Posts with tag 5.0.4

A new set of hotfixes have been announced by Blizzard for September 28th. They include various fixes to pet battles, including the repair of a bug that caused pets to inadvertently skip turns, and a fix to get the Win Streak achievement to function as expected.

Hit the break for the full set of hotfixes!

Cross-Realm Zones are getting a bad rap. This recently introduced new feature seems to be stirring up all kinds of hostility on the forums, with players complaining about them left, right and center. And yes, they have definitely had their problems. I can totally understand why players on PvE servers weren't happy with being merged with PvP servers, for example, and why people weren't pleased about the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza being winnable within an instant of its starting.

I totally get that the spammy chat is annoying, and why being dismounted on crossing into a CRZ was really tiresome. And I do really understand how people are fed up with other players around stealing their nodes, and their Time-Lost Proto-Drakes. I can completely wrap my head around the many reasons why players are not enjoying the CRZ experience.

But, having read the thread Rygarius posted a few days back, it seems like Blizzard are listening to the concerns, and trying to take active steps to mitigate them. I hope we're going to see more official information coming from Blizzard soon regarding the problems players continue to experience.

This is a continuation of the ongoing work in progress that always takes place around a big patch such as 5.0.4. Last time we had a few reader emails, asking some questions about certain aspects of the 5.0.4 addon changes and how to deal with them, and this week we're doing much the same, except that we're focusing exclusively on broken addons and some alternatives that do work in the current patch, and therefore may well work when Mists arrives in two weeks' time!

Raeli's Return!

First, ladies and gentlemen, I have some great news! A while back, my esteemed ex-colleague Mat McCurley wrote a piece on replacing Raeli's Spell Announcer (RSA). He referred to the Raeli's Apocalypse, which it appeared took place when 5.0.4 dropped a couple of weeks back. Mat did find some alternatives, so if that's what you're after, have a look at the original article.

But just the other day, I received an email from Raeli himself with the great news I was talking about: Raeli's Spell Announcer is back! Raeli isn't the guy holding the reins any longer, he has handed that hefty responsibility over to Xadurk and stapler2025. And the updates are coming in thick and fast! There's already been over 12 beta versions for 5.0.4 added in the past 2 days, and the new developers have stated that they are determined to have a stable version up and running for the launch of Mists, if not before. A release version has recently become available. If, like me, you're thrilled to hear this news, get on over to the RSA project page, download the latest version and do some testing for the new developers!

Yesterday, with a speculative post on twitter, I unwittingly started a bit of an argument between a few of my friends about the 5.0.4 changes to achievements. I didn't mean to, I had been reading the comments on The Queue and was not hugely surprised to note that I was not the only person who wasn't jubilant at the changes.

I am ever the partisan, and try to consider both sides of every argument when making a decision, but at this point I can't quite decide whether I like the new achievement system or not. Why? Well, let's see.


Making the meaningless less meaningful

I was kind of upset at the changeover from Wrath to Cataclysm at the disappearance of the Wrath and earlier talent trees. If you weren't around for those, they were gigantic behemoths of talent trees, far larger than the Cataclysm ones, and featuring far more talents that addes 1% damage onto something, or reduced a cast time or cooldown by some insignificant amount. I didn't miss them because I mourned the loss of any particular aspect of them, or felt they were more complicated or clever, but because getting a talent every level made going from 23 to 24 feel like something meaningful.

Notice anything, well, fishy about the paladin in the header image? No? Well, look again, more closely. Do you see how she's fishing, but also holding a shield? Impossible! Hackers! Cheating! No, my friends, it's not. Why not? Well, let me tell you.

Since the arrival of patch 5.0.4, there's been a change to fishing. You no longer need to equip a fishing pole to use the Fishing skill. Did you notice how the tooltip has changed? How it now says "Equip a fishing pole?" Well, the skill now does that for you. It's rather a downrgade on the old basic fishing pole, as it looks like little more than a fairly straight tree-branch with a piece of string tied to one end. To use it, you'll need to find the spell in the professions section of your spellbook and drag it onto your bars, as for me at least, the old one didn't work.

But once you've done that, you no longer need to worry about remembering to re-equip your sword and board, your staff, your two-hand axe. The fishing pole doesn't replace any of your usual weapons when it appears via the new spell, so they're never un-equipped in the first place! Gone are the days of my trying to tank Morchok by waving a fishing pole at him in a semi-threatening manner. I'm a little sad about that, actually.

What's more, you don't even need to have a fishing pole in your inventory. That's right, with the new Fishing spell, you have a fishing rod mysteriously stored about your person somewhere other than your bags, which you can magically whip out whenever you want to fish. I'll let you make the jokes.

However, if you are the proud owner of one of the many upgraded fishing rods available in the game, and want to use it for the skill bonus, you will still need to equip it. The new fishing skill isn't smart enough to equip an upgraded rod, and as a result those who use them will need to keep them in their inventory and equip them like they did before.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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I've been doing my level best, along with Bluspacecow, Mac Technical MVP extraordinaire and general incredibly helpful person, to keep you in the loop on addons that are ready for 5.0.4, as well as an addon survival guide for handling broken and updated addons. The article on addons that are ready is still being updated, as I'm going to be redoing it for the Mists launch.

But of course, I can't possibly anticipate all your 5.0.4 addon questions, and I've been getting a good number of emails with addon problems, addon frustration, and addon-related cries for help. If you want to email me with questions, do feel free. I will try to get back to you as quickly as I can, or reply to you in a future article!

Let's get started with your questions.

Patch 5.0.4 is the point at which even if you have a group, you can no longer travel. Gone are the days of sending one poor soul to wait at the instance while the raid leader hangs out in Orgrimmar or Stormwind, spamming trade chat for ranged DPSers.

Have Group Will Travel will be removed from the game with this patch, replaced with a boost to flight path speed. For those of you who had gotten used to its presence in the game, what do you do to get to your instances now?

There are a few methods available. Of course you can fly, ride or walk to instances. If you know roughly where you're headed -- for example, Dragon Soul is in the Caverns of Time in Tanaris -- you can hop a flight path to as near as possible to your destination. For Dragon Soul, that is probably Gadgetzan.

When I logged in to the servers this morning, I was greeted by three very pleasant surprises! The first thing I noticed was that hardly any of my addons were broken, and I seem to have successfully anticipated those that were, avoiding the usual patch palaver of updating and deleting and fixing.

Then I realized I had mail, headed over to the mailbox, and got my second surprise. Waiting for me were my two Digital Collector's Edition rewards, my Lucky Quilen Cub pet and my Imperial Quilen mount! I also got two Collectors Edition achievements just for taking the two items out of my mailbox.

My only frustration arose when I headed to another character, received the same mail with the mount and pet, put them in my bag and received an error message telling me that they couldn't be learnt as I already know them. I hope this doesn't happen with every new character, as having to delete all the default account-wide pet mail could become a tad tiresome.

My third surprise came when I logged over to another character and realized there was a button at the bottom of my character list indicating that I could create another character. Confused, I quickly counted up the characters I already had on that server and confirmed that I did already have 10. Therefore, the 11th character slot has been added with 5.0.4!

All of these surprises have brightened up my day -- and hopefully yours, too. Have you noticed any surprises in 5.0.4?

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Ladies and gentlemen, the patch is upon us! Brace yourselves for a total UI meltdown. Here at Addon Spotlight, we are as ever here to help you with your patch day UI blues. There was a preparation guide a couple of weeks back, but it's too late for that now. If you didn't take those steps already, you're going to have to pin your hopes on this survival guide. Once more into the breach, my friends!

First and foremost, check out last week's post on addons that are ready for 5.0.4. I've been doing a ton of updating on this piece every time someone informs me that an addon is updated. It's a work in progress, of course, but it's pretty accurate right now. If you don't see your preferred addon on there, then have a look on the big three addon sites: WoWInterface, WoWAce and Curseforge. You're looking for recently updated files in the download section.

If they don't show up there, have a Google. Your addon may have a stand-alone site. You can look elsewhere, but these are the places where the vast majority of addons are hosted with the authors' permission, meaning they are in line with copyright rules, ethically sound and home to the authors' most recent updates.

Once you've checked for the most recent versions, download any that show compatibility with 5.0.4. If there are none, then make a note of that addon and check back in a few days' time. WoWInterface can also be set up to email you when addons are updated; check out how to set up email notification for addon updates.

The patch is coming! The patch is coming! Run around screaming wildly! Right. Anyway, if you're just coming back to WoW, here's everything new you'll need to know to get your feral or balance druid up to speed. First I'll hit some of the overall druid changes before drilling down into the spec-specific stuff.

Changes for druids

Feral is no longer a tank/DPS specialization. Yes, bearcatting is officially dead for those who practiced it, though it lives on somewhat in one of our new talents. Feral is now solely melee DPS, and a new spec has been added for bear tanks, guardian.

All the old talent trees are gone. You still pick a specialization at level 10, but instead of a 31-point tree, you now have six tiers of talent choices, with one choice out of three options every 15 levels. With the talent tree deletion came an ability shuffle; many druid abilities that were spec-specific, such as Force of Nature or Feral Charge, have been made into talents that can be used by any spec. For more, read my column on talent tiers 1 through 3 or tiers 4 through 6.

Patch 5.0.4 is less than a week away, and we need addons. I've been in touch with various addon authors and established who has addons ready to go for 5.0.4. I've compiled the results here for you, along with the authors' preferred download links.

This is far from an exhaustive list -- it's always going to be a work in progress -- so if you know of addons I've missed that are ready to go for 5.0.4, pop a link in the comments or email me and I will add them to this list. There may well be many addons that are prepared for Mists' full launch in September but are not set up for 5.0.4 -- they're not what we're after here! If that's what you're looking for, though, there's a huge list of addons ready for Mists itself at Curse, and another at WoWInterface.

Please note that in the majority of cases, the addon page's live download will be updated at 5.0.4's launch, not several days in advance. Use your brain when downloading addons via these links; many of the authors who've contacted me have told me that their addons are ready to go but that they will not be uploading a release version to their live pages until patch day. This list of addons here represents those I have confirmed either through my own testing or directly from their authors that are ready for 5.0.4, and the links provided will be the links to download the addons on patch day or shortly before.

If there are addons you use that don't appear on this list, let me know and I will try to look into whether they're ready to go yet or if there is no news. I will do my level best to keep this list up to date and complete as we approach the launch of 5.0.4.

[I'd like to say a huge, huge thank-you to Bluspacecow for all their help with this!]