Category: World of Warcraft

I have been having this awful problem with choppy frame rates in World of Warcraft instances. Not anywhere else, just instances.

After removing all of my interface add-ons, I noticed the choppiness was gone. Adding them back in one at a time narrowed it down to one called “Gatherer“. That one tracks potential herb and mining resource spots for me. I never really relied on it so I took it off for good. I have read the newer versions don’t have the problem, but I really don’t care at this point. I’m just happy I can go into an instance again and move freely. Woohoo!

I came across this thread on the WoW forums today and thought it interesting how quickly people jump on a bandwagon with no facts to back it up.

It starts with:

Blizzard saw fit to completely remove the Doomguards purpose for higher end raiding – Cripple no longer works on bosses (which it did before).

And then the others join in:

All of that gets blown away by a nerf which isn’t even listed. Fantastic.

Why give classes abilities if you’re going to negate them in the content you really need them for?

yay, I LOVE it when Blizzard lies, (o w wont make anymore changes without telling you) and goes and nerfs ONCE more, the class thats been nerfed like 5 times since release, thats already broken to an extreme….

The thing that bugs me about this nerf, is just the sheer magnitude of it. A small decrease in imp health? Ok fine. Seduce breaking earlier in pvp? Sure to that as well, not a game breaking deal. The warlocks best debuff being nuked and obliterated without so much as a mention? On an entirely different tier of severity.

Why do I pay you? I am confused as to why you take my money. Is it to provide a game in which I enjoy, or a game in which aggrivates me to death upon hearing about the not so elusive stealth nerfs occuring with no prior notification.

Finally a dev responds:

I saw this thread and found it somewhat surprising. No one had made any changes to the Doomguard or to any of the Molten Core bosses on the live servers. So Daelo and I logged into Kilrogg and tested out the Doomguard on some of the Molten Core bosses and cripple stuck to them. We then came back to this thread and noticed that Protous (the original poster) was on Archimonde. In the name of being diligent, we logged on to Archimonde and conducted a new test. Once again, Cripple stuck on the bosses.

Could you please provide more information than, �Blizzard saw fit to completely remove the Doomguards purpose for higher end raiding – Cripple no longer works on bosses�? I�m more than happy to make sure nothing got nerfed but you�ve got to try to work with us a little bit. Which boss did you fight that was immune?

As a side note, the Doomguard�s cripple is not intended to work on every boss in the game. While we find it an interesting mechanic for some encounters, we don�t want Warlocks using this on every boss in the game. Some bosses WILL be immune to the spell. But nothing should have changed overnight. No �stealth� nerf was ever planned.

I just love it when someone has one thing happen in a game with random numbers deciding gameplay and they automatically assume it was a stealth nerf without doing any testing. And then other people jump right along with them. At least there were a few logical responses in there by people with functioning brain cells.

The dev response was a beautiful piece of communication and customer service. Bravo!

While rare (in my experience), I have occasionally encountered some odd problems while playing World of Warcraft. Last night was one of those times.

A friend of mine asked if I wanted to run through Shadowfang Keep to try to get my Rogue one of the Meteor Shard daggers that drop at the end on occasion. I had nothing going on so I decided it would be fun. I was in the Crossroads and had a bit of travel time ahead of me. I needed to take a flight to Orgrimmar then run to the Zeppelin. The Zep would take me to the Undercity where I could catch a flight to the Sepulcher. From there I had to run on foot to the Shadowfang Keep (SFK) entrance.

While I was doing that, my friend decided to enter SFK and start clearing out the place. As I got closer, we made a group. This was a mistake. We may have avoided these problems if we had formed a group before he went in, but we have never had a problem adding someone into a group for an instance before so we thought nothing of it. Until… I ran through the entrance to SFK.

After zoning (it is an instance so you zone into your own unique version of the area) I was attacked full force and had to run back out. He asked me where I was and I told him I was outside because a bunch of mobs attacked me at the entrance. He said he would come back and clean up, assuming there had been a respawn. He got back and ran outside to meet me. We went back in and I got the wonderful “this is not your instance please leave or die kthxbye” message. Went back out.

Then we went through various stages of grouping, ungrouping, making a raid, abandoned the raid, etc. Nothing helped. He decided he would recall to Undercity and then run back and see if zoning helped. When he got back, he could not enter the instance at all. He would just stand there in the zone area and nothing would happen. I could still run into it (and get attacked).

We decided to relog. Nothing changed. We filed a request for help and then waited. While we waited we did a little roleplay. “Don’t enter the swirling portal, it’s evil!” “EEEEVvvviilll!” “Do not taunt happy fun portal!”Of course many people did enter the portal with no problems.

After a while (of no help from our request), my friend decided to charge into the portal one last time and he got in! So I followed and what do you know “leave or DIE!” pops on my screen again. This time we both leave, drop the group, reform the group and go back in. No warning. Huh. So we proceed to do the whole instance.

At the end, the dude that drops the dagger on occasion dropped a robe.

We have to go back now…

The other day (playing World of Warcraft) I was doing some quests around Tarren Mill when a Night Elf Rogue, level listed as ?? so they had to be quite a bit higher than me, wandered in and started killing some of the local level 50 Deathguards. They had no problem with them at all so I am guessing they were level 60. This is on a PvE server so I was not worried for my safety.

I watched this Rogue for a few minutes and eventually a small crowd gathered. Soon one of the higher level Horde players attacked the Night Elf. The beatdown commenced as the whole crowd joined in. I tossed out four Frost Shocks to keep them from running away and eventually they lost the battle with us. Was quite suprised I was able to land them at all.

I reflected back on my PvP experiences in WoW and I realized I am a sort of ganker. I only participate in PvP when I am rather sure I’ll win.

For example, I was hunting with my brother and we came across an Alliance player equal to our level. They appeared to be solo while hunting some creatures and we noted they had been PvP enabled. We decided it would be prudent to remove them from the area and we did so. I felt bad some as it did not feel honorable but my brother pointed out that they *were* flagged, so it is their fault not ours.

Most every other PvP situation I have been in is when the numbers are on my side. A level 60 might be killing NPCs in the Crossroads and eventually a crowd hunts them down. I usually will cast something like Earth Shock (interrupt casting) if they are a caster or Frost Shock to keep them from running away.

In fact, I don’t normally accept duals either. Certainly not when every single time I have been challenged to a dual I was in the middle of something else. Doesn’t anyone bother to ask any more? What’s wrong with a little /tell? I have been asked to sign guild charters with no conversation. I have been asked to join a group with no conversation. Hardly anyone bothers to ask if I would be interested in helping them do something. What’s up with that?

Sorry, went off on a tangent there.

To sum up, I feel like a ganker.

On another note, my Shaman reached level 27 last night. Now we are cooking with gas.

New patch notes went up over on the WoW site. Only one of them affects me in any way and it’s a good way.

Fixed a bug that was causing the game to freeze when scrolling through auctions in the Auction House.

Thanks for that one.

As I was drifting to sleep, my thoughts turned to my WoW session from earlier. I found a few things interesting:

1. I don’t like to solo, I hate to solo. If I had my way I would always group up with someone I know. I solo because of my schedule and the fact that everyone I know that plays, outlevels me by a large margin. Unless the game has a productive way to group up, most of them would rather do high level stuff then slum with me (in general).

2. Playing my Shaman in a group was a completely different experience than playing solo. I had to try things in a whole new way. Skills and spells I rarely used, became important. Skills I normally used a lot, became unneeded.

3. WoW still has some really odd problems. When we were fighting a group of mobs, my brother told me that all the mobs and I disappeared from his screen. On my screen he appeared to be frozen in a combat pose and his pet was not moving either. Eventually he said he was fine, but it did not appear to be any different for me. Then the mobs starting fighting nobody, so I joined in as I could tell from the text it was him fighting them. We did this for a while and then his frozen character moved some, looted mobs that were not there any more and then froze again. Later he called out for help and I noticed from his icon he was low on health. Not seeing him, I selected his icon and healed him. This went on for another 5 minutes or so and eventually things returned to normal without either of us relogging. This sort of thing is unacceptable in my book, I hope it’s not something I have to deal with again.

My brother talked me into questing in WoW with his alt. In the matter of maybe 3 hours I levelled twice and am now level 26. Imagine that. Had fun the whole time too, but I am damn tired.

Amazing how much more fun these games are when you have some company.

Now, about that break…

I logged in, tried to check my mail. Could not get my mail – “Internal Mail Database Error”. Auction House not working. Cannot enter an instance. Cannot log out (had to Alt+F4 to get out).

Bah. Guess I’ll go out now and try playing later tonight.

Well, he writes anyway:

I am sure that many of you are wondering what has been going on with the World of Warcraft servers, as there was another period of extended downtime during peak hours last night. I want to be as candid as possible with you, in the hopes that I can both shed light on the situation and reassure you that we are doing our utmost to ensure that these problems get fixed.

Last night, we took down 20 realms for emergency maintenance. The boat between Menethil Harbor and Auberdine was disappearing intermittently, dropping players into the ocean and crashing the servers. Passengers on this boat who were disconnected and tried to reconnect would crash the server yet again when trying to log on. We knew that this was unacceptable and immediately took down the servers when we discovered the problem in order to implement a fix. That occurred at 6 p.m. PST, but unfortunately, complications arose while we were testing our fix, and we were unable to bring those servers back up until more than a few hours later in the night.

Players on these same 20 realms also experienced service interruptions earlier in the week, following last Thursday�s extended server maintenance. While last night�s downtime was unrelated to the issues in the days prior, this is no consolation to those of you that were unable to play. Therefore, in addition to the three days already credited to these players as a result of the server issues earlier in the week, players on these realms will be receiving an additional four-day credit to their accounts. The credit will appear as a total of seven free days on your current billing statement (or on your trial period for those who recently purchased the game).

I want to take this opportunity to say that we will do everything possible to ensure that unexpected downtime like this does not occur in the future and that if it is necessary, we will do everything possible to give you better warning and keep you informed. In the future, we will avoid doing maintenance during peak hours, unless no other alternative presents itself. When complications occur that could impact your playing time, we will provide that information as well. We failed to do this last night, and I assure you that we are making changes to ensure that we do a better job of communicating with our players next time.

I want to extend my personal and heartfelt apology for the problems that some of you have been experiencing on our servers. We remain committed to delivering the best possible service for you and will continue to work around the clock to ensure that we provide an experience that you and I have to come to expect from Blizzard games.

Sincerely,
Mike Morhaime
President, Blizzard Entertainment