Posts with tag bug

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Zarhym has given us an update on the bug with Seal of Truth from yesterday, and it opens a fascinating window into the complexities of the code that ultimately is the World of Warcraft.

Zarhym - Update on Retribution Paladin Bug

The bug where paladin Seals could sometimes cause excessive damage has been fixed. This bug came as a result of a hotfix we put in to fix an issue where some attacks, such as Scatter Shot, were still causing Vengeance in PvP situations. While these things may seem totally unrelated, it has to do with our proc system, which is an extremely complicated mechanic under the hood. We reverted that hotfix, meaning you may sometimes see Vengeance in PvP. But we don't think that will present a major balance concern at this time.

To be clear, we have no current plans to take action against players who experienced this bug last night unless we come across any extreme cases. The error was ours and we haven't seen any evidence -- so far -- of players excessively exploiting the bug. We reserve the right to take action if we do find evidence of players crossing the line to repeatedly exploit this bug for major in-game advantages.

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I won't lie, I find this fascinating. The idea that the issue lies in a system that on the surface would seem totally unrelated gives me the shivers just imagining what it must be like to maintain and advance the design for code that's been around for years and years. I have to agree that letting Vengeance sometimes pop up in PvP is probably the better option. It's only going to happen in an extremely limited set of circumstances, anyway.

I'm also glad only extreme edge cases will be seeing bans, as I had no idea the bug even existed while leveling my ret paladin last night and only figured it out afterwards.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

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According to several reports, including the official forums, World of Logs, and several of our own staff, retribution paladins are experiencing a bug after tonight's rolling realm restarts. The bug has retribution paladins dealing several times their normal damage, with new records on World of Logs easily exceeding 100,000 DPS on any given Dragon Soul encounter.

The bug appears to be related to Seal of Truth, as it's dealing over 60% of the affected ret paladins' damage, vastly dwarfing all other sources. The bug seems to be affecting PvP and PvE, as there are many reports of retribution paladins being nigh unstoppable in Battlegrounds tonight. One group of retribution paladins toppled Lord Rhyolith in under 15 seconds.

There has been no official word from Blizzard just yet on these developments, although we can be sure that there will be a change deployed to fix this bug as early as possible.

Reminder from the editors: Do keep in mind that abusing things like this is considered exploitation. Blizzard does have the right to ban you for abusing this if you're using it to bypass content à la our old friend Karatechop. Don't make Blizzard's job harder, and don't risk your account.

Update 10:00 a.m. EST Blizzard is aware of the problem and is looking for a way to solve it. They also issue the same warning we did -- don't exploit this.

Zarhym -- Ret Paladin DPS Bug

We're aware of this issue and looking into it right now. It's likely we won't have further updates for you until we're back in the office in the morning PST.

Just as a reminder from the Terms of Use:

C. Rules Related to Game Play.
(i) Using or exploiting errors in design, features which have not been documented, and/or "program bugs" to gain access that is otherwise not available, or to obtain a competitive advantage over other players.

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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.

• The duration of the Superheated Quicksilver Armor debuff on Karsh Steelbender is now 17 seconds, up from 12 seconds. The encounter was too hard to tank and went against our intended fight mechanics. The display for this buff may not properly update until a client-side patch is applied.
• Rare archaeology finds should now grant triple skill gains.
• Mekgineer Thermaplugg is no longer using outdated abilities and has a shiny new list of abilities to use. He is also no longer immune to taunts.
• Elemental Goos now drop 100% of the time off of Cataclysm elementals for the jewelcrafting daily quest.
• Chaos Orbs can now only been seen and rolled on by characters with a minimum skill level of 425 in tailoring, blacksmithing, leatherworking, or engineering.

For the full list of hotfixes, follow us behind the break below.

Just released is the initial official list of patch 3.3.5 known issues... and it's a big one. Some of the major highlights:

• Performing the /eat emote while dancing as a male Blood elf can cause some very unnatural character movement.
• Pit of Saron - Scourgelord Tyrannus can remount Rimefang during the encounter.
• The last remaining player in a random instance group can miss out on Random Dungeon loot.
• Players from different servers can't trade dungeon items necessary to progress through the dungeon.
• The Twilight Orbs periodically disappear during Phase 2 of the Halion encounter.
• It is possible for a level 70 to receive the Wrathful Gladiator's Tabard.
• You cannot get the "Call To Arms" Achievement through the Looking for Battleground feature.
• Mage Summon Water Elemental does not fully function as a permanent pet when glyphed with Glyph of Eternal Water.

It appears that this includes some unfixed bugs that were present in previous patches, such as Tyrannus remounting Rimefang. There is no indication as to when these bugs will get fixed.

The complete list after the break.

We have news of two new tricks hackers are currently using to steal WoW accounts. First, from Curse, comes news of a Google sponsored link that claims to lead to the popular addon manager Curse Client, but instead leads to a malware download. To be absolutely safe, you should always only download the client from http://www.curse.com/client.

In addition, Blizzard is warning that Adobe Flash version 10.0.45.2 contains a critical vulnerability that could be used to install a keylogger on your computer in order to steal your WoW account info. You can avoid this issue by installing Adobe Flash version 10.1 Release Candidate 7, which does not appear to have the same vulnerabilities.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we have absolutely no excuse for the column we've written.

I'll be honest; I wrote this week's column purely for brainless fun. You won't learn anything (not that you do normally), there are no insights to be gained (not that there are normally) and I don't have any new Cataclysm alpha information. I am very sorry to anyone who came here looking for a solid, informative column, and if you wish to excoriate me in the comments then I encourage you to do so.

Anyway. When it comes to druids, the deal with race choice is that you don't really have any. If you play Alliance, you have to play a night elf; if you play Horde, you have to play a tauren. We're the most race-restricted class in the game, and even in Cataclysm, that's not really going to change.

Some of you might recall a bug from a little while back that allowed you to model-swap between characters on the same realm by "choosing" two of them at once. I'm pretty sure it's been fixed now, so I wouldn't bother trying it if I were you, but I had lot of fun swapping non-druid races into our various tier sets and wondering what it might have been like to play them. I screenshotted like a maniac while doing so and then set them aside for a future column whenever I felt like doing something just for fun. That would be today.

Blizzard has officially stated that the issue with not being able to complete the Dalaran Children's Week quests this year, if you did them last year, will not be resolved before the holiday is over. They are not saying this is how it is supposed to work, but that they cannot fix it in time.

Bornakk -- Dalaran Children's Week Quest Line Issue

We are aware of the issue that is currently affecting the Children's Week quest line in Dalaran which does not allow players who have completed the quest line last year to take part in it again this year. We do not currently have a fix planned to address this issue at this point in time.

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Bashlok -- Dalaran Children's Week Quest Line Issue

To clarify, this issue won't be able to be resolved for Children's Week this year. If you completed the quest previously you won't be able to complete it again for the other pet this year.

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Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.

Even though Crimson Halls has been open for about half a week, a series of hot fixes have been applied today. Most of the fixes posted by Bornakk are applied to Blood Queen Lana'thel. I have to admit though, the bug where the Kinetic Bomb could trigger Blood Queen Lana'thel during the Blood Prince Council encounter did make me chuckle. I'm glad that's been resolved as well.

• Blood Queen Lana'thel will only be available after the Blood Prince Council is defeated.
• Blood Queen Lana'thel's Essence has a longer duration.
• Kinetic Bombs no longer aggro Blood Queen Lana'thel during the Blood Princes encounter.
• Blood Queen Lanathel should no longer cast Vampiric Bite on pets.

In addition, Daelo posted another set of fixes for the Blood Princes encounter:

• Prince Keleseth will no longer melee players. So if you get knocked into Keleseth or happen to move by him, he won't swipe in between his casts and kill a non-tank.
  
• The first Shadow Resonance should appear earlier in the fight, which will allow the Keleseth tank to have more orbs on him or her if Keleseth is empowered second instead of third. We didn't want which Blood Prince was empowered second to be a major element of the difficulty in the fight.
  
• We reduced the melee damage for the Princes by 10% for the 10 player difficulty. They were doing less damage than the 25 player before the hotfix, but this change lowers the damage further.
  
• Empowered Flames will now run out of power after shooting fewer firebolts in the 10 player difficulty. We did not change the initial impact damage.

Valnoth states that the Essence duration was lengthened because the developers didn't like the idea of sacrificing a player to get through an encounter. As a healer, I'm inclined to agree. I hate it when I have to stop all heals on a player in order to progress through a counter. It just goes contrary to everything my character stands for.

A nasty bug with the 2-piece Tier 10 bonus for Elemental Shamans reared its ugly head recently when a player attempted to use Elemental Mastery. The bonus, which is supposed to reduce the cooldown on Elemental Mastery by 2 seconds each time Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning is used, instead puts the 31-point Elemental talent on a whopping seven day cooldown. This is akin to the bug found with the Hunter ability Call Stabled Pet, which puts the ability on an even more staggering 25-day cooldown.

Ghostcrawler immediately responded to the concern as raised on the official forums, stating that the problem happens only in cross-server instances and that raiding shouldn't be affected. Elemental Shamans sporting two pieces from the Frost Witch's Regalia would probably do well not to activate Elemental Mastery while in a dungeon using the Dungeon Finder until a fix is found. Ghostcrawler stated that Blizzard is working on the issue.

Another day, another round of in-game hotfixes. This time the most interesting one of the bunch is the increase in Battered Hilt drop rate (the Battered Hilt leads to the Quel'Delar). Of course it could mean that the hilt drop rate was increased from 0.001% to 0.01%, but hey, at least that's one whole decimal place! Please note however that we don't know what the actual drop rate was nor what it is now. All we know that it's very low.

In actuality, one could surmise that the drop rate was increased to combat some of the outrageous prices that we're seeing on the AH. 20,000 gold or more for a weapon that will be outdated in less than a year is a bit much.

• Quel'Delar in now unique equip.
• Naxxramas can now be cleared in any order for the Immortal and Undying achievements.
• The drop rate for the Battered Hilt has been increased.
• The Skeletal Slave in the Pit of Saron has had the ability to drop the Battered Hilt and other random drop epics removed.

The entire list of in-game hotfixes from the past seven days after the break.

We've been sitting on this one for a few days now to let people have their fun before we draw a little too much attention to it, but there's a rather interesting bug in the patch 3.2.2 client: you can glitch out the model being loaded for your character upon login, and switch it with that of another character. We don't know how long it's been around or how long it will stay, but watch the video above (which is pretty large, our apologies) for a demonstration.

The WoW.com staff has confirmed it works, though the timing required is very precise. You need to be quick, but being too fast hitting one or the other is just as bad as being too slow. A few of us found that we had to slow down our fingers to do it properly, because "fast" to a hardcore FPS gamer is very different than "fast" to a casual MMO gamer. Click first, hit enter second. Not the other way around.

Whether this falls into exploit territory or not, we don't really know. What we do know is that the model 'swap' is only visible for you on your client, nobody else sees it, so nobody else should be impacted by it. It's also only graphical, no benefits carry over from one character to the next. You might see your epic iLevel 258 shield on your level 1 rogue, but you won't have the stats. You can't be a Horde draenei to anybody but yourself, so no screwing with people in battlegrounds. You can't be a unique snowflake like an undead paladin to anybody but yourself.

It's a whole lot of fun to see what a draenei rogue would look like, or a gnome druid. Check out the gallery below to see what came out of WoW.com's experimentation, and a few from our friends, too.