Posts with tag Patch2.1

In Patch 2.1, Blizzard introduced daily quests, the Netherwing faction and nether drake mounts. Through a combination of solo and group daily and one-time quests, players can grind their faction from Hatred to Exalted in as little as 14 days. At Exalted, players can then buy an epic flying mount, the nether drake.

This has been well documented since the patch, but now Blizzard has added their own guide to grinding out the Netherwing faction. Their guide gives a nice overview of the quests involved without too much extra detail. It also links to their Burning Crusade page that covers the origins of the nether drake as well as a trailer.

If you're new to flying mounts, check out Blizzard's guide first. If you like what you see, try WoW Wiki's guide (linked in the paragraph above) for a more detailed look at the quests involved as well as a list of bugs. As for me, I'll stick with druid flight form. And trying to scrape together that 5000 for the riding skill.

Patch 2.1.3, a small bug-fix release, is apparently now up on the public test realms. Here are the patch notes:

World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.3

General

• The Warlock spell Incinerate has had the performance of its graphical spell effect improved.
• The "show launcher" option has changed so that it now defaults to "on". Players will now see the launcher when running WOW by default.

User Interface

• Improved the performance of conditional macros, slightly increasing the framerate.
• Fixed a crash triggered by many unit frame AddOns.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the movement of Archimonde's Doomfire.
• Fixed the wand missile art on most Shadow based wands to show the correct graphical effect.
• Infinity Blades will now despawn properly when the encounter with Kael'thas resets after a wipe.
• Gan'arg Underlings and Felhound Defenders are now properly classified as demons.

I was getting a few crashes in recent releases; perhaps the unit frame crash is the culprit. Also...um...no, nothing else in this patch is going to affect me at all.

Fatforprom just wrote in tipping us to this movie he found showing off the Patch. 2.1.0 Force of Nature bug. Now, I don't know whether this is a bug or just a practical joke, but it sure is funny. Who knew that trees could be so darm attractive to the wildlife!

If it were me I would think twice before using this spell. Unless of course I had an army behind me to back me up.

Previously on Moviewatch...

We love Blizzard EU CM Ommra, because he's (or she!) is always the one to keep us up to date on the most recent hotfixes coming out of Blizzard. And there seem to be a few more than usual this week -- because of the patch, perhaps? (No matter how long they're on the PTRs, they're never bug-free!) But if you're wondering what's happened so far this week in the world of hotfixes, here's a list for you:

• Linking a Poison Recipe or Hunter Pet Ability in a chat message will no longer cause a disconnect.
• Seer Olum will no longer despawn as quickly after being rescued from Serpentshrine Cavern.
• Coilfang Ambushers can no longer be charmed.
• The Lurker Below will no longer emerge from the water before all adds are dead.
• Gruul's hateful strike will now target the second highest on the threat list instead of the third highest.
• The gem vendors in Thrallmar and Honor hold are now once again available.
• Al'ar's Meteor ability will now do less damage and its damage will no longer be divided between multiple targets.
• We're working on a hotfix for the problem where Krosh Firehand's Spell Shield is not cast immediately upon entering combat for a Mage to Spell Steal. This was not an intended change and we hope to have it fixed soon.
• The hotfix for the Spell Shield has been deployed. The Spell Shield should be cast in a much more timely manner now.

I particularly like that first one!

Do you guys like the new AutoDismount option built into the interface? There's now an option that you can check or uncheck (in the interface window) that will automatically dismount you from your flying mount whenever you start casting a spell-- and that includes dropping into stealth, shapechanging (for druids-- Hugsy of Thunderhorn tested it for me), and mining and herbing.

I used to use an addon called EZDismount a while back that did exactly this, but I eventually ditched it because it seemed like it kicked me off my mount too much. But since the patch, the AutoDismount seems to be working perfectly-- it saved me tons of clicks farming herbs while flying around (and towing my orphan behind-- what can I say, I'm a multitasker). I don't know if Blizzard has theirs set up differently, because I haven't used the old addon in so long, but so far it just seems to work better.

But I do realize that not everybody likes it, and unfortunately, it seems the checkbox only seems to work for flying mounts-- AutoDismount is set on by default for all ground mounts now. If you want to turn it off for all mounts (so that you get an error message, just like before, when you try to cast a spell while mounted), you can simply type this: /console autoDismount 0. That, we're told by Slouken, the UI blue guy, is all you need to type in once, and it's set off for all mounts. I'd assume to turn it back on, you just type /console autoDismount 1. And there's a few helpful dismount macros in that thread as well-- you can use a hotbutton to select a random mount in your inventory, or use a hotbutton to turn on or off AutoDismount (if, for example, you want to use it in battlegrounds, but not in PvE). Interesting stuff. I'll be autodismounting, I'm sure, but with all that info, it's good to know that you have control over when you get on and off your mounts.

In today's breakfast topic, I noted that I haven't gotten any gold spam in the time I've played since patch 2.1.0 came along. And oh, what a change it is! I was always a good little player, taking the time to report any gold selling spam to a GM, but usually by the time a GM got around to looking at my ticket, I'd have gotten at least five more piece of spam -- and that was if I opened my ticket during off-hours.

So what's the magical change that's stopped spam in its tracks this patch? Obviously, there's the new spam reporting system, which makes reporting anyone an easy task: just right-click on their name and select the "report spam" option. You'll no longer get whispers, see text, or receive mails from that player for the duration of your game session and the incident is automatically forwarded on to a GM. But even if every player were duitifully reporting every spammer, I wouldn't expect such a dramatic change in the level of spam. CM Drysc notes that as of the patch, trial accounts can no longer whisper other players -- at least not without players whispering them first. I don't know about you, but I think this simple step may have been the magic bullet.

We've all had at least a day (our European friends are a bit behind us, but I have no doubt they have also managed to form their opinions) to play with patch 2.1.0 and digest the many changes contained therein. While the Children's Week quests (and the non-combat pets you get from them) are super fun, but what I'm enjoying most is the lack of gold selling spam. At least for me, this near-constant nuisance has completely vanished since the patch came out -- though perhaps I'll have a different opinion tomorrow. So, I ask, what's your favorite aspect of patch 2.1.0?

If you were attempting to play this evening, you may notice your realm vanishing out from under you. That's because Blizzard has been in the process of rolling restarts to fix a serious issue with today's 2.1.0 patch. As of 3:45 PM PST (that's 6:45 PM to you east coasters), restarts began, with an anticipated downtime of 15 minutes for each realm. The problem that caused all this hubbub? The official forums are a bit flakey this evening, but reader SirCasey reports that stacked items taken from mailboxes are vanishing from players inventories -- and I don't know about you, but I can see this resulting in hundreds of gold lost. What to do if you've already lost something? Blizzard poster Hortus says talk to a GM, but makes no promises that they'll be able to restore items.

Update: CM Drysc reports at 6:30 PM PDT (9:30 PM EST) that complications from the earlier fix has prevented some realms from coming back online. However, they're working on bringing the remaining realms back online and plan to have all realms back online by 9:00 PM PDT (12:00 AM EST).

For those of you who didn't want to wander through the extremely long transcript for the Stratics House of Commons Dev Chat in the last post, I thought I would point out one extremely pertinent bit. According to Tigole, Kalgan, Drysc and Eyonix, patch 2.1 is going live tomorrow morning to all servers.

If you've been holding off on running the torrent, or meaning to look for that patch mirror site but never got around to it, you might want to get that download started. In either case, patches generally mean strange bugs and rolling restarts, if not an extended downtime in the first place. Best to prepare for an extended WoW jones now and some frustration as the bugs get worked out of the system.

Me? I've got my World of Warcraft home game, WoW Insider, and caffeine. I'm ready to face patch day!

What kind of things do you do on patch day? Have any particular things you do on maintenance Tuesdays like the WoW LJ community does with their Caturday - Servers Screwed thread? Share your tips and save your fellow WoW players from boredom tomorrow!

Edited to add: Yep, Drysc confirmed extended downtime:

This isn't in the patch notes, but I'm still surprised I didn't hear about it sooner. Ming writes that the Rogue talent Sword Specialization, which has been broken for a very, very long time, is fixed in patch 2.1. What do I mean by "broken?" Well, here's the talent's tooltip:

Gives you a 1/2/3/4/5% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after dealing damage with your Sword.

Sounds like it should work out to basically 5% more white damage plus a little more due to it proccing off special attacks, right? Well, that's not how it's been working. What it's been doing is resetting your main hand swing timer whenever it procs, causing your main hand to swing at that time. If it procs off a regular main hand swing, you're getting your money's worth. However, say you've got a 2.0 speed mainhand, and it swung 1.8 seconds ago. You cast Sinister Strike, which happens to proc Sword Spec. This causes your main hand to swing and resets its timer to 2 seconds -- but it was about to swing anyway, so you've gained very little from the talent. Off-hand procs share a similar fate, since they also cause main hand swings.

About an hour and a half ago I made the mistake of logging out of the game. Now I can't seem to get back in and evidently many people on multiple servers are having the same problem. It's a shame, really, since I was planning another attempt at the heroics, but alas it was not meant to be.

My guess is that one of two things could happen. One is that we will be back up and running soon with little problem. The other option, and the far more likely one in my opinion, will be that these problems will keep occurring throughout the night. I am betting that something is happening with the Patch 2.1 install and it is messing authentication up. Nothing official on what is happening, but we do know that all is not well in Azeroth. Until then, I guess it's time to dust off your consoles, read a book, or catch up on all that homework you've been slacking on.

I love the Auction house. I've got a mule parked there just specifically so I can log over periodically, scan, and then snap up any bargains and either stash them for tradeskills, send them to an alt, or resell them if it's an item that has been severely under priced. (I can't tell you how many copies of the Savory Deviate Delight recipe I've bought from the AH for 40s that I resold for at least 5g.) But I have to admit, I've never thought that the search interface was too terribly good. Then I saw a blue reply to a forum request for changes to the auction house that made me a happy panda. According to Eyonix:

...We're also working to improve our user-interface, which includes the auction house. Below are some of the changes slated to be implemented for the next patch.

• The Auction House now has a reset button that will reset all fields you have entered to allow you to quickly try a different search.
• When items are being put up for sale on the Auction House, if the item you are putting up for bid is the same item and quantity as the previous item you put up for bid, it will automatically fill in the price and buyout for you with your previous price.
• Gems are now searchable in the Auction House under the heading of Gem with the gems then broken up by color so you can search for all gems of a specific color.

I just wonder if the end version of automatic fill they implement will remember prices from when you were logged in before like Auctioneer does? Or will the auction house "forget" things as soon as I log out -- or perhaps even as soon as I close the auction house interface? It's not enough of a change to replace Auctioneer for me, but it's a step in the right direction at least.

And I lest I forget -- Hooray searchable gems by color in case you missed it in the previous patch notes!

[via the General forum]

Another week, another Tuesday maintenance. And it's not even a rolling restart week! So here we are all twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the servers to come back online. And, alas, while we've all no doubt been having fun playing with patch 2.1 on the test realms, we do know that today isn't the day. Of course this only leaves us with lots of room for speculation -- so I'm asking you, good readers, when do you think patch 2.1 will be headed towards the live realms? The patch has been running on the test realms since April 13th, which means next Tuesday's maintenance will be approaching the 4-week mark that I always use as a general guideline for patch releases. But Blizzard has been known to surprise even me. So let's hear your predictions -- when do you think we'll see patch 2.1 on the live realms?

Blizzard has quietly disabled the upcoming Children's Week holiday. There was a brief announcement in the EU forums saying the event would be disabled until after the 2.1 patch and on the US site the holiday's date has simply been changed to "TBD." In the past the week-long event's start has varied from the 1st of May to the 9th of May, so if 2.1 is released soon perhaps it won't be pushed back very far. Now my question is... what the heck does Children's week have to do with the patch? Should we expect something new and different this year or is there just some technical issue with deploying a patch during the middle of a special event the Blizzard team is trying to avoid?

[Thanks to all who sent in tips on this one!]

Over at Blessing of Kings, Coriel has a great explanation of how the paladin's to-be-changed Illumination talent -- which has been happily residing in the holy tree since the game's release -- became such a thorny problem.

The talent (as it exists now) returns the base mana cost of a healing spell to the paladin when the healing spell crits. (It costs 5 talent points to bring it to this level of effectiveness and requires 15 points in the talent tree. So a fully maxxed illumination will cost you 20 talent points in the holy tree.) The end result is that, overall, the paladin receives a mana discount on their healing spells equal to their spell crit rate. Prior to patch 1.9, a paladin could boost his or her holy spell crit rate by 5% through talents (priests have a similar talent that boosts holy spell crit), but it was difficult for paladins to get any other spell crit gear. The plate itemization simply didn't exist and there was heavy competition for generic items that a paladin could use like the Azuresong Mageblade.