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Hotfixes and compensation for Garrosh tokens
It seems that raid end-boss Garrosh Hellscream has been up to his old tricks again, as players have been having a great deal of trouble with his loot table awarding insufficient tokens on 25-N difficulty. It seems that, instead of the usual three, Garrosh was only dropping one token, as Community Manager Lore reports: Lore Greetings, When Patch 5.4 released, Garrosh Hellscream was set to drop one tier token on 25-player Normal difficulty. This was inconsistent with other bosses in the zone, and we planned to correct that via hotfix. Our intent was to release this hotfix during weekly maintenance to keep rewards consistent throughout this reset; unfortunately, due to an error on our part, the hotfix was applied early to the North American and Asian servers. This has resulted in an unfair advantage for guilds that defeated Garrosh later in the week, not only against the NA/Asian guilds that defeated him before the hotfix was applied, but also against all European guilds that have defeated him (as the hotfix has not yet been applied there)... source
RIFT adds warfront modes on a daddy's day off
While most fathers were enjoying brand-new ties and meals out on the town this past Sunday, RIFT Lead Game Designer Bill Fisher decided that he'd be a papa to the PvP game community and take care of their needs. Fisher went into the office on his day off, asked players what they wanted added, and whipped up two new game modes for warfronts. The Black Garden warfront got a domination mode added, which allows players to wrest for the control of two key points. Also sporting a new domination mode is the Karthan Ridge warfront, although this one is a little more complex. Players in Karthan Ridge have to fight over five control points; the control points on the enemy's side of the map award more score points than do those on the on the home team side. The hotfix also reinstated the second dimension option to players which had been disabled after the 2.3 patch.
Bashiok clarifies changes to Durumu
Last night, Blizzard released some hotfixes that mostly focused on the Durumu encounter in Throne of Thunder. Today on the general forums, community manager Bashiok has responded to a few player questions and clarified some of the rationale behind the changes, as well as announcing that another small hotfix to the encounter will be deployed later today. This newest change will see the death-beam during the maze phase dissipating slightly sooner than before, to balance against the fact that it now moves faster than it did prior to the hotfixes. The sum of these changes should help out those players who were struggling with the fight due to graphics and visuals. Just wanted to follow up with some additional information, as we've seen a few questions since the changes. In a hotfix yesterday, we changed two elements of the Durumu Eye Sore mechanic, or the "maze" as it's more commonly known. First off, we applied a small client patch to increase the visual fidelity of the fill graphic itself, giving the effect less vertical height and hopefully making it easier to see the safe spots as they appear. Feedback on this change has generally been positive. Separately, at the same time we made some adjustments to the logic of how the maze is drawn with respect to the movement of the Disintegration Beam. One of the less intuitive aspects of the original maze mechanic was how it would begin drawing behind you, and how the right thing to do was actually to turn around and back up, towards the approaching death beam, in order to safely enter the forming maze. Why would any sane person want to move closer to a death beam?! We generally are extremely cautious about making gameplay adjustments to encounters once players have already learned them, but in this case the opening of the Halls of Flesh-Shaping LFR wing highlighted the fact that the mechanic was a particular source of confusion to many players, and the longer we waited to make any adjustment, the more disorienting it would be if we did change anything. So what we did was make the maze immediately begin drawing in front of the player as the beam activates, so that you never need to turn around and run towards the beam. This also effectively gives players a slight head-start on the beam as it begins to move. To maintain the same sense of urgency, the beam does move slightly more quickly now, so that it will, over the course of the phase, catch up to players and negate that head start. But the player movement required once you're actually running the maze should be unchanged. We have noted, however, that at the very end of the maze sequence, it can now feel like the fast-approaching death ray is going to reach you, making it feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. To address that concern, we are making another adjustment today, which will cause the death ray to dissipate a few seconds earlier at the end of the maze. source
Trion Worlds promises that it's addressing critical Defiance issues
Executive Producer Nathan Richardsson has mixed emotions in regards to Defiance's release. "This first day of launch of Defiance has been as awesome as we expected it to be," he wrote in a state of the game post. "And by awesome, I mean we're neck deep addressing all the issues that come up when you scale something up to a million people from a test environment of thousands." Richardsson promised that the large Trion team is working hard to "update, patch, fix, and improve" Defiance post-launch. The most critical problems that he identifies are connectivity problems, missing pre-order items, the scaling of bosses and arkfalls, and broken chat and VOIP. "We appreciate the trust that you are showing us by coming with us and we will address all these issues," he concludes. Speaking of awesome, check out the main theme to Defiance, composed by Bear McCreary, after the jump!
Players visiting a different realm no longer eligible to receive loot from Oondasta or Nalak
Oondasta may have the best loot table in the entire universe, but the encounter understandably requires quite an army of players to defeat. And when I say army, I'm not exaggerating -- groups are currently rallying at least four 40-man raids to successfully put this guy down. Due to server stability issues, mainly brought about by using CRZ to bring over enough players, Blizzard is hotfixing how loot is earned for an Oondasta or Nalak kill. In order to receive loot from either, players must be on their home realm. Rygarius - Oondasta and Nalak Hotfixes We're in the process of implementing a hotfix that will remove players' eligibility to receive loot from Oondasta and Nalak, The Storm Lord if they're not on their home realm. We think it's great that encounters like Oondasta have been able to bring back some of the excitement of massive spontaneous outdoor raids. However, with cross-realm groups giving the ability to play with friends on each other's realms, the amount of people concentrating on a single realm to try to zerg these bosses down can unfortunately cause a number of stability issues, impacting the availability of the game for everyone. While Nalak isn't available yet, we want to preemptively address this so that the first realm to unlock it doesn't then become the single focus for the rest of the region. Here's the hotfix note that'll be added to the blog shortly: Players visiting a different realm are no longer eligible to receive loot from Oondasta or Nalak, The Storm Lord. source Many players may take issue with this change, as it's much easier to rally such large numbers through the CRZ system and down the boss with sheer numbers. For smaller realms especially, this change will be a big blow to successfully defeating Oondasta using the zerg strategy. I'm happy with the change, and it'll hopefully turn Oondasta into the challenging world boss he's meant to be -- more like Doom Lord Kazzak was, back in BC.
Bashiok clarifies pet battle XP hotfix
Overnight, Blizzard rolled out a hotfix on all servers nerfing the obscenely high XP people were gaining from winning pet battles. You can no longer level characters to 89 in a matter of hours by hanging around capital cities battling level 1 pets. Bashiok explains how and why they implemented the nerf. Bashiok We're in the process of updating the hotfixes blog with the recent changes to Pet Battle XP, but wanted to provide a bit more insight into why the changes were made and how XP is calculated. All buffs to player XP (heirlooms, enlightenment, guild bonus etc.) were bugged, these where hotfixed to work as expected. General player XP from pet battles was tuned too high, these numbers have been balanced accordingly. Player experience is granted based on a number of factors. These are player level, number of pet opponents, maximum pet opponent level and the level disparity between opponents pets and your pets. Our philosophy is that player XP from pet battles should be, in general, somewhat slower than normal questing. source While almost everyone agrees that it was not in the game's best interest to allow the ridiculously speedy leveling players were taking advantage of, the nerf at first seemed excessive. Whereas one could get 28K for winning a level 1 pet battle at level 60, this morning the same character got 900 to 2000. But as Bashiok describes above, the XP now scales appropriately according to level of the player and the pets in the battles. I've been experimenting and I agree that they have succeeded in making pet battles slower than questing, but not a complete waste of time. If you are questing in a level appropriate area, taking time out to battle the wild pets in the same zone is definitely worth doing to add variety and experience to your endeavors. Also, heirlooms, XP buffs, guild bonuses all still affect pet battle player XP, so do go take a ride on the Darkmoon Faire Carousel before you test the hotfix for yourself. Did you take advantage of the insane leveling XP? I did only for a few levels. A grind's a grind, after all, and there are new islands to explore.
Pet Battle XP hotfixed
We're getting reports of insane experience gains for players via winning pet battles. Because the XP being awarded was affected by heirlooms and XP buffs -- like the Darkmoon Faire Carousel buff -- people were leveling characters from 1 to 89 in a matter of hours. (Experience for pet battles stops at level 89 and you get a chance for Lesser Charms of Good Fortune, instead.) Community Manager Zarhym had this to say on the subject on Thursday afternoon: .@lordreinhart @cm_zarhym Yes, pet battles are rewarding more XP than intended right now. We're testing a hotfix to address this asap. :) - World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) March 7, 2013 The XP scales with your level and how close your pets are to the pets you defeat. XP is earned via battling pets in the wild, pet tamer NPCs, and other players in pet battle PvP. No experience is gained from pet battle duels or if your highest pet is more than 5 levels above the pets you are fighting. The amount received before the nerf was roughly what a character gets from completing the capital city cooking and fishing dailies. Because you can get XP from battling level 1 wild pets, people were camping out in major cities and decimating the battle pet population while leveling their low level pets. As of this morning, it looks like all realms have been hotfixed so that the experience is approximately 10% of what it was. We have no further official word on the nerf as of this writing, but we'll keep you posted. Update: It looks like from the comments and my experimentation that the nerf is scaled. While it is no longer worth it to hang around Stormwind and kill level 1 pets, if you battle in level appropriate zones with level appropriate characters, the XP gain is still worthwhile.
Trion tackles holiday RIFT botters
RIFT's come under siege as of late, but instead of that siege being the "vicious creatures from another planar dimension" variety, it's been the players themselves. Trion Worlds has posted that the game became infested with botters over the recent holidays, so the team has taken action. "As of today, we've already shut down a few thousand accounts over the recent rise in fishing botting, and we've begun removing gains from others in places of extreme bot use. A good number of these botters were brought in, as is often the case, on stolen credit cards and fraudulent RIFT purchases," the development team wrote. The studio said that while the situation is being dealt with, disabled gamers who use keyboard-assistance software are advised not to use these programs (but aren't forbidden from doing so, either). Trion has plans for "a more creative content solution" for the botting issue that will come in the future.
Level 80 paladin solos some Mogu'shan Vaults bosses, gets Vengeance hotfixed
A great video is making the rounds right now of an exceptional player using some unintended consequences to solo multiple bosses in Mogu'shan Vaults -- and as a protection-specced paladin no less! He apparently downed Stone Guard, Feng, and Elegon before Blizzard caught wind of the escapade. You can see a video of the Elegon kill above. How he pulled this off was by taking advantage of a series of design choices that Blizzard made, combining them all into a hilarious example of the law of unintended consequences in action. To reach a decent item level, the paladin equipped various bind on equip rares that drop in Mists zones which all had a required character level of only 80. And because he was only level 80, he was avoiding the combat ratings drop-offs for levels 81 and 86 that a normal character wearing those pieces would be subjected too. This would allow him to get an insane amount of secondary stats like haste (I've seen that he had 95%!) and mastery (88%, apparently).
Blizzard to fix exploit with Diablo III's votekick system
Playing Diablo III in Hardcore mode is a harrowing experience. No matter how good you are as a player, there's always the real worry that one careless move will mean the end of a character you've worked hard to level. Unfortunately, sometimes that careless move is simply playing in a public game, as griefers have been exploiting the votekick system to cause players to die and lose everything through no fault of their own. As it currently stands, a player who has been kicked by popular vote will be rooted in place for 10 seconds while the character is ejected. Griefers have used this to kick players in the middle of monster-heavy rooms, resulting in 10 seconds of uninterrupted monster beatdowns with no chance of reprieve. So how to fix this? Well, Blizzard plans to remove the 10 second lockout in the near future to ensure that a kicked player can still move and respond rather than get pointlessly murdered. There's no word on whether this will be a hotfix or rolled into a larger patch, but it's definitely on the horizon. Until it goes live, though, you might not want to have your hardcore characters on a public game.
Patch 5.1 hotfixes for December 3, Valor drop amount increased
Another round of patch 5.1 hotfixes hit the ... Streets ... tonight. The amount of valor points dropped from raid bosses will increase from the current 25 points to 40 points. Noteworthy in this increase is a specific tweet from Ghostcrawler, clarifying earlier remarks: Correction: More Valor hotfix hasn't gone out tonight. It will get pushed with the next raid reset. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 4, 2012 This means that when the raids reset tomorrow (Tuesday), everyone will get the enjoy the higher valor drop rate. The changes are not taking place today, because as Ghostcrawler puts it: "There was some concern of causing ill will among people who had already finished raiding for the week." As far as why the change happened, Ghostcrawler says: @shadesogrey Sympathetic to the argument that 16 bosses is already a big time commitment. Different world from small tiers like Firelands. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) December 4, 2012 Warlocks, paladins, and monks also received minor changes. The full notes after the break.
Patch 5.0.5 hotfixes for November 20
A new batch of hotfixes has hit the servers, and several issues with LFR have been tweaked and adjusted. Several encounters have also been adjusted for difficulty level, which should be a relief to LFR players. In addition, there have been a few tweaks to world bosses, and one mob in particular is no longer able to become an actual mob of creatures. Alliance players, I'm sorry but Teng Applebloom has lost the secrets of cloning technology. In the Heart of Fear, the Raid Finder version of Grand Empress Shek'zeer has been adjusted to be a more appropriate difficulty level. Amber-shaper Un'sok has also been tweaked. The issue that sometimes caused Alani to despawn after being pulled with a Sky Crystal has been fixed. Read on for the full list of hotfixes.
Ink traders finally accepting new inks
If you're looking to get a Darkmoon Deck made before the end of the faire, you might be interested to know that despite a false start earlier this week, the Ink Traders and inscription vendors now accept trades of 10 Ink of Dreams for a Starlight Ink. Ink Vendors finally updated. Very sorry for the delay. - Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) October 12, 2012 The Darkmoon Faire is only around once a month, and the one on now is ending this Sunday, October 14th. Unless the Faire is going on, you can't trade, for example, a Crane Deck in for a Relic of Chi Ji. This expansion, unlike in others, Darkmoon Cards require an item that can only be made once a day by scribes, the Scroll of Wisdom. Scribes who have been hanging onto their Scrolls should probably look into making them into cards now that the inks can be gotten cheaply, since by the time the next Faire rolls around, there will be 3 more weeks worth of daily cooldowns waiting to be turned into cards. These trinkets range from pretty good to among the best in slot for most classes, so almost everyone can use one, and many people really want one. Additionally, since the Starlight Inks have been so expensive lately, the epic quality shoulder enchants have been quite expensive. Now that you can trade the much less expensive Ink of Dreams in for them, you should see the prices lower on the Greater Ox Horn Inscription, the Greater Crane Wing Inscription, the Greater Tiger Claw Inscription, and the Greater Tiger Fang Inscription. Maximize your profits with advice from Gold Capped. Want to know the very best ways to earn 10,000 gold? Top gold making strategies for auctioneers? How about how to reach 1 million gold -- or how one player got there and then gave it all away? Fox and Basil are taking your questions at fox@wowinsider.com and basil@wowinsider.com.
World of Warcraft exploiters wipe out entire cities
Imagine logging into your favorite MMO only to find that a previously populated capital city is a barren wasteland devoid of life. This actually happened yesterday to some denizens of World of Warcraft, as mischief-makers used an exploit to kill everyone -- human players and NPCs alike -- in the biggest cities. Stormwind and Orgrimmar were completely wiped out on several servers, with other towns reportedly coming under nefarious attacks. Blizzard leaped into action and quickly hotfixed the game, promising that the exploit cannot happen again. The studio said that it is taking this apocalypse action "very seriously" and has launched an investigation into it.
Incoming hotfix buffs JP gear, nerfs honor point gear
If you thought the item level of endgame PVE gear purchasable with justice points was a little low, Blizzard apparently agrees with you. Bashiok just let the official forums know that a hotfix is incoming, bumping the ilvl 450 PVE rares to 458. Additionally, the hotfix brings down the item level (and rarity color!) of the ilvl 464 epic PVP gear available for honor to 458 and rare. In conjunction with the hotfix removing the reputation requirements to access the JP gear, it should be considerably less of a hassle -- and involve a lot less PVPing -- to gear up for heroics. The downside is that the PVP gear you probably bought just to cheat the queueing system is a little worse. I can live with that. The full post from Blizzard is after the cut.
Skype to update Mac client to fix IM bug (Updated)
If you're a Skype user, then you probably ought to know about this: Skype 5.8 for Mac, as well as similar versions for Windows, Linux, and Windows Phone, has a bug that unintentionally shares instant messages with other contacts on a user's friend list. Skype describes the bug as follows: Based on recent Skype customer community posts and our own investigation over the past couple of days, we have identified a bug that we are working hard to fix. This issue occurs only when a user's Skype client crashes during a Skype IM session, which may in some cases result in the last IM entered or sent prior to the crash being delivered to a different IM contact after the Skype client is rebooted or logged in as a new user. Although we cannot determine precisely how many users may have been affected by this error, we believe the number is small given the very specific circumstances under which the error occurs. At Skype, our customer experience is paramount and we are working hard to release fixes for impacted clients within the next several days. The Skype clients impacted include: Skype 5.10 for Windows, Skype 5.8 for Mac, Skype 4.0 for Linux, Skype 1.2 for Windows Phone. We urge all Skype customers to download the latest client as soon as they are notified that any update, including this fix, is available. As of 2 PM GMT on July 17, 2012, hotfixes for Skype for Windows and Skype for Linux are available for download. Although there's no announcement of a hotfix for Skype for Mac so far, you may wish to "Check for Updates" to receive the update as soon as possible. I was able to get an update to version 5.8.0.945, although this page shows that the hotfix version will be 5.8.0.1207. Update: The hotfix is now available. Once again, using Check for Updates within the Skype for Mac app will locate and install the update, or you can download a completely new installation of Skyle 5.8.0.1207 here.
Recent Diablo 3 hotfixes address exploits, high-level item drop rates
Blizzard Entertainment has been keeping busy, tweaking a number of aspects of its best-selling loot-hunting game, Diablo 3.One of the hotfixes released today addresses an exploit used to circumvent the recent decreases in attack speed. Before the hotfix, players could "temporarily increase their attack speed or double-cast a skill" by repeatedly clicking the Town Portal option within the hot bar. A complete list of fixes can be found on the official game blog.In changes made yesterday, Blizzard once again increased high-level item drops in Acts III and IV of Hell difficulty and all four acts in Inferno. The breakdown of increases can be found after the break. Not found after the break: those hundred hours you've spent clicking through Sanctuary.
Breakfast Topic: How's the automatic removal of inactive GMs working out?
Back in patch 4.3, a feature was implemented that automatically offered guild leadership to another guildie if the GM didn't log in for 30 days. A few unscrupulous GMs have taken to logging in just before the 30 days are up in order to keep control, and then they disappear for another month. In April, Blizzard hotfixed the feature to extend the inactive time to 90 days before the GM spot would be offered to another guild member. Thus, evil GMs now have even more time in between needed logins. Are these players just allowing their guilds to be leveled up by others in order to turn around and sell them? Possibly. Of course, the automatic changing of leadership has its benefits as well. GMs may vanish for extremely good reasons, and this feature allows guilds to move on. Guildies are also protected from GMs who quit WoW without saying goodbye -- inconsiderate, but not evil. I made the stupid mistake of parking guild leadership on a barely used alt once. I don't remember my reasoning. Seriously, why would I do that? So guild leadership got offered up, even though my main character kept logging in. Is your GM taking advantage of the timing in a way that is detrimental to your guild? Or have you been in a guild where the leadership has been automatically taken from an absent GM? What were the results?
Should Blizzard leave heroic encounter difficulty alone?
When the Raid Finder was first introduced, I had high hopes for its impact on the game. While the main reason behind the implementation of this system was arguably to get as many players experiencing raid content as possible, at the time, I was more interested in the impact it would have on the progression races between all of the top guilds in the world. I have always had a great deal of admiration for players in these types of guilds and have watched intently during each new tier as they all vied for world firsts. I believed the Raid Finder could benefit this type of competition by preventing heroic encounters from being nerfed while the content was still current. Surely, I thought, if so many people are able to experience raiding like never before through this new tool, Blizzard would have no pressing reason to make heroic encounters any easier. Well, it seems I was wrong, for in the very next tier of content Blizzard released, we saw progressive nerfs to these difficult fights. Personally, I prefer to keep these encounters the way they are, at least until a new tier is released. Something just feels wrong to see the hardest fights available made easier through a series of hotfixes. Even with respect to my own guild's progression, having sweeping nerfs hit Firelands just as my guild was putting in some really good attempts on Ragnaros felt like Blizzard moved the finish line, taking what would have been a very gratifying kill and turning it into an accidental one-shot that contained none of the catharsis we had felt during previous boss kills. What do you think? With the Raid Finder now a reality and a new expansion looming on the horizon, do you think the difficulty of heroic raid encounters should be static, like those from tier 11, or should they be more flexible?
Patch 4.3.2 hotfixes for Feb. 2, 2012
Besides the highly publicized hotfix of the retribution paladin bug, we've got some other fixes that were announced tonight. Keep in mind that while most of fixes like this are usually live right away, some may require a restart or not be active immediately -- so your mileage may vary. Highlights include a fix to Mass Dispel and some Darkmoon Faire quick fixes. The full list of hotfixes as follows: Blizzard Entertainment -- Patch 4.3 Hotfixes February 2 General Mass Dispel should once again dispel up to 10 friendly or enemy targets. Resilience should now properly reduce the damage over time effects for targets affected by Mind Control. Dungeons and Raids Dragon Soul Lord Afrasastrasz no longer offers the option to disable the Power of the Aspects buff in Raid Finder mode. The Spine of Deathwing Corrupted Bloods should no longer maintain threat after reconstituting themselves from residue. Events Darkmoon Faire Soothsayer's Runes and A Treatise on Strategy should now drop from all appropriate Heroic and raid bosses. Murozond's Temporal Cache now has a chance to contain Monstrous Egg and A Treatise on Strategy. Quests and Creatures Players who inadvertently disconnect during Tailgunner! should now find themselves able to complete the quest. Baby Crocolisks have been given tiny teething rings, and Tiny Teeth! should no longer transfer to other players. Players should no longer encounter any invisible Young Crocolisks during the quest The Pit of Scales. Items Cunning of the Cruel will now trigger its Shadowbolt Volley approximately three times as often, but will deal approximately one third as much damage. This results in the tooltip for the item being incorrect, but should moderate its burst damage in PvP. source
