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More bugs than patches
By now you've heard of the Orc shoulder problem (and maybe you've even confronted Azeroth's Greatest Male Orc about it), but as MMO Champion shows, that was definitely not the only major bug that showed up in 2.1.3. There's a huge list of things going wrong-- Dwarf females' offhands are huge, Blood Elf males can walk through chairs, Cyclone can prevent players from getting their BG marks (!), and ghost wolves, when attacking, can now be seen carrying weapons. What happened?!The problem becomes even stranger when you consider the patch notes-- almost nothing got changed compared to previous patches. All we saw were a few graphical changes, an added interface option, and some high level raid tuning. As someone asked yesterday, how can all of this seemingly unrelated stuff be breaking? If all Blizzard is doing is updating the mail system, what does the size of shoulderpieces on male Orcs have to do with it at all?The answer is probably more complicated than we can know. As commenter Okoloth said yesterday, object-oriented programming (which Blizzard uses to code the game) is full of parent/child relationships, which means that a change in one class ("wearable items in the mail") can have strange effects all across the game ("Orc shoulders shrink"). And then there's the whole fact that even though the patch notes for 2.1.3 are small, that most likely doesn't mean Blizzard is slacking-- they could be implementing more subtle changes on the system (in preparation for future content that we don't know about yet), and those changes might be having an effect on the actual game we play.Of course, just because we aren't being told why these things are happening doesn't mean we should give Blizzard a pass on fixing them ASAP (in my opinion, they shouldn't wait until the next patch to fix my shoulder size, thank you). But just because seemingly unrelated bugs are popping up doesn't mean they don't know what they're doing.
Insect Wars is the bee's knees
We shooed Insect Wars (Konchuu Wars) away when the game's beetle-filled screenshots first flew into our periphery, believing the bug to be an uninspired pest. "Go away," we said, "and bother us no more." In our defense, language barriers kept us from understanding what the Success Corp. title was trying to communicate with its antennae and movement patterns. Having studied its habits, we found that the game isn't a Mushiking clone as we'd originally assumed, but a tactical RPG where you command an army of customizable, mechanized insects. Our mouths were agape, monocles falling from our faces when the truth was revealed. Below is a sampling of Insect Wars' creepy crawlers: a rifle-mounted praying mantis with buzzsaws -- my god, buzzsaws! -- for arms a lightning bug that terrorizes foes with its beam cannon tail a heavily-armored, treaded snail (pictured above) which acts as a transport for other units while healing them Not since Puzzle Quest have our loins ached for such a game. Insect Wars swarms into Japanese stores this August 2nd. Head past the post break for a minute-long trailer.
PvP gem hotfix needs a hotfix
For PvPers out there interested in the Mystic Dawnstone pattern from Halaa, a hotfix was applied yesterday which made it available at vendors in the city. Or, well, should have made it available. Reports from the European forums today suggest that the hotfix needs a hotfix, because the pattern still isn't spawning properly on EU realms. (No reports from US realms -- which I presume means everything is working as intended on US servers. But let us know if it's not!) Stay patient, everyone -- Blizzard is working on a fix.[via MMO Champion]
Al'ar: Finally, a use for troll priests
There's been a controversy brewing on my realm forums over whether something is an exploit, a bug, or merely a creative use of game mechanics, so I thought I'd take the question (and the strategy) to the wider world of WoW blogs. Basically, Horde guilds across several realms have discovered that by using a troll priest on the Al'ar fight, you can take off 20 percent of the boss's health in Phase 2. It appears that the troll priest racial ability Hex of Weakness, which decreases healing done to the target by 20 percent, makes Al'ar resurrect from his Phase One "death" with only 80 percent of his maximum health. There have been a few posts about this on Raids and Dungeons and Bosskillers, but it doesn't appear that it's a widely used strategy. Vendetta, the guild on my realm that used this strategy for their first kill, said they don't believe it's an exploit, and that they felt they could kill Al'ar without using it. "Until Blizzard says otherwise on Raids and Dungeons or contacts us in-game, it's working as intended because the Rising Phoenix ability is a heal effect," a guild member said. Other people have compared it to using Divine Intervention on Razorgore, which was deemed an exploit, and the bugs that caused Vashj to lose 20 percent of her health before 2.1, which were not. So, raiders of the world, what would you call this? A clever use of Hex of Weakness as intended, or an exploitation of a bug that classifies Rising Phoenix as healing? And, more generally, if a guild takes advantage of an odd mechanism in a fight that hasn't been classified as a bug by Blizzard, is it exploiting or just being smart?
Submit Your iPhone Bugs to Apple
There are bound to be bugs in any first generation product, and unfortunately this has been especially true for new Apple devices. It's only been a day since the iPhone went on sale, but already we're hearing of some nagging issues. But fear not, for you the user have the power to change the iPhone world for the better. If you already have an ADC account, you're all ready to start submitting bugs to the iPhone team. Head on over to bugreport.apple.com and go crazy– just make sure you submit responsibly and stick to the official description format, because someone has to read through each bug you submit.
Patch 2.1.3 PTRs up
Patch 2.1.3, a small bug-fix release, is apparently now up on the public test realms. Here are the patch notes: World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.3 General • The Warlock spell Incinerate has had the performance of its graphical spell effect improved. • The "show launcher" option has changed so that it now defaults to "on". Players will now see the launcher when running WOW by default. User Interface • Improved the performance of conditional macros, slightly increasing the framerate. • Fixed a crash triggered by many unit frame AddOns. Bug Fixes • Fixed an issue with the movement of Archimonde's Doomfire. • Fixed the wand missile art on most Shadow based wands to show the correct graphical effect. • Infinity Blades will now despawn properly when the encounter with Kael'thas resets after a wipe. • Gan'arg Underlings and Felhound Defenders are now properly classified as demons. I was getting a few crashes in recent releases; perhaps the unit frame crash is the culprit. Also...um...no, nothing else in this patch is going to affect me at all.
The Light and How to Swing It: Bugs or Features?
Every other week, Robin Torres investigates Paladin issues, interviews experienced Paladins and reports her findings in The Light and How to Swing It, formerly The Paladin Report.I used to work in Software Development and later tested Video Games. A prevailing joke in all software companies is "It's not a bug, it's a feature." Today, we are looking at some issues that Paladins have encountered and determining if they are Bugs or Features.Purging Divine Shield: Bug or Feature?Biggillard complained in the forums that his pally's Divine Shield was purged by a Shaman in PvP. He assumed it was a Nerf. Others who complained about the same problem thought it was a Bug. But Byzantine got it right. According to Hortus:Because of the Client-Server nature of the game it is possible for two mutually exclusive actions to occur at the same time resulting in some unexpected behavior. Although efforts are made to minimize these situations they will still happen on occasion.So, if your Divine Shield gets dispelled as soon as it is cast, rest assured that this is not a Nerf or a Bug, but in fact a Feature of WoW's Client-Server architecture.
Conjecture Countdown: 16 days to go
Even with a diminished E3, there's no controlling the wave of rumors that hit the Internet every year before the show. Why fight it? From now until E3 hits, we'll be posting one piece of wild speculation every day. Some may be patently ridiculous, and others just might turn out to be true. Even some of the ridiculous ones might turn out to be true! Rest assured, everything will be totally made-up and unfounded. Except, of course, when we speak about all the ass Reggie is going to kick. That part? Totally true. Rumor: Nintensects! Use your virtual insect pins to secure your virtual collection! Gotta catch 'em all!
Blue Notes: PvP trinkets, Mage S2 armor, Focused Mind
For a short time, the PvP trinkets were able to dispel the Warlock DoT Unstable Affliction. This was quickly hotfixed:A hot fix has been applied. Unstable affliction cannot be removed by using Horde or Alliance PvP medallion trinkets. Shamans were in a bit of a tizzy over their talent Focused Mind, which reduces the duration of silence or interrupt effects used against the Shaman by 15% (not to be confused with the Priest talent Focused Mind, which reduces the mana cost of several Shadow spells). The problem is that the talent doesn't stack with other effects that provide the same bonus, which now include the Paladin Improved Concentration Aura (30%) as well as the Pendant of the Lost Ages from Serpentshrine Cavern (20%). Blizzard is looking into it:Hi there, sorry for the late answer, I confirm you that Focus Mind is being reviewed.And the Mage Arena Season 2 armor, which famously has less Intellect on it than their Season 1 armor, is also getting investigated:We've been able to identify what went wrong and the stats for the Mage Season 2 items are being corrected in a future patch.
More drakes! OK, stop drakes.
We're now in Arena season 2, and in theory, those in the top 0.5% of their battlegroups should have received the 310% speed armored nether drakes as a reward for their prowess. However, there seem to have been some...issues with their distribution. According to this thread and the above picture (thanks for the tip, Robodex), the drakes have been making their way to well over the mandated 0.5% on the European realms. Whereas according to several threads in the US forums (still down), people that know they should have received their drakes are not getting them. Blizzard's looking into it:We're currently in the process of investigating instances where the end-of-season rewards may not have been provided to teams that should have received them. As we're still in the process of collecting information and investigating we're unable to comment at this time on what exactly occurred, or if there was indeed an error in how the rewards were provided based on the stated criteria. We'll provide more information as soon as we have a clear and final idea of what the issue is and how it will be addressed if necessary.Do you have an armored nether drake? Are you supposed to?
Windows Safari bugs and exploits "popping up like hotcakes"
Safari has been available on Windows for less than 24 hours, and already the hacker community is apparently tearing it to shreds. The Errata Security blog has been keeping track of a few announcements across the web, including a fully disclosed 0-day exploit that Thor Larholm apparently found yesterday within two hours of the software's release (and says more are "popping up like hotcakes"). And just to be clear on the use of 0-day exploit: it means Larholm found a way to execute any piece of code on a Windows box when Safari visits a properly crafted site to successfully exploit a vulnerability on the day the vulnerability was found. What will this mean for Safari's reputation and traction in the Windows market? I'm not really sure yet. There are any number of reasons behind Apple's decision to develop Safari for Windows, and even though a healthy pool of tech-savvy users are already tinkering with it (for better and for worse), the real results will be seen once it reaches much more of the mainstream market. One of the primary reasons (besides making it easy for Windows-based web developers to write web apps for the iPhone, of course) for SafariWin, as some are calling it, is because that tiny little search box in the upper right of a browser has become quite a revenue generator if the browser does decently in the market. When users search through that box, the browser manufacturer makes some money off the resulting ads that are displayed along with that search. Firefox reportedly made around $50-75 million last year for Mozilla because of that little search box (not bad for an open source product, eh?). You don't have to be Internet Explorer to bring home at least some bacon for your company; heck, I would bet that Opera is still in business largely due to their search box as well.But none of these reasons will mean anything, and Safari won't generate nearly as much revenue for Apple, if it doesn't gain at least a respectable share of Windows users who are actually firing up Safari to search, browse the web, view and click on ads. But If Safari keeps getting torn apart like this within 24 hours of a release, it could gain a terrible reputation before it ever hits the radar of a crucial portion of the general public. In this new web browsing and computing world where security is everything when you talk about a browser, Safari needs to plug these exploit holes ASAP if it plans to get any farther than the fleeting front page of digg.
PTR patch 2.1.2 tonight
2.1 is getting quite a few sub-patches, it seems. The public test realms are scheduled come up "late tonight" in order to test patch 2.1.2, which will probably correspond with the beginning of Arena Season 2 (or at least that's my guess). It mostly looks like a bug fix patch, but there are a few more substantive changes: PvP Trinkets: Insignia of the Alliance, Insignia of the Horde, Medallion of the Alliance, and Medallion of the Horde have all been redesigned. The trinkets for all classes now have the same effect: Dispels all movement impairing effects and all effects which cause loss of control of your character. [Rogue] Sword Specialization: The change to Sword Specialization making its extra attacks appear in yellow has been reverted. Extra attacks will appear in white and act like any auto-attack. They will no longer reset the swing time of your weapon. [2.1 changed Rogue Sword Spec to do yellow damage and not reset swing timers. This reverts the "yellow damage" part.] [Warrior] Sword Specialization: The change to Sword Specialization making its extra attacks appear in yellow has been reverted. Extra attacks will appear in white and act like any auto-attack. They will no longer reset the swing time of your weapon. Rage awarded will be calculated by damage dealt as with any normal auto-attack. [See above] [Shaman] Focused Mind: This ability has been changed to reduce the duration of silence and interrupt effects, rather than increase resistance to them. [Paladin] Improved Concentration Aura: This ability now correctly reduces the duration of silence and interrupt effects by 30%. In addition, the reduction in duration of silence and interrupt effects from this ability will no longer stack with other such reductions. [CoT: Hyjal] The number of preliminary waves before each boss in the Caverns of Time: Battle for Mount Hyjal event has been reduced from 12 to 8, and some of the larger waves have fewer creatures than before. Heroic Sethekk Halls was also nerfed, especially the Anzu fight. Full patch notes are after the cut.
Gruul's hurtful strike bugged again
At least for all the guilds I've talked to, Gruul's hurtful strike is now targeting the third person on the aggro list instead of the second. This bug is probably related to this morning's patch, because HS has been messed up with other patches before. A possible solution to this problem is to keep your guild's best rogue second on the aggro list, and the actual offtank third. With hunters shooting Misdirections at the rogue and everyone keeping a close eye on threat meters, you should be able to do it. (Thanks to Schleeze of Magtheridon for the solution.)
Patch Notes: 2.1.1
Not *quite* as short as last time, but 2.1.1 is not a major patch by anyone's reckoning (unless, you know, you're all about "The Fel and the Furious"). Clocking in at 1.84MB on the PC and 3.45 MB on the Mac, here's what you'll be getting:World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.1Bugs Players will now be able to properly destory the infernals in the quest, "The Fel and the Furious" Gladiator's Plate Legguards: Fixed a graphical display error. Fixed a bug that caused some systems to see terrain holes appear in the distance. Stackable items retrieved from mail will no longer automatically stack in your inventory. This has been disabled pending a future patch fix. Players will no longer see the flickering terrain issues that were introduced with 2.1.0 when the LOD system is enabled. [Thanks to Kompost for the tip!]
Blizz responds to Hyjal bugs
Recently, the few guilds who have been raiding Mount Hyjal have noticed some issues. Curse had their Archimonde repeatedly despawn, and other guilds have been stuck in a quandrary after NPCs killed bosses while the rest of the group was dead. Blizzard lead encounter designer Daelo posted on the US Raids and Dungeons forums about these issues and their fixes. Full quote after the cut.
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.
The DS gets buggy
Gamecock Media, the new publisher formed by former Gathering of Developers executives, have announced a new DS game from Crackpot Entertainment: a "third-person shooter/detective game" called Insecticide. The game, also coming out for PC, stars Detectives Chrys Liszt and Roachy Caruthers as they attempt to solve a murder at the Nectarola soft drink company. In addition to shooting bad guys, players will have to investigate environments and clues using the stylus.We are loving the concept art. It's got a great detective-thriller atmosphere combined with Psychonauts styling, which is very appropriate for what looks and sounds a whole lot like an adventure game. Obviously this art is a little too hi-res for DS, but we hope they can pull off a similar look.%Gallery-3405%[Via press release]
Gruul's Lair tweaks
Gruul's Lair is the first 25-man raid many BC raiders may experience. My guild hasn't gotten a crack at it yet, since we can't seem to get 25 raiders together at a time, but I'm still hopeful. The raid is relatively short, consisting of two bosses (Gruul the Dragonkiller and High King Maulgar) plus relatively small amounts of trash. It doesn't require any attunement, drops (among other things) the T4 legs and shoulders, and is required for Serpentshrine Cavern attunement.Both bosses in the raid have had adjustments in the past couple of days. Gruul was using his Hurtful Strike ability on both the second and the third players on his aggro list; this was a bug introduced in 2.1 and has been hotfixed such that only the second player on the aggro list gets struck, as intended. Maulgar was slightly nerfed in 2.1 as an intended change; he now attacks faster, but for less damage at a time. His overall DPS should stay the same. This change ought to result in less spiky deaths, and will be "mostly noticed by under geared raids."
Rolling restarts to fix 2.1.0 error [Updated]
If you were attempting to play this evening, you may notice your realm vanishing out from under you. That's because Blizzard has been in the process of rolling restarts to fix a serious issue with today's 2.1.0 patch. As of 3:45 PM PST (that's 6:45 PM to you east coasters), restarts began, with an anticipated downtime of 15 minutes for each realm. The problem that caused all this hubbub? The official forums are a bit flakey this evening, but reader SirCasey reports that stacked items taken from mailboxes are vanishing from players inventories -- and I don't know about you, but I can see this resulting in hundreds of gold lost. What to do if you've already lost something? Blizzard poster Hortus says talk to a GM, but makes no promises that they'll be able to restore items.Update: CM Drysc reports at 6:30 PM PDT (9:30 PM EST) that complications from the earlier fix has prevented some realms from coming back online. However, they're working on bringing the remaining realms back online and plan to have all realms back online by 9:00 PM PDT (12:00 AM EST).
SNK fixing Card Fighters DS
Luckily for people hoping to get their New Game+ on in SNK vs. Capcom Card Fighters DS, SNK is aware of the game-breaking bug. Unfortunately, they'll have to wait more than six weeks to get their hands on a repaired game.SNK president Ben Herman released a statement on SNK Playmore's official message board stating that they have ordered new cartridges from Nintendo, which will take six weeks to receive. At that point, SNK will issue instructions for getting your game switched out for a corrected one. Be patient! Don't return the game to the store yet, because the replacement copy will have the same issue.Anyone out there playing Card Fighters DS? We wonder how many people this issue affects. That's a nice way of saying we wonder how many people bought this game.
