Headless Horseman pumpkin shrine crashes game
by Gregg Reece 
Oct 18th 2010 at 9:00AM
When the first players started doing the Headless Horseman event in hopes of Sinister Squashlings, they quickly noticed a rather harsh bug. There is about a 50/50 chance when mousing over the pumpkin to summon the Headless Horseman that the game client will lock up and/or disconnect you. Ever since patch 4.0.1 hit the live servers, there have been reports that world items that give the gear icon to let you know it is clickable have been causing a similar crash, and this is likely related to that.
One of the reasons this bug is especially hurting groups is that the people to usually click on the pumpkin are the tanks, who are then disconnected, leaving the groups to fend for themselves until they get back. As a precaution, have a DPSer be the one to click on the pumpkin and allow time to reconnect afterward so that the tank and healer can keep the rest of the group alive. If the fight is over by the time the DPSer gets back, the loot roll and bag of goodies should be ready and waiting.
Update: Orlyia (Blizzard customer service representative) posted a list of known issues and work-arounds for Hallow's End in the customer service forums. They've said that they're aware of the mouse-over issue and the developers are looking into what is causing it.
Filed under: Events, Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 6)
Zebreck Oct 18th 2010 9:05AM
I have no idea if this really works, but in my -extremely- limited testing it helps.
Go into your sound options and hit the "defaults" button down at the lower left side, and select "all settings." I did that on my tank after I had someone else click the damn thing, and 3 subsequent characters had no mouse over issues with the pumpkin. It also solved me instance-zoning-hang issue. Might be worth a shot.
wllmsgame Oct 18th 2010 9:05AM
4.0.1
Apparantly Deathwing destroyed the game stability as well.
veil Oct 18th 2010 9:54AM
oh stupid troll...you so silly sometimes.
tho i will admit i nearly lost a number of bg's this weekend when sometime put down a fish feast. people start eating, then oh shit...half the teams dc'd.
Kurtis Oct 18th 2010 9:59AM
If only there were a way to put down a fish feast for the opposing faction...
veil Oct 18th 2010 10:14AM
that would be high-larious. preferably a cake.
*leave cake in the middle of the road*
"hey look...free cake!"
*snickering behind bushes*
"hey everybody, gather around this fancy cake the horde left for us. that's so darned nice of them. wouldn't want to symbolically slap them in the face for this highly benevolent show of mutual respect by not eating it..."
*eats cake, crashes out*
cap, win...then eats own cake and crashes out too...
Kylenne Oct 18th 2010 1:33PM
@veil: God help me for remembering this but that was an especially cracked out episode of Sailor Moon, in the last season. The Monster of the Day was a chef (no really) that managed to distract Usagi by making a cake in front of her.
veil Oct 18th 2010 1:53PM
my mind reels at the knowledge. i'll have to look that episode up. jk...it's sailor moon. heck no.
the more i think about it, the more i'm tempted to try this (with a cake!) if the bug can activate from merely mouseovering and not from actually being able to interact with the item, maybe this is actually feasible. assuming that is that my own team doesn't go "ooh cake" and crash out. time to go bake some cakes tonite...
rich Oct 18th 2010 9:07AM
We had a similar issue with mouseovers in ICC the other night (anything "clickable," like a warlock's summoning stone, the teleporters, a Brewfest keg our tank dropped after we mentioned "clickable" thing were causing crashes, etc.). Best I could figure out, the "Hardware Cursor" option is enabled by default in the patch, and disabling it seemed to prevent the crashes. Not sure if this issue is related, but it's worth a try.
Phaelan Oct 18th 2010 9:49AM
i tried this and it didn't work
Silverhawkx Oct 18th 2010 9:07AM
First Where are Epicz?
veil Oct 18th 2010 10:16AM
first posts are stupid. first posts that aren't first (by 3 minutes...so close) are fail.
Silverhawkx Oct 19th 2010 6:38PM
It's an attempt to do something first something sadly u will never be able to do. I can tell you post comments like you raid. Last
llaw_grimm Oct 18th 2010 9:07AM
Haven't had that issue yet on either of my accounts/computers... but thats definately one to watch for. thats for sure.
It can be bad enough WITH a tank come Phase 3 and not up to snuff gear wise.....
Tolkfan Oct 18th 2010 9:08AM
I crashed too :(
But then I relogged, beat the horseman and got the mount! =D
neogramps Oct 18th 2010 11:18AM
me too - in fact my group killed him in my absence and I came back to the bag containing the mount.
Also go 2 pets so far over my 5 chars
Leafroot Oct 18th 2010 9:08AM
The problem I see with the suggested solution is that I went in as my healer druid and was not the one clicking on the pumpkin and yet the game was still crashing. Crashed when I first entered the instance and I believe someone tried to start the event. Then when I logged back in and was still in the instance, it crashed again in a couple of seconds.
As a side note, this seems to be an issue when clicking on mage portals too at times.
marauder Oct 18th 2010 9:09AM
I've checked the forums... pages and pages of players reporting the bug, and 0 blue responses so far.
Wulf Oct 18th 2010 9:14AM
There also seems to be (what I hope is) another bug.
If you do manage to complete successfully, and open the bag, people (myself included) have been receiving "The loot is empty" messages.
marauder Oct 18th 2010 9:19AM
You're still getting justice points. The game doesn't seem to consider them lootable, so they're just automatically added to your currency as soon as you open the bag. It does put out a message in the chat window.
Teej Oct 18th 2010 9:21AM
I had this happen on two of my characters this morning, I'm hoping that tomorrow's maintenance will give Blizz a chance to fix this.