Tips and workarounds for the bugs and quirks on the patch 4.2 PTR
by Matt Low 
May 5th 2011 at 1:00PM
Things like:
- Buggy mounts
- Instant deaths
- Crashing addons
Premades won't see the new stuff
If you want to check out the daily quests and the phased areas, I'd suggest not copying premade characters at all. It appears that premade characters are not able to progress at all because they have not done the opening Hyjal quest chains. You need to reclaim the area around Malorne's statue.
Speaking of quests, there seems to be a bug with the quest involving the killing of elementals. If you leave the immediate area and then enter it again, your mob kills may not count towards the required amount needed. I've had to restart that quest four times, and I know I'm getting my mobs tapped. I camp those spawn points and slam Shadow Word: Death the moment I can target them.
Mount madness
There appears to be a bug in certain areas where if you get on your mount (be it flying or ground), you'll automatically dismount. You'll need a little dexterity. As your mount castbar is about to reach the end, you need to jump. That little bit of lag right at the end should be enough to get you on your mount. It takes some practice, but you'll get it.
Speaking of mounts, I was on my Dark Phoenix just flying around. First, I'd like to say it has no new model yet. Second, I flew into the Stormwind cathedral and just died. At least the corpse run back wasn't so bad. It happened again when I was bringing my drake and touching down in Hyjal. Randomly died again. It is a difficult bug to reproduce.
Timing and workarounds
The raid instance isn't open yet. We should be seeing a schedule of testable encounters sometime soon.
It will take about five days to open up the next area. Once you finish the initial quests, you'll get access to some dailies that grant you a Mark of the World Tree. You need 20 to get through and unlock the next phase. The initial dailies only grant four marks in total.
If you experience problems actually launching the PTR client, try deleting your Interface and WTF folders and let the game refresh them for you. I had an issue in which my client would immediately crash before I could even see the opening cutscene, and that fixed it for me.
Interested in some PTR? Feel like chatting? You can find me on Anastarian.
The news is already rolling out for the upcoming WoW Patch 4.2! Preview the new Firelands raid, marvel at the new legendary staff, and get the inside scoop on new quest hubs -- plus new Tier 12 armor!Filed under: Bugs, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Matticus May 5th 2011 1:09PM
Update: If you're on there right now doing the Toss a Bear daily (Yeah, the trampoline bear chucking quest is back as a daily), it's not working properly. You can't advance to the top part of the tree to toss the bear.
Prella May 5th 2011 10:00PM
What's your character's name on the PTR?
louandy2001 May 5th 2011 1:50PM
What about the problems where you get the "error rectriving charator list".
Ive tryed everything to fix this, reinstall the game, got rid of all the wtf, data folders.
Any tips on that?
Luotian May 5th 2011 1:57PM
Not all those bugs are just on the PTR. I had my carpet randomly despawn on me when flying over ZG from Blasted Lands. I fell to my death, but when I released I appeared alive in the middle of the Alliance Rebel Camp (on my blood elf mage).
The Paladin I was with couldn't reproduce what happened. It's very strange.
Continuous May 5th 2011 11:50PM
You fell to your death... as a mage?
Luotian May 6th 2011 2:47PM
@Continuous:
I didn't say I didn't panic. I was so surprised I couldn't remember where I'd put my slow fall. Not a spell I use a whole lot.
GrumblyStuff May 5th 2011 2:00PM
The mounting "bug" isn't a bug. Blizz is just trying to ensure all players properly mount with the little hop at the end. You know, like jumping through instance portals.
IT'S HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSE TO DO IT!
OldPossum May 5th 2011 2:03PM
WoW Insider, please highlight the problem since 4.0 of graphical stutter in the Mac client, because Blizzard sure isn't doing enough to deal with it.
And since 4.1 (including the 4.2 PTR) the Mac client has been updating time stamps in the Data directory every time the client runs, even when there are no changes to the files, causing Time Machine to go overboard with backups (and losing older versions of files that really changed). Blizzard isn't addressing this one publicly, either.
Blizzard is suffering too much from features-before-bug-fixes.
Brett Porter May 5th 2011 3:10PM
What's the graphical stutter issue? I have not yet seen that on my Mac.
Joester May 10th 2011 7:36AM
Instant deaths - Ragnaros has poisoned us with his fiery ways to kill us. Fire is bad!
wow May 5th 2011 2:09PM
PTR's appear to be offline. Perhaps some of the above may be fixed soon...
(cutaia) May 5th 2011 2:26PM
"There appears to be a bug in certain areas where if you get on your mount (be it flying or ground), you'll automatically dismount. You'll need a little dexterity. As your mount castbar is about to reach the end, you need to jump. That little bit of lag right at the end should be enough to get you on your mount. It takes some practice, but you'll get it."
On the last PTR, this was occurring specifically for human males characters. I was getting dismounted constantly (and also getting stuck on random invisible things). A race change to Dwarf fixed it completely.
Who knows? Maybe this is the same bug. Those of you getting it, may want to consider a race change to see if it fixes it.
Onakraise May 5th 2011 2:33PM
i found that killing elementals it dindt matter who tagged it first it was whomever got the killshot got the credit, i had mobs i tanked get killed by another players aoe and i got no credit similarily i toss my avengers sheild at a mob and it bounced and kill someone elses and i got credit.
Tinwhisker May 5th 2011 2:48PM
The "instant dismount fixed by a short hop after cast" is one we've seen twice before so hopefully Blizzard can stomp this one right away.
Kiyoko May 5th 2011 2:49PM
Speaking of mounts...
I can't help but notice that with this patch, when riding almost all horse models (Paladin chargers, regular horses, HHM mount & skeletal horses), your character wobbles back and forth in the saddle like a bobblehead doll. It's really stupid looking and I hope it isn't an attempt by Blizz to make things more "authentic" looking because I've ridden horses before - and it's NOT natural/good looking. :(
(cutaia) May 5th 2011 3:49PM
Fixed today with the so-called "Fast Patch 4.1.0A":
"Animations while mounted should work normally again."
Source: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/173922/world-of-warcraft-fast-patch-410a-notes
OldPossum May 5th 2011 3:24PM
Go to Orgrimmar with your view distance higher than bare minimum, turn in place, preferably 360 degrees or more. For a lot of Mac users it's very far from smooth.
poggg May 5th 2011 5:29PM
Well if you don't want to die, maybe you shouldn't ride your bird that is MADE OF EVIL into holy ground. :I
PJ May 5th 2011 5:35PM
The amount of unexpected and odd bugs with each patch is amazing - its like blizzard is reprogramming the whole game every time - tsk tsk.
SamLowry May 5th 2011 6:10PM
Or they don't really know what they're doing.
Go C-Team, Go!