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PTRs down for new build
About three hours ago, Hortus announced that the patch 2.4 PTR would be going down for four to six hours to apply a new build. So they ought to be down for another one to three hours. In the mean time, we all get a break from beta-testing the patch to get some food, watch a movie, do some homework or -- let's be honest -- gripe about the patch.What will this new build contain? Well, since they haven't updated the PTR patch notes yet, we can't be certain, but it would be reasonable to guess they'd be fixing two outstanding bugs: huge stats and huge NPCs. Other than that, we'll have to wait and see what Blizz brings us.
MythBuster Hortus says "No PTR caused lag"
When I woke up this morning I was greeted to two things: a fist full of WoW news to report on, and my daily dose of MythBusters. Interestingly I found that our chummy Blizzard PTR forum poster Hortus has taken up dispelling some myths of his own. This myth is so epic that I think it would make for a good computer nerd edition of MythBusters.The myth is this: every time the PTR goes up, my server slows down. I play mainly in two different servers, Anvilmar and Eldre'Thalas. I've heard it claimed often enough on both servers that the PTR seriously effects stability. Most people claim this is because the PTR and the server hardware are on the same "rack." Most servers are just a small gray box with a few blinking lights on the front of them, and lots of connection ports in the back. When making a server farm, like Blizzard has scattered throughout the country, they physically put the servers in clusters, called racks (no, not that kind of cluster, well kind of, but that's beside the point).
Patch 2.4 known issues
More 2.4 news for all of you to consume.Our friendly master of the PTR forums, Hortus, has posted a list of known issues on the PTR. I'm sure the list will grow longer, but in brief here are some major points: Watch out for corruption of your World of Warcraft files if you use a Mac! This is a major issue for some people. Indeed yours truly would have been up the creek if I used my Mac's firewall feature (I've got a Linux firewall instead). All you Mac users: please, be careful! When you rename a Hunter pet you get disconnected. The Hunter ability Auto Shot can get locked out if you use an instant ability after Steady Shot. Looting Bind on Pickup items isn't working right. So watch out if you're starting to raid. Shattrath wasn't copied over correctly. Many NPCs (besides those listed in the blue post) are missing. Blues also have posted an update of sorts on the character copy queues. They've said we're all going to have to wait a couple days to get our characters copied over if they're not already. At least some news is better than no news.WoW Insider is your source for all the patch 2.4 news! Check back with us often for the latest.
Violet Eye ring exchanges at exalted only
I have good news and bad news, good readers. The good news is that if you are at exalted level with the Violet Eye, you can, in fact, exchange your reputation reward ring from Karazhan for a ring of a different type (if you are DPS, you can get a healing ring, and vice versa)-- all you have to do is destroy your ring, and then you'll be able to redo the quest to get a different ring, according to Hortus on the forums.However, I thought that the other question in the thread, the one about whether it works for people who are not exalted, was an excellent one. And since my Shaman is not actually exalted yet, I figured I'd get some hands-on experience and find out for you, dear readers, whether the Violet Eye would exchange your ring at a level below exalted. So, as you can see in the shot above, I destroyed my revered ring (I am not kidding-- I really did), and asked the quest giver for another one.Unfortunately, the bad news is that it does not work. I didn't actually get another ring. And apparently I'll have to work up to exalted to get my ring back. The things I do for you, my readers. The things I do.
You say Mana. I say Manna.
The Ritual of Refreshment is available for Mages today, among other things. The Ritual of Refreshment produces stacks of Conjured Manna Biscuits just as the Soulwell produces healthstones for others to take as needed.Conjured Manna Biscuits or Mana Biscuits? Which is right? Flaye reported it as a text bug, but Hortus confirms that Manna is the correct spelling.Manna: Magical food. You may have heard it in a non-game context as "manna from heaven".Mana: The resource pool that is used for casting spells in WoW.So Manna, in this context, replenishes Mana (and Health). It may have been a better idea to call the food that restores both health and mana something like ambrosia or chocolate chip pancakes or something less confusing.What do you think would have been a better name for the Conjured Manna Biscuits?Mmmmm. Chocolate chip pancakes. Now I'm hungry. /afk
2.2.3 on the PTR
Looks like we got a little ahead of ourselves. Before we see 2.3 on the PTRs, we're going to see 2.2.3, a small patch that is supposed to bugfix a lot of the sound problems that players are having. Patch notes are complete below, and I'm betting that if the Kael event isn't fixed yet, a fix for that will also be included in this patch. We can only hope that we'll see a small PTR appearance for 2.2.3 (so test it extra fast, folks), and then the gloriousness of 2.3 will grace us with its presence.PTR 2.2.3 Patch Notes Clients utilizing OpenGL video modes will no longer experience graphical anomalies and missing textures after minimizing/maximizing the window. Fixed an issue that caused Fel Eye Stalks during the Legion Ring event to not despawn when the event is completed. Fixed an issue where zoning after mounting and summoning a pet was disconnecting players. Fixed an issue where the Shift key would get stuck in game. Using a /equip macro while affected by certain crowd control spells will no longer cause the items in the macro to be stuck in your inventory. Continued after the jump...[ via MMO Champion ]
Not a bug: Guild UI errors with over 500 members
Most guilds don't have this problem, but if you have a guild with over 500 members, the guild UI reports incorrect information. The member status is no longer accurate with over 500 members and not all of the members appear on the roster.Blue poster Hortus says this is not a bug: Guilds are functionally limited to 500 members. There is no cap on the number of members in a guild so you can invite more than 500 but the UI will not support it. This may change in the future but it is not considered a bug. I briefly had a character on Dark Iron in the Knights of Arcadia, the first of the Penny Arcade guilds <insert fangirl noise here>. The UI issues over 500 members got so unwieldy that they split it into multiple guilds.Do you think WoW should support the functionality of guilds over 500 members? Or do you think Blizzard's resources are better spent elsewhere?
Things to know about Patch 2.2
As is common with any major patch day, there are a few issues. Here are a few from the forums and what I've experienced:Instance servers are crashing on many realms. From AV to Tempest Keep, players are having a hard time completing instances. Raiding is particularly hard hit.It's OK to delete the Auction Sale Pending notice from your mailbox. You will still get your cash when the new 1 hour delay is up. And, yes, everyone else seems to hate the new delay, too.Windows resolutions and UI Scaling have been tweaked. It's not your imagination and it also, according to Hortus, isn't a bug. Changing resolutions of the same aspect ratio will only give you a higher or lower image quality, but otherwise your view will not change. Windows are automatically resized to maintain aspect ratios and to reduce issues with stretching and distortion. If you aren't happy with the new size of your UI, turn on UI Scaling in the Video menu and adjust it accordingly.Hopefully the instance servers will have been fixed by the time the patch is live in Europe. Sometimes it's better not being first.I also recommend checking out the undocumented patch notes.
New patch coming to the PTRs and it's not what you think
Patch 2.2.2 is coming to the Public Test Realm later today according to Hortus. Instead of Zul'Aman or more Voice Chat testing, Blizzard is putting their October Holiday content up. The first event, Brewfest, is a new holiday for Azeroth. Early reports hint at attack kegs, signalling Dark Iron dwarves, racing rams, and even sausage eating. Sounds suspiciously like the annual German event, Oktoberfest.After Brewfest, Blizzard will test the Hallows End festivities. Considering this long held event is on the Test server hints that Blizzard may have some new tricks or treats in store for us. Mountable flying brooms have already been spotted in the Test files. Hallows End is scheduled to start October 18th on the Live servers.
Patch 2.2 may take "weeks" longer
MMO Champion's about right-- patch 2.2 is likely not coming for a matter of weeks. Since background downloading started a little while ago, we all figured this Tuesday or next was looking pretty good for a patch update, but Hortus on the forums alludes to new PTR patches "several times in the upcoming weeks," which is a good indication that we've got a while to go on the PTR.It doesn't necessarily mean that we're looking at a November patch-- it could be that the PTR updates are for 2.3, or that 2.2 will drop with hotfixes coming later, or that Hortus just doesn't have the information from the devs right. But take a deep breath-- even if it takes a few more weeks for a new patch, odds are we'd all rather have it "right" than "right now."And Boubouille says that if it takes this long for 2.2, he doesn't see how they'll release the expansion by next January, which is just plain laughable. Sorry Bou, we love you and all, but WotLK isn't dropping anytime before July 2008, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if we didn't see it until early 2009. It's not that we won't have content until then-- Zul'Aman is coming, and a new arena season will show up before then (maybe even two), as well as guild banks, a new CoT instance, and of course the Sunwell. But if you're still thinking we'll see Arthas as soon as January, time to stop holding your breath.
PTR Notes: Kill command bugged
This is a weird, weird bug. Over on the PTRs, Tig has found that every time he tells his pet to drop the Kill Command, the mob attacked also executes the spell on its target. For example, if Tig is shooting a murloc, and his pet Ganjii is in melee with that murloc, Ganjii's Kill Command will attack the murloc, and then the murloc will somehow also drop a Kill Command attack on its target (in this case Ganjii).That's a big bug, because if you move it to, say, a boss, a Hunter could drop the Kill Command on the boss while the main tank's health is low, which would cause the boss to instantly attack the main tank, in effect wiping the raid. Not cool.Hortus wonders if it's just against specific mobs, but that's the last we hear of Blue-- there's no confirmation that it's a known bug and that they're planning a fix. Of course, it is the test realm, so let's not get too excited-- chances are that by the time this big patch reaches the live servers, this won't still be happening. But if you happen to be hitting the Kill Command with your pet on the test realms, watch out for that extra attack.Thanks, Colin!
Voice chat coming soon to the PTRs
We missed it on Friday afternoon, but apparently voice chat is coming in 2.2. Previously, we'd heard that Zul'Aman and guild banks weren't showing up until 2.3, but there wasn't official word on when voice chat was arriving. PTR players have reported seeing a voicechat interface, but of course it hasn't been hooked up to any code yet.But Hortus now says we'll be seeing voice chat ingame sooner than we thought-- it will be coming soon to a PTR near you, and pending testing, should go live with 2.2. Wow. Blizzard must have done a lot of work on that behind the scenes, assuming that it is what they promise: a fully featured builtin voice chat client. Think it's coincidence that there have been a few sound bugs on the test realms lately?Which means that at some point we'll have to ask this question: What will happen to Teamspeak and Ventrilo? There's a nice bit of industry there-- players pay for servers all over the place, and while each server is pretty cheap, altogether they add up to a nice chunk of change, I'm sure. My guess is that TS and Vent aren't going anywhere (because players are so used to them, and not just in WoW), but until we see what kind of interface Blizzard has created, we won't know if they're worth leaving or not. Seeing as it's the PTRs, we should get a chance to play with it soon. [ via WorldofWar.net ]
Known 2.1 issues (and a few more besides)
The realms are down this morning for "scheduled maintenance," and in the meantime, here's a list of what's wrong (and hopefully what's being fixed right now). Blizz QA guy Hortus has posted a list of known issues in 2.1, and I've included it in full after the break.Most of these are pretty inconsequential and/or already known, but a few of them might cause confusion (I had the "grayed out" icon thing happen to me just last night-- the spell looked like it was unavailable, but I could still use it). They all seem easy enough to fix, and so hopefully when the realms go back up today, we won't see them again.Strangely enough, there's no mention of the Hunter bug/feature at all, so Blizzard still hasn't confirmed that one officially (or maybe hunters liked using it so much they just didn't want to report it). And though Neth has confirmed the Spellthread nerf as a bug, it's not on this list either. I guess we'll have to see what drops this morning-- we could get a small post-2.1 patch, or maybe we'll have to wait for further hotfixes to see any of these bugs squashed.
More on 1.12.1 mounts
Since the mount changes coming in the next patch were announced earlier this week, players have had tons of questions about how the new mounts will be bought and used. I'm sure you know by now, if you've hit level 40, that buying the riding skill for mounts is 20g, normal mounts are 80g, and epic mounts are 900g. But in the next patch, there will be two levels of riding skills, a lower level (75 skill) for 90g, and a higher level (150 skill) for 900g (take a guess which kind of mount will probably require 300 skill...). Because the skills price will grow, the mount price itself will drop-- only 10g for each normal mount, and 100g for each epic mount. The overall price hasn't changed much, but the skill is much more expensive, while the mounts are cheaper.First, of course, everyone wants to find out what happens to the mounts they have now. Hortus tells us, thank goodness, that if you have a mount now, you will have the appropriate skill to ride it when the patch hits. Paladins and Warlocks will get both their mounts and the required skill from their quests. If you have a PVP or AV mount, you will be given the 150 riding skill just like everyone else. All mounts will be BOP after the patch, so if you're holding a mount for someone else, pass it off soon. And finally, due to the new mount prices, I figured it would be lots easier to get lots of mounts. It will, with the faction, but to get other factions' mounts, says Hortus, you'll still need exalted with the other faction. So there's still a good amount of grinding in there if you have a horse and want a tiger (or an elekk...).Finally, we here at WoW Insider know exactly what your real question is: "How can I do it the cheapest way possible?!" Things are still open to change (of course), but the cheapest way to get a mount and skill seems to be this: If you don't have the money (or level) for an epic mount, buy a skill now for only 20g, and when the patch hits, you'll be given 75 skill along with everyone else, and will be able to buy a normal mount for 10g, giving you a mount and skill for only 30g (normally 100g after the update). But if you have the money for an epic mount, buy one of those for 900g, and when the patch comes, you'll be given a riding skill of 150 (because you have a mount in your possession), and you'll already have the epic to go with it. In that scenario, you're only saving 100g, but as anyone saving for their first mount will tell you, 100g is plenty of money.Update: A previous version of this post listed the wrong patch for the mounts. Thanks for the comments.
