Filed under: Bugs

• The targeting reticule for AoE spells and abilities like Magmaw's chains should no longer disappear when players cast spells.
• Animations while mounted should work normally again. Say hello to your ponies, they're now moving correctly!
• Character legs should move properly when the character is moving.

The 4.2 PTR is up and ready to be tested! There is a new daily quest hub along with a new raid. Unfortunately, the raid itself isn't ready to be tested quite yet. But before you go off trying to break things in this PTR build, I'd like to take a moment and get you prepared for a few things.

Things like:

• Buggy mounts
• Instant deaths
• Crashing addons

There may be some spoilers (like the second quest), but read on if you're not going to be bothered by that too much.

Patch 4.0.6 brought with it a rather nasty bug that primarily affected non-mana using DPS including hunters, feral druids, rogues, and death knights. The client was disagreeing with the server on exactly how much haste refreshed the regeneration time of focus, energy, and runes, causing the client to report that certain resources were ready for use before they actually were, which then caused the player to press the button and the ability to not fire.

CM Bashiok has been keeping us up to date on the status of the bug and just recently reported that it should be fixed via a hotfix that was applied late last night. You can read the full text of his post behind the break.

While Love is in the Air on the calendar, the air is full of grumbles in game as people discover that not only has the holiday changed on them, but a lot of bugs and anachronisms have popped up. Among the most dire:

• Quests for the faction leader gifts currently point to faction leaders who died in the Cataclysm, including Cairne and Magni.
• The dailies and main quest chain currently do not function for level 81-85 characters, leaving anyone who has a new 85 or just didn't get around to doing the quests in previous years unable to finish their achievements.
• It's hard or impossible to buy certain special vendor items due to errors that show up when you click on them.
• Apothecary Hummel is sometimes not showing up in the LFD tool for level 81-85 characters.

Blizzard is aware of these bugs, and blue poster Nephadne has posted a list of FAQs on the customer service forums that address many of the changes and bugs, including workarounds for the latter two issues listed above. She's also assured everyone that these bugs will be fixed either with hotfixes or when patch 4.0.6 drops. Read on after the break for the full text of Nephandra's FAQ.

• In Deadmines, the Foe Reaper 5000 will not cast Harvest on players more than 70 yards away.
• In Grim Batol, Trogg Dwellers that players cannot reach via legitimate means no longer award experience or loot when killed.
• In Throne of the Four Winds, players now receive credit for the achievements Heroic: Conclave of Wind or Throne of the Four Winds if they are dead when the encounter is defeated.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Gold Capped, in which Basil "Euripides" Berntsen aims to show you how to make money on the auction house, and Insider Trader, which is all about professions. For Gold Capped's inside line on making money in game, check in here every Thursday, and email Basil with your comments, questions or hate mail! This week's gold-blogosphere post is Warcraft Econ's Pyrite prospecting results.

Normally, when Blizzard makes a change to the economy, it's not enough news to justify its own blue post. When I sat down and tried to decide what to write about this week, I realized that the most important information I could get out to you guys is news of all the economic tweaks that have come down the pipeline that are shaping these first few weeks of Cataclysm.

First up: Pyrite Ore is now prospectable at 500 skill, down from 525. This is a very expensive mineral on most realms, so it hasn't been prospected as much as, say, Elementium Ore. That said, based on the limited number of prospects we've seen numbers for, it looks like it may be dropping as many green-quality gems as Obsidium Ore, as many rare gems as Elementium Ore, and an additional one to three Volatile Earths. My napkin math indicated that if the additional expense for five pyrite is more than two earths, it may not be worth prospecting.

• Argaloth in Baradin Hold now respects the faction that kills him and does not drop trinkets for the opposing faction.
• In the Lost City of the Tol'vir, Frenzied Crocolisks should always despawn when Lockmaw resets.
• In Shadowfang Keep, troll druids in particular, when shapeshifting into Cat/Bear form, were dealing an extra 5 percent damage to themselves via Beast Slaying when afflicted by Barion Ashbury's Asphyxiate. This caused them to die instead of being taken down to 1 health. This has been corrected, and Asphyxiate now properly ignores damage modifiers.

• Master Riding now properly grant players 310 percent flight speed in Eastern Kingdoms with X-53 Touring Rocket, Celestial Steed, Headless Horseman's Mount, X-51 Nether-Rocket, X-51 Nether-Rocket X-TREME, and Invincible.
• The dungeon finder random bracket for Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns has been changed from level 80-81 to 80-82, and the specific bracket has been changed from level 80-83 to 80-85.
• The respawn rates for all Horde and Alliance cooking daily quest objectives in Orgrimmar and Stormwind have been increased.
• The Alchemy mount Vial of the Sands is no longer bind on pickup.

• In Vash'jir, NPCs on The Verne and the Pincer X2 will no longer despawn or behave oddly while players are completing the quest Full Circle.
• In Twilight Highlands during the quest Aiming High, the Flintlocke's Explosives can now be used anywhere on the Skyshredder.
• Those exploring in Deepholm should be happy to hear that players should no longer be repeatedly consumed by the very mean Colossal Gyreworm.

If you're one of the many players who is having issues with the Headless Horseman pumpkin locking up your game client or any other cogwheel type item doing the same sort of thing, there is now a workaround while they look into fixing this bug. Kill your tooltips.

That's right, tooltips are the cause behind this rash of client crashes. There are two ways you can get around this particular issue. One is to just disable tooltips. You can do this by setting up a single macro and putting it on your action bars.

Stickied post by player Deyneth of Wyrmrest Accord (US-H)

/script GameTooltip.Temphide = function() GameTooltip:Hide() end; GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Temphide)
/stopmacro [btn:1]
/script GameTooltip:SetScript("OnShow", GameTooltip.Show);

source

This will disable tooltips when you left-click the button and re-enable them when you right-click the button.

An alternative is a simple addon called CogFix which disables the simple addons which are causing this issue, but will allow complex tooltips (like when you mouse over a player or NPC) still remain visible. Any custom tooltip addon could possibly protect you from this bug, but your mileage may vary.

The developers are working on permanent a fix for this issue, but have to test things to make sure that the fix doesn't cause issues elsewhere.

When the Hallow's End decorations went up, many people were excited about the possibilities of the rare Headless Horseman mount, finishing up What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been and just generally playing around with one of the favorite holidays in the game.

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.

There's a fascinating thread on the official forums about the way that Blizzard is changing the global cooldown. The long and short of it is that on live, we can spam our next ability to try and increase the number of actions we can get in per minute; however, if we change our minds, we have until the next ability is accepted by the server to decide to change the keys we're spamming. In Cataclysm, there'll be a completely different system. First, let's look at the blue posts, and then we'll talk about the explanation.

If you haven't noticed, your intrepid WoW Insider team has been going through some ch-ch-ch-ch-changes lately. And sometimes, when you're undergoing such vital and overwhelming upgrades, certain pieces of the ship need a little more loving care than others.

Right now, our goblin-engineered RSS feed and gnomish iTunes systems are getting overhauled and fixed up. Both services are being cranky, but the stalwart code slingers at Aol are working on fixes. In the meantime, just hang in there with us a tiny bit longer. It'll be OK soon enough, and we can all enjoy our shiny new WoW Insider.

We'd like to thank those of you who have written us to make sure we know about the RSS feed, podcast and iTunes issues. Our community is a wonderful group of people whose feedback has helped us excel. We appreciate the time you took to write in. It shows you care, and we will keep trying to return the best content possible.

An update to the Blizzard launcher and associated tools this afternoon has been causing problems for folks running various versions of Windows. The bug has a chance of occurring when you get stuck at a "Waiting for files to close..." dialog box when updating. Blizzard support staff was quick to announce a fix, which is pretty easy to do.

To solve this, go into the task manager (you can get to that by right-clicking on the bottom taskbar on your screen and selecting "Start Task Manager," or by pressing the control, shift and escape keys all at once) and end any and all of the following processes in the "Processes" tab:

• WoW.exe
  
• Launcher.exe
  
• BackgroundDownloader.exe
  
• Repair.exe
  
• WowError.exe
  

After you make sure none of the above processes are running, you'll be able to move forward with the update and get WoW working again.

The full Blizzard statement after the break.