Breakfast Topic: Do you appreciate the beauty of a fascinating bug?
by Suzanne Bower 
Feb 15th 2011 at 8:00AM
I love bugs in the World of Warcraft. Wait, let me clarify that: I love bugs in WoW that don't stop me from being able to complete the game. While the bug in Vashj'ir stopped me from being able to finish the zone, made me want to charter a plane to California, camp out in front of Blizzard headquarters, and punch the first game designer who came by me in the face, the bugs that do weird things to terrain or my character brighten my day and give me warm, amused fuzzies.
I am fascinated by terrain that bugs out as I am flying over it, and I can get sidetracked quite easily by running over to it to see if it changes as I get closer. I have fond memories of spending almost an hour "swimming" through the air of a bugged-out Shattrath when I couldn't log out or see anyone around me. I also remember days when I squished my boredom by looking through pictures of the day that captured weird visual bugs on people's characters or their surroundings.
Are there any others out there like me who find the beauty and amusement in this wonderful game of ours when it decides it does not want to work quite right? Or am I the only one who can see the sun through the dark cloud that is bugginess?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Arkki Feb 15th 2011 8:08AM
I used to commonly get patches of water "missing" in Wrath while fishing in them. Perfect squares carved out of the water.
Tricia Feb 15th 2011 8:11AM
I still remember the day, after one of the major content patches before Wrath, when I hearthed, and instead found myself hovering in the air over the ocean off the coast of Desolace. No matter how much I ran, I went nowhere. Some other person got similarly stuck nearby me, so we waved back and forth, ran around for awhile, then I logged off to ask a GM to put me back in a city so I could play again.
But I took screenshots, and still laugh when I recount the story. I don't remember even being more then a bit irritated when it happened. It was just so random, and therefore amusing. I was more irritated by the snake trap bug that killed me in the starting zones over and over again when I first started playing... I still hate that trap, even if it's been fixed.
Tomonius Feb 15th 2011 9:56AM
I've had exactly the same happen to me, but luckily i had some friends who summoned me to a capital with a warlock.
Was very funny though ^^
Dreyja Feb 15th 2011 1:21PM
I've had that happen only I was falling... falling... falling... I fell so long that I died along the way. I forget where my ghost ended up in the end but it was in some crazy alternate dimension of the old world. 'Twas fun. /eye-roll
I know that epic explorers actually use these dimensional shift to get to cool places. I'm not that cool. I just ran around sounding like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHm9KdV7Io XD - Toby Turner epicness.
Imthejoncarroll Feb 15th 2011 8:15AM
I remember riding my troll on his raptor at full ground speed across the ocean floor offshore of stv on night when I was lagging. Far as I could tell, the swim physics info wasn't being sent to me so off I ran exploring until I was disconnected. I logged back in to find I had drowned quite far from shore. Luck for me a max lvl belf pally in the zone came to rescue me after I posted in gen. Channel about what silliness had taken place
Debesun Feb 15th 2011 8:18AM
I won't be forgetting the massive pink boxes that spawned in the position of the gates when they were destroyed in Isle of Conquest after the pre-cata patch. Sure, it pretty much broke the late stages of the battleground but when ever I saw it, it just reminded me of watching the cartoon Reboot when I was a kid.
It was also funny how glaringly obvious that something was wrong and just how long it took to get it fixed.
I hope you like the feeling of nostalgia if you watched this stuff as a kid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2-GTrfhByw
Debesun Feb 15th 2011 8:23AM
I guess I wasn't the only one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z7B2BPSCN8
Tortus Feb 15th 2011 8:51AM
Debesun, I must thank you! A while back I got the add-on Comix after it was featured in the Add-on spotlight here (It adds so much missing depth to playing a melee character!) One of the things that it did was add the sound clip "Warning incoming game" to the loading screen whenever I logged in on a character. Thanks to you, I finally know where it came from
dodgeballer2005 Feb 15th 2011 12:15PM
Yeah, that cartoon was fun, but think about now:
How much of your computer will be thrashed if you, the user, kill Deathwing with your raid?
INCOMING RAID. INCOMING RAID.
:D
razion Feb 15th 2011 8:24AM
I absolutely love bugs, glitches, and errors. I find mistakes hilarious if only for the fact that I can never see them coming. They're spontaneous, new, and due to the altering nature of themselves, they become a sort of parody on the game. And well, I find unintentional parody the best kind.
As long as the bug doesn't interfere with my day-to-day activities, that is. Eheh.;
razion Feb 15th 2011 8:25AM
One such bug I loved being, of course...
"THE ICE STONE HAS MELTED!"
Felix_rew Feb 15th 2011 11:20AM
"NO NO NO NO!",
Oh my Lil XT how I adore you
cloudhopper013 Feb 15th 2011 5:29PM
I'm a wee bit upset that the Icestone didn't become as big of a meme as it should have become. :\ It had some potential for hilarity. Although I suppose there are very few opportunities on the internet where referencing it would make sense.
Shirubia Feb 15th 2011 8:31AM
Not sure if im the only one, but I really enjoyed the sliding corpse bug.
TheBearMonk Feb 15th 2011 8:47AM
Did you ever see the bug where the mobs would spin around in place to face the person that had aggro on them just before they were killed?
Now that's what I call threat generation!
Snuzzle Feb 15th 2011 12:47PM
I really liked that one, and the one I affectionately call the "Freeze Tag Bug," where your character would get frozen doing one animation or one frame of an animation. I remember back in Vanilla, I could tell when the rogues got out of a repair bill by Vanishing because their arms would be stuck in the air for the rest of the raid. lol.
It still happens sometimes. When I get into Throne of the Tides, sometimes after fighting Squid-Head, I'll be stuck in a fear animation if he inhabits the priest who fears me or etc. But now it seems to be more "full animation" freezes, whereas in Vanilla it was being stuck on one frame. Ah well.
The sliding corpse bug was still the best, though.
mamasama Feb 15th 2011 8:31AM
My guildies and I have very slowly geared for heroics and the other night we finally got all the way through Heroic Blackrock Caverns up to Ascendant Lord Obsidius only to have him bug. He was unattackable. He just stood there even when we all gathered around him for a screenshot. We figured since it was the day before Valentines it was appropriate.
monkeyhouse Feb 15th 2011 8:32AM
strangely enough the little things annoy me just as much as the big things. seeing vases of flowers floating above non existent tables just smacks of an irritating lack of polish, incompleteness and unprofessionalism just as much as DCing when you enter water did (does).
bugs that occur under rare circumstances i understand and don't have any problems with - these are the hardest to identify and track down (i speak from years of experience!)
the problems with small items has been growing over the years and there is now hardly a day goes by that you don't see some little glitch. this is indicative of a general decline in quality. not a good sign for the future as the game becomes larger and more content is added.
Imnick Feb 15th 2011 9:22AM
Or maybe they just didn't notice and nobody else was bothered enough to point it out so they still don't notice
When you're adding hundreds of tiny objects like that it's pretty easy to miss one that's in slightly the wrong place, and who is going to bother telling you?
Lexa Feb 15th 2011 8:33AM
When the female Draeneis /train sound randomly turned into /chicken halfway through the emote.
That was freakin' awesome.