Posts with tag haunted-memento

Back in patch 6.0, the plague event drop Haunted Memento was nerfed to provide a random, 15-second haunting, rather than provide a constant ghastly companion. Many who owned the item didn't notice the change ... but those who did notice weren't too happy. The item, no longer able to be acquired, was something special. Why the change? Community managed Bashiok shed some light on the subject:

Patch 6.0 and the change to Haunted Memento

It was the #1 source of creature spawns within the game, which was causing server performance degradation, and during launch we changed its behavior as one of many tweaks to help recoup some server headroom. Due to the ongoing demand on the game service (and likelihood of similar demands in future expansion launches) we're not currently planning to revert it to its old behavior.

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The Haunted Memento being the #1 source of creature spawns is somewhat fascinating -- given the (perceived?) rarity of the item, we were surprised by that spawnrate. Even with the creature respawning every time a player zoned or took a flight point, we wouldn't have expected it to be so significant. The nerf to the item is unfortunate -- especially given reports that the ghost's spawn buff can break players out of stealth -- but it seems necessary given this information. However, if the item does break stealth, hopefully that's a bug that can be fixed.

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whack asked...

Why are there shades all over major and minor cities in Azeroth, Outland, and Northrend? Has there been an explanation? I originally thought they would only be there for the WotLK launch event but they haven't gone away.