I suppose we could argue for days about which World of Warcraft patch over the past two years has been the worst.
There was that one patch that nuked item enchantments — that was fun in a “I can’t freakin believe this” kind of way. The cross-server battleground patch was a pretty good one, except for the “everyone’s corpse piling up under Alterac Mountains” part. The patch nerfing out-of-combat resurrections should at least get an honorable mention — not only as a shining example of what I call a “too bad for the rest of you sorry bastards” nerfing, but also because of the ripple effects. I’d bet there’s not a Warcraft player out there that hasn’t experienced this: sitting around, waiting for someone to arrive or regenning health or mana, whathaveyou, you’ll look down at your action bar and think “why the FUCK am I in combat?” Moments later you knew exactly why you were in combat.
Ahh, memories.
But this Patch 2.oh!.1 is just fucked.
This patch is so fucked, they had a recurring in-game server-wide broadcast directing players to a Blizzard forum post about patch issues. Here’s the thread: Patch 2.0.1 – Issues & Revisions. And actually, that’s not the link addy they were broadcasting in game, but, as I WAS RAIDING at the time, I couldn’t alt-tab out to check — I assume this is the gist of it.
White Text for Enchantments – annoying and momentarily panic-inducing, but shit happens. No biggie.
Arena Battlemasters Temporarily Unavailable – again, a nuisance but we’ll deal.
Honor System Revisions – there’s some creative spin going on in that thread. No great shakes.
Display / User Interface Issues – here we go. And where to start? Meh, I’ll get back to this.
Missing Bank Bag Slots or Items – this seems kind of huge. Hotfix incoming though, which is nice. Maybe if they weren’t trying to shove the square Beta code peg into the round Live code hole this wouldn’t be an issue, but what do I know about coding? Nothing, that’s what.
Level 60 XP to Gold Conversion, Display Issue – nuisance.
Shaman and Paladin Items – (my favorite cuz it’s so damn stupid) Vrakthris, Blizzard short straw holder:
With this patch we have released many features/changes in preparation for the upcoming expansion. One of these changes is that Paladin items will now be found by the Horde and Shaman items by the Alliance.
Although some of these classes might not be available by the opposite faction until the Burning Crusade release, this is indeed an intended change.
Bull. Shit.
I so loved those two paragraphs, I macro’d those for /ra chat and used it each time we scored shaman gear. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn’t have. So disheartened were we, we left Nefarian up for today because we all just KNEW he had 2 shaman breastplates waiting for us. Seriously. We left Nefarian up, not because it was getting late (it wasn’t) or because we needed more players in the raid (we didn’t) or because we were scared (we weren’t … of him, anyways), we left His Dragonness up because we feared the shaman breastplates.
The raid was already horrible: late start because CTRaidAssist wasn’t playing nice with the default UI (read: forum thread. solution: /bye CTRA), and because of the INSANE clicks every time someone did almost anything in the raid (read: forum thread. solution: turn off all sound), and because of default UI’s needing that complicated reset procedure (solution: leave those poor souls behind at the entrance), a drawn-out Razorgore kill because the UI was killing pet action bars which makes it rather challenging to control Razorgore, the healers monopolized Vent chat during Vael with their “who’s tanking now??” “how bout now?” “why is a warlock tanking?” “who’s tank?” “is he dead yet?” “what’s Vael at now?” (no CTRA, remember?), same healer deal with Broodlord, but add in a Raid Leader near-SCREAMING at the warlocks bombing the shit out of Broodlord. Firemaw, fine. Trash, fine. Ebonroc, fine. Flamegor, fine. Chromaggus, a typical pain in the ass, but fine.
Chrom was a little dicey with the manual decursing, but all’s well that ended well. No shaman shoulders either, nevertheless he dropped shardables (i.e. junk to us).
Considering, we were making good time. And it was early. But with the shaman loot, (and its opportunity cost), and with my asshole macro and with the healers exhausted and with everyone pissed at the warlocks, we left Nefarian alone with his two shaman breastplates. We intentionally scheduled the Blackwing Lair clear for our first post-patch raid so people could work out the kinks in their new talent builds (*cough*warlocks*cough*) before the week’s Naxx and AnQueer raids — we know that every damn patch that’s ever been is a royal pain in the lower intestine. No noobs we.
Meh. We’ll just have to go loot the shaman breastplates tonight, but maybe we won’t punch our monitors on the way out.
I can live with the shaman bullshit, it’s only a little more than a month until THEORETICALLY, it’s not auto-shard.
I can’t live with that UI. I can’t. I won’t.
I get that Blizz didn’t like the cheese automagic decursing. I get that this was a bit of a rush and jamming partial beta code into a live game is … problematic. What I don’t get is why Blizzard is not pandering to a vibrant, open-source addon developer community when they have to know their default UI is shit. And publishing partial notes of planned changes is not pandering — that’s half assing. Pandering is something like this: We (Blizz) need you (the addon dev community) to have your stuff ready to go on patch day. How can we (Blizz) help you (the addon dev community) do that? Also, thank you (the addon dev community) for fixing our shit UI, you (the addon dev community) really make our game a pleasure.
I know, that’s all too much to ask and unreasonable.
Hey, I’m flexible. I use a handful of addons, but all I really need is a raid addon and boss warnings. That’s my line in the sand. I’m not scanning their shit combat log for boss cast warnings and counting down in my head when BossSpell will hit. I’m not guessing who has boss aggro and asking in Ventrilo 78 times, “who’s he on now?” “how bout now?” “is it a warlock?” “a mage pet, wtf?” I won’t have 1/6 of my view taken up with raid groups (and I play at 1680 x 1050, there’s only so much squeeze room) and I don’t want half of my healers taking a month-long hiatus because the target/spam heal routine isn’t so much a bore as a Chore.
(And really, why does decursing have to be a pain in the ass to fit some game vision? I do not, cannot understand that, but their game, their rules — not like decursing is my gig anyways, but I sure as hell hear the bitching about it.)
I repeat: fuck raiding. I’m going to farm flowers with my herbalist. I’m not sure what the status is on Gatherer (the resource addon), so I’ll just skip through the fields hoping to score some Dreamfoil.
See Also:
WoW Forums: Mods updated for 2.0 – Concise List – and umm, fair warning, some (many?) of those listed were THOUGHT to be properly updated and weren’t. And as Vroxx stated in the comments, most of the big interface sites are still down for the count this morning, as they were all last night. Probably because 7 million people are camping the interface sites for updates. (La Vendetta works like a champ though, love that mod.)
WoW Forums: Hey! Stop scaring my Healers away! Articulate essay written by a WARLOCK (gasp) discussing the wisdom of disabling Decursive-ish addons.
Filefront WoW Mods browse – cuz we’ve destroyed every other addon site.
WoW Forums: CTMod sucks Now – I think sucks is too strong a word, but there’s some suggestions for alternate raid addons in the thread. Updated ones too. Will still need some luck finding a download source, but knowing what to Google is half the hunt.
Furl Archives:
WoW Forums: Patch 2.0.1 Issues & Revisions, page 1
WoW Forums: CT Raid Assist “clicking” and “laggy”, page 1
WoW Forums: Bliz, What’s up with the raid noises?, page 1
WoW Forums: Hey, stop scaring my healers away!, page 1
Gatherer is updated. Good luck finding a addon site that is up and running though.
Pingback: Broken Toys :: It Really IS Like An Expansion Launch!
Ahh, more warlock hate, I love it! =)
I do have to say that the increased damage output from the destruction tree was a pleasant surprise, until I nuked Vael’s ass off and got aggro after I got BA. One thing that was funny to me on that fight, i have 1 point in Nether Protection (grr, talent lag) and it was making me immune to Vael’s fire aura and greatly reduced the number of casting interruptions I was getting. So I was able to actually do some real dps to him.
But then again,I probably should have hit my fetish of the sand reaver when I busted my ToEP after I got BA. =)
Cartographer is a good alternative to Gatherer; it handles a lot of MetaMap’s stuff as well, and is more efficient than either of those on its own.
As for raid warnings, BigWigs is working with 2.0, I believe. I’m not a raider though, so I’m only going by what I’ve heard.
I’d give you links, but it’s tricky with the addon sites the way they are. I think those ones are findable through wowinterface.com, though.
(The beta version of Auctioneer works. It just has a teensy bug whereby you can’t disenchant while it’s loaded…)
Pingback: Thoughts from the Void
I couldn’t agree with this more. As a mod author it disheartening to see great advances in the WoW UI emerge from the community only to be destroyed by Blizzard or shamelessly stolen then turned to complete shit.
With patch 2.0.1 we see enemy cast bars, which are actually pretty good, but shamelessly stolen. We saw SCT makes it’s way into WoW, only to be a steaming pile of crap compared to the REAL SCT.
The one that hurts the most is the well written, elegant, nice to use and look at CallToArmsmod. It cleverly parsed the LFG chat channels creating a group searching/creation feature in WoW. Squashed, thanks to the a really dumb looking LFG UI feature and the dismantling the of the LFG channel.
Half-ass is a nice word for the support Blizzard is giving addon developers. Reading a 50 page forum post is not my idea of support. They need to step up to the plate and release real API documentation (the Addon Dev Kit is worthless) and provide real support for the addon community. How about hosting servers to host mods maybe even CERTIFYING them yourself (I’ll bet they actually like that part) to avoid issues. Stand behind and support and API that you are allowing anyone to jack with.
OMG please, for the love of god, bitch more
Pingback: MMODump.com » It Really IS Like An Expansion Launch!
/script if not _clickfixed then __xps=PlaySound; function PlaySound(snd) if (snd~=”igCharacterInfoTab”) then __xps(snd); end end _clickfixed=1; end
Solves the clicky problem!
Right now, the most annoying part to me is CTRA, the clicks, and the lag. For a moment after the patch, I lost all my spell sounds too, then without changing anything, and logging back in the next day, for the 9th time, the sounds just started working.
BUGGY!!
I swear, I thought that the Wednesday after the patch would be like that one time, in band camp (like that one night where the server restarted over and over, I think to fix battlegrounds). We were in AQ, we eventually just quit for the night.
I miss Decursive. Big time. Some MC fights haven’t gone so smooth without it.
I haven’t been to my bank since the bank thing started happening. I’m trying to keep one eye shut, and one open in regards to everything wrong. I want it fixed, but I keep noticing stuff.
:: sigh ::
Well this quote should giver everyone a nice warm fuzzy
From Cosmik over at N3rfed
I’ve been using oRA2 for a raid interface since the patch came out, and it’s working well. I got it as a part of an ACE based UI that can be found on Curse Gaming:
http://wow.curse-gaming.com/en/files/details/4575/all-deuce-ui-ace2/
the clicks are coming from the default UI, not from CTRA. I don’t have CTRA installed and I”m still getting them =/
Torron, I tried setting up oRA2 for a test drive and had a problem with a script error. Could be I didn’t have the absolute latest version or I need to go through that extended UI reset proc. I’m going to try again. Even though CTRA pushed version 1.61 last night, which does fix most of the lagginess, we’re thinking maybe it’s time to step away from CTRA.
I know it’s RADICAL! Many of my guildmates don’t like change. There’s a new restaurant in town, they’re not interested!
Nonetheless, I’m going to check out some other raid UIs and maybe push for a change.
Heh Tseric. Sounds like he’s getting squeezed by the players and by the dudes in the coding dungeon.
RoXet, think you have to run that macro that Gilt posted above each time you log into the game. Should fix the clicks for that gaming session. Worked for the guildmates last night.
Just proves raiders couldn’t play this game to begin with.
Well, as long as you’re going to check out other raiding UI’s I assume you’ll post here about your experiences with them? Not that I’m planning on moving from CTRA, or lobbying my guild to do so (some of them haven’t even gotten CTRA….)
I have to back Heartless up on this one as I think UI mods make raiding one step up from botting (quit WOW 18 months ago not because I hated raids but because I hated how mechanical healing and raiding was due to mods and how they were becoming a standard requirement).
The question is, did Blizzard design the raid content with the UI mods in mind? If so, they there might be a problem as they might be too difficult to clear without them. As I said I have been out WOW for a while and MC was the only raid instance when I left so I don’t know how hard the newer ones are. Even if they were designed with the mods in mind Blizzard may not care as this content will be useless very soon anyway.
The more I read about the changes WOW is making the more I want to come back.
Right on. The more popular WoW gets, the further the community relations peoples’ heads go up their asses. Drok’thul, Tseric, these guys cover the developmental fuck-ups with blithe comments aimed at “arm-chair developers” without actually considering that among the millions of players, there are actually software professionals out here, who actually have some experience developing and releasing software, thank you so very fucking much.
Allow me to say that were I to release code to a production server before correcting it in the test/staging area (and yes, they KNOW it’s broken) not once, but as many times as Blizzard, I would be selling french fries out of a fucking window. But let’s face it, as long as the profit margin is high-high-HIGH, they can get away with stupid bullshit like this while playing the ‘you’re ignorant’ card on the paying players.
In general, I like the direction in which they are going. And mistakes will be made. But their utter lack of support for the third-party UI developers, along with the condescending attitude toward subscribers, just smacks of wanton unprofessionalism.
With the amount of bugs crawling around this patch I, for one, would try and keep it away from my genitals at all cost.
run that script in my previous post once per login and that will solve the clicking problem, at least untill Blizz pull their head out of their ass and give us a real fix.
Here, here Twisted! I’m with you and am also on the SW Dev side a company much bigger than flippin Blizzard. If we released code with the amount of bugs and disregard for our customers as they do, we’d be out of a job. As for performance, which is the end I’m on, when things get a little bit slow – let alone can’t freakin’ log in, people race to resolution becuz millions of dollars start floating out of the window. Blizzard seems to think that they are the only big man in town and no one could possibly be in technical situations like theirs. Their arrogance is what will some day make them passe.
And how comforting to know that their pushing this stuff out now to fix bugs because what’s coming down the pike might be hellacious and need all of their attention. Yeah, I loved the ironic name of this patch, Before the Storm.
Remembers reason 1, 2 and 3 while I’m currently on hiatus.
Pingback: Mannoroth’s Gold Giveaway at MMOG Nation
Heartless, Nat … are you two insane? The ho-hos who used the wallhack to do AQ like it was going out of style were complete idiots, that’s a given.
I fail to see how a simple addon that allows you to know what the hell is going on means they ‘don’t know how to play’. It’s like the man said in the post, status monitoring is not rocket science. I don’t understand why the CTRA functionality isn’t in the fricking basic UI!
Bah. I’m glad I’m out.
For what it’s worth, I think Blizzard DID make an effort to pander to the dev community. WoWInterface gave out 900 beta keys to UI authors, then brought up a public test realm. Plenty of opportunity to try stuff out. Communication with the UI devs is excellent. There were a bunch of changes made to the 2.0 UI based on mod author feedback.
If CTRA was broken at launch, that would either be because testing raid code is difficult on a test server (and the beta server has both Horde and Alliance UI dev guilds for such things), or because the CT people were too busy raiding to fix their code.
Not that Blizzard’s QA is the best, but seriously, they DID make an effort for the UI community, and any AddOns that are broken now are broken because they were “outside of the vision” or because the authors didn’t bother fixing them.
I think the problem is that add-ons give players too much information on ‘what is going on’, information that players should not have fed to them. Sure these add-ons make the game easier to play but at what point does the game become too easy due to them. At what point can I basically ‘check out’ and when the screen prompts me to do something I do it. I’m not talking about my brain processing the input and making the call what I need to do, I’m talking about the add-ons doing a huge portion of that processing and analysis for me. To me that is what is going on; it’s like putting radar guidance systems in a football. With that we can all throw like a pro.
And about the wall hackers … they could beat the bosses so what is the big deal. They just didn’t want to deal with the pain of hours of trash mobs, right? To me that is bad game design.
The “automation” mods can cause varies from class to class and person to person. I know for meas a hunter most of my UI mods do nothing more than tell me something that would have otherwise had ot have been called across vent and added unneccesary clutter over the channel.
@Nat
Nothing says you HAVE to use the mods. Even if a guild says they require it unless they are in your account they really won’t know one way or the other, If it is “too mechanical” as you said remove the mods and voila’ you get to slap buttons however many times you want 😛
I like the people talking about how their uber l33t skills in the SW development world far surpass Blizzard’s ability. Because we all know how many client/server applications in the world have a user base of 6 million+ and service an average of 300,000 concurrent users. And we all know that it is handled by a single super person that is infallible!
If your skills are so phat why the fuck are you here complaining about god damn LUA UI mods that you probably could patch up yourself in your god damn sleep?
Bugs happen in any development environment related to computers. If you have the perfect answer then I suspect you are named Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. If not you are missing the boat with your talents.
Blizzard is responsible for the bugs. Blame them for it, but don’t for a second sit around and act as though this is such an easy task to perform.
Totally right this patch is a pain in the ass for all of us (except locks and huntards), but keep on whining like 5 year olds and blizzard will give up and move out of france so they can work more that 35 lame hours a week 🙂
____________________________
Did you get Tox1fied?
And, btw, i got kinda scared when the shutdown skipped from 14mins to 5mins in 14secs cuz i was out climbing :O Yes, wall walk is back again (kinda
Pingback: Negatendo.Net » WoW 2.0
Part of the problem is your playing a kiddie mmo – have you tried feeding it pablum or gripe water?