort of game/server instability.
That's the way these things work. It would be rather naive to expect anything else. Blizzard has acknowledged the problems and are working on it. I'm confident they will solve it sooner rather than later.
And the people who have been banned?
Have you seen what kind of abuse is being posted in the various forums? I'd ban the lot of you for much less.
And finally, for your "This is terrible - people shouldn't have to pay for this."-comment I'll give you some homework: Count exactly how much money you've lost over this. Post again if you've lost more than a dollar. (Hint: You pay $13-15/month, month has about 730 available playhours, the servers are available 24/7, you've lost about XX hours of your playtime, that makes XX cents of real money ...)
Also, if you're such a cheapskate, then vote with your wallet and quit.
Chris Oct 20th 2008 1:25PM
a) Cheapskate
I make well over 100k/year. I have multiple accounts. Money is not the issue - quality is.
b) Quality (or: "That's the way these things work.")
Wrong wrong wrong. Your attitude is misinformed. Don't be so apologetic. Software Dev does NOT work this way - everyone on the PTRs knew that this patch wasn't even close to being ready. Forget the typical complaints on class balance - it was, plainly, far too buggy. And Blizzard has NOT acknowledged the problems - show me their correspondence on this? The conversations across our server with GMs was, to be blunt, ridiculous.
c) Banning Forum Posts
Again, another broad statement. Sure there are trollers - don't group me in there. But there are well thought out posts from mature people that have been now banned.
d) "Homework"
You need the homework - add the math up across the user base and consider what Blizz might need to refund. Consider this: our server for *all* of yesterday was unplayable. I don't care about 1/30th of $15 - but I'll use a word you clearly haven't heard of before: Precedence.
e) User Base Frustration
Here's the core issue - sure we could all quit. Go WAR. AoC. Whatever. BUT what people like you fail to understand is that we enjoy WoW, and have come to expect quality from Blizzard. This patch, frankly, is Windows-ME-level-bad. We want to keep playing, and want Blizzard to know our baseline expectations. A big reason why WoW is so huge because of the expectation and delivery of quality.
Stop being such a sheep.
SgtBaker Oct 20th 2008 4:26PM
A lot of nerd rage in you buddy, go outside and relax a bit, find another hobby.. this is supposed to be fun you know :-)
Chris Oct 20th 2008 7:24PM
I'm pretty sure so-called nerd rage is filled with strange acronyms that main street has never heard of.
I don't like hearing "just deal with it" - not in wow, not in anything.
Jane Gray Oct 21st 2008 10:34AM
Yeah did everyone notice that the european servers get play time back every time their servers sneeze but american servers never get any free anything?
I'd settle for a guaranteed drop of that mount from the headless horseman.
Amaxe Oct 20th 2008 9:10AM
As for the Lockboxes, I had one come as a world drop. I'm not sure this is a glitch. As i recall we had some TBC material start to drop before the release of the game but after the patch.
Malyfactian Oct 20th 2008 10:34AM
Confirmed - one dropped for me on the Isle of QQ the day after the patch. This is not a glitch.
CvijaFaQ Oct 20th 2008 11:32AM
People were getting TBC items in the "Before the storm patch" from those mobs outside Kara, but killing them was quite hard.
Mostly netherweave cloth dropped, not sure if anything else dropped, like greens and such.
opala Oct 20th 2008 1:25PM
was able to pickpocket the bc junkboxes off the elite demons in blasted lands and get stuff like blood garnets and all that pre-BC. Just seems to be a matter of mobs above max level seeming to have that stuff on their table
Olicon Oct 20th 2008 9:10AM
Careful now--maybe it's the Twilight Bracelet at work..
Xeromaru Oct 21st 2008 11:09AM
.hack fan above I see.
Wish Bliz would take some pointers from that anime/manga/game and do some interresting things in game like that.
(Devs you can give my character Albireo the 'Spear of Woton' any time you want. The legendary upgradable kind plzthnxkbai.)
I was killin the AQ guys after the last patch wondering why they were back, to bad I decided not to finish the quest chain or I might have had a buggy mount.
Shame.
Perhaps Ill do those and wait for the next time they goof up the instance.
native Oct 20th 2008 9:13AM
One of my characters got stuck in limbo last night trying to enter WSG. There's been some general lag and instability but I'm not curling up into a fetal position just yet.
I wouldn't consider this a life or death issue.
Samantha Oct 20th 2008 9:37AM
I got an IGM from Blizz containing a bunch of mounts and pets that /hadn't/ been deleted. All stuff I had safely tucked away in my Mounts & Pets tab.
Amaxe Oct 20th 2008 10:27AM
Same here, so i sent my extras to an alt i had
Arcaria Oct 20th 2008 10:46AM
"Same here, so i sent my extras to an alt i had".
You sent soulbound items to an alt?
mimic Oct 20th 2008 1:29PM
Same happened to me. You can not mail soulbound pets such as the spirit of competition, but all other vendor and dropped pets were not soulbound and could be mailed.
cjshrader Oct 20th 2008 9:16AM
On Dragonmaw last night Outlands was working fine, but Kalimdor disappeared for a while. Since all three of my characters were in Kalimdor I was pretty much stuck.
Steve Oct 20th 2008 9:17AM
I'm on Silver Hand too. I hadn't lost any pets, but I did receive all of them again in an ingame mail from Blizzard, so I can confirm that it's happening.
Can't wait for patch weirdness to be ironed out.
Tridus Oct 20th 2008 9:19AM
Yeah its been pretty bad. Friends who came back to the game after months away started off excited by all the new things, but are being turned off by the awful state of the servers.
Balance is pretty terrible too. Healing in general is underpowered now, everything else was buffed like crazy and healers were left largely stationary. Its lame.