Posts with tag bugs

At this point, I'd recommend to everyone still working on these achievements that you save up your artifacts and turn them all in during one Faire, in order to ensure credit. For the goblins among us, however, this means it's still a good gold-making opportunity, so check out our guide to profiting off the Darkmoon Faire.

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High-end raiding guild Paragon issued an apology today for exploiting a bug in the Raid Finder that allowed its raiders to accumulate a large quantity of tier 13 gear. The statement reads, in part:

We acknowledge that using this unintended behavior, which was quite clearly a bug, to our gain, was wrong. The fact that others were using it as well is no justification for doing it ourselves. We apologize for doing it, and accept whatever consequences follow.

Paragon had come up with a plan to run the Raid Finder multiple times, once for each raider. While executing the plan, they noticed and exploited a bug that allowed the raid the ability to loot passed gear -- a violation of Blizzard's rules. The exploit has since been hotfixed.

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Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

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This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages.

I love bugs in the World of Warcraft. Wait, let me clarify that: I love bugs in WoW that don't stop me from being able to complete the game. While the bug in Vashj'ir stopped me from being able to finish the zone, made me want to charter a plane to California, camp out in front of Blizzard headquarters, and punch the first game designer who came by me in the face, the bugs that do weird things to terrain or my character brighten my day and give me warm, amused fuzzies.

I am fascinated by terrain that bugs out as I am flying over it, and I can get sidetracked quite easily by running over to it to see if it changes as I get closer. I have fond memories of spending almost an hour "swimming" through the air of a bugged-out Shattrath when I couldn't log out or see anyone around me. I also remember days when I squished my boredom by looking through pictures of the day that captured weird visual bugs on people's characters or their surroundings.

Are there any others out there like me who find the beauty and amusement in this wonderful game of ours when it decides it does not want to work quite right? Or am I the only one who can see the sun through the dark cloud that is bugginess?

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Ghostcrawler has dropped information on the forums about a few incoming hotfixes to patch 3.3. The first three changes are posted over on the DPS role forum:

• Hunger for Blood will increase damage by 10% instead of 15%. Assassination rogues needed damage, but they got too much, and this will bring them back. Sorry rogues -- the tooltip, we're also told, might not change right away.
• Scourge Strike will crit only once, not on the shadow portion of the damage. "This change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids." He also gives lots more explanation of the change on the forums -- this one will be discussed quite a bit.
• Rolling Corruptions will no longer use the initial haste value indefinitely. More of a bugfix than a change, says GC -- the haste value should drop out to normal after a few ticks of the spell.

Elsewhere, GC says that there are no changes planned for the new hunter epic ammo, so find a friendly engineer and stick to them like glue. There is a hotfix incoming for the bug that causes tanked mobs to move around randomly -- thank goodness on that. And SW: Pain's immunity from the haste change for shadow priests will probably stay right where it is.

Patch 3.3 obviously is having its share of bugs, some more severe than others. People are reporting inability to zone into instances, often times met either with the dreaded "Additional instances cannot be launched" error or just flat out lagging out so long that they're ported back to Dalaran or wherever the system decides to drop them, entirely unable to enter the instance.

Some of the issues have been addressed, some haven't.

Blizzard has released the first part of the list of known issues with patch 3.3. It will be expanding in the future, so don't get too upset when you don't see a bug on it. Remember that it typically takes a couple days for a patch to get all its kinks worked out. Just hang tight, enjoy some some lore and trailer action, and things will be fixed before you know it.

The full list of known issues 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.

After getting yanked off of Apple's App Store a little while back, Blizzard's Mobile Authenticator app is now back in business, and ready for a free download. Version 1.0.2 is out now [iTunes link] and the description says it contains UI improvements with a streamlined and enhanced interface.

Unfortunately, the issue that originally got the app pulled off the store hasn't actually been fixed: the official blurb is now saying that you should definitely remove the authenticator from your account before you upgrade, and then re-apply it again to your account after you've upgraded (and presumably gotten a new key installed). If you install this new version of the app and then try to access your account, it won't work (and you'll have to call Blizzard support at 1-949-955-1382 to help them remove the old authenticator).

Small hassle to go through, however, to have an account protected against hacking. If you have an iPhone or an iPod touch and haven't picked up this application yet, now's the time to do so for sure.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in, especially Eric!]

We recorded our latest podcast last Saturday afternoon, and it was a good one -- not only did we have Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington and Turpster on from here at WoW.com, but we welcomed two special guests: Fimlys and Nibuca from the Twisted Nether Blogcast. They were on to talk about their podcast and what they do with Twisted Nether, as well as their new Azeroth United project and what they'll be doing with that in the future. And of course, after we introduced everybody, we sat down and chatted about the most popular stories from the last week in Warcraft, including Brewfest and Onyxia, as well as patch 3.2.2 and the bugs contained therein. Enjoy the show.

And if you've heard something you'd like to respond to on the show, feel free to drop us a note via email -- the address is theshow@wow.com. We'll see you next Saturday as usual, thanks for listening!

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