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Stability And Maintenance Updates November 14th

6.0.3 Hotfixes: November 13

 

The stability of the realms in the first 24 hours of the launch was not what many had hoped for. Here’s an overview of all the stability/maintenance blue posts:

Garrison Access Issues

Quote from: Blizzard

We’re tracking a few issues that are impeding access or progression with Garrisons. To address these issues we’ll be restarting some Garrison services which will impact access to the Garrison for some realms. While these restarts progress, this may result in characters not being able to phase into the Garrison, or become temporarily stuck while phasing in. This is a temporary effect and should resolve as these services return.We’re continuing to look into other issues outside of this impact on Garrison access, including realm latency and its affect on gameplay and questing elements. We’ve implemented dozens of hotfixes over the last few hours, and will be continuing to work toward resolution of any outstanding issues.

The majority of our fixes are aimed at issues that are resulting in latency. Latency itself is not a singular issue, but is the effect of many compound issues–a few of which are related to Garrisons.

Warlords of Draenor Launch Update

Quote from: Blizzard

[Update] 9:00 p.m. PST

We’ll be performing maintenance on all NA realms beginning at 5 a.m. PST in order to address issues with realm stability. We anticipate this process will last approximately 4 hours and appreciate your patience during this time.

[Update] 8:00 p.m. PST

Our top priority continues to be service issues impacting performance and long wait times on North American realms. We recently pushed a server change that caused disconnects, and as a result login services are heavily impacted as players attempt to (re)log in to the game. If you experience issues logging in, please be patient and wait a few minutes before trying again. We’re continuing to work to address other stability and latency issues as well as make additional improvements in game performance.

[Update] 6:01 p.m. PST

We’re continuing to work toward greater realm stability and address the service issues impacting latency. Our current biggest hurdle is the concentration of players in specific areas and zones, and an unexpected effect of that concentration on the realm stability. We’re continuing to maintain a lowered realm population cap to help with the stability, which is resulting in increased queue times. We’re seeing some increase in individual zones drop which are causing localized player disconnections as we get into primetime in the Americas, and if someone is disconnected they will quite likely run into a queue to log back in. Work is progressing on improving realm stability through fixes targeting individual in-game issues, as well as on the backend game and network services.

3:02 p.m. PST

We’re excited to finally launch Warlords of Draenor and explore this new world with you, but we know that the experience has been less than ideal as we approach our first full day of launch.

Europe was our first region to launch, and we encountered a few issues due to the sheer number of players attempting to enter Draenor from a single location. We worked to add multiple new ways to access Draenor, and this helped ease some of the initial rush into the new expansion as players were able to access it from their capital cities, as well as from the shrines in Pandaria.

While that solution helped a ton for our North American launch, we ran into a few other issues, including a distributed denial of service attack, that resulted in increased latency.

To help correct for this and other issues, we’ve temporarily lowered maximum realm populations. This means there will be high queue times experienced on high-population realms.

Here are some of the other important issues we’re currently working to address:

  • Instance servers timing out, which may impact dungeon access
  • Continent server issues, which are resulting in Player Not Found and disconnection issues
  • Garrison server issues, which are resulting in phasing and performance issues

We’ll post updates here as we make progress against these issues. Thank you for your zeal to face down the tyranny of the Iron Horde—and for your continued patience as we work to improve the current experience.

Realm Maintenance For Both EU and NA

Quote from: Blizzard
We’ll be performing unscheduled maintenance on all EU / NA realms beginning at 7 am CEST / 5 a.m. PST in order to address issues with realm stability. We anticipate this process will last approximately 4 hours and appreciate your patience during this time.

6.0.3 Hotfixes: November 13

Quote from: Blizzard

November 13

Update 3: 09:30pm PST

Classes

  • Monk
    • Brewmaster
      • Resolved an issue where Keg Smash may sometimes not generate Chi when used.

Quests

  • Artificer Romuul: Resolved an issue where players may sometimes not receive this quest after completing the Embaari Defense Crystal event.
  • Book Burning: Shadowborne Dementor should now always drop a Shadow Council Spellbook.
  • Shivertail’s Den: Made a change to make it easier to receive credit for “Find Shivertail’s Mother”.
  • The Great Salvation: Draenei prisoners should spawn more frequently now.
  • The Warlord’s Guard: Increased the spawn rates for Thunk, Gullok, and Splorg.
  • These Colors Don’t Run: Characters now receive credit towards planting a Frostwolf Banner when they defeat or help in defeating a Bladespire Ogre with the exception of Bladespire Mauler, Chef, Boarbuster, Ogron, and Goresnout.
  • Wrath of Gronn: Increased the spawn rate for Captive Gronns.

Creatures and NPCs

  • Collision geometry has been added to Drek’Thar, Thrall, and Gazlowe in Frostfire Ridge.
  • Gorg the Host should now allow multiple players to receive credit for defeating it.

Battlegrounds and Arenas

  • Resolved an issue where item levels for Battlegrounds, Arenas, and Skirmishes brackets below level 100 were not scaling correctly.

Items

  • Epic rings that are a part of the Legendary quest line can no longer be disenchanted.

Update 2: 6:00pm PST

Quests

  • Adherents of the Sun God: Increased spawn rates for Adherent Bladewing.
  • Dark Enemies: Increased spawn rates for Shadowmoon Voidmancer.
  • Escape from Shaz’gul: Players can now receive completion credit for the quest by defeating Terrorfang at the end.
  • [Requires a realm restart.] Gormaul Tower: (Temporary) Completion credit for the quest is automatically awarded once players reach the top of the hill.
  • Great Balls of Fire!: To address an issue where some players were unable to destroy the barricade, players now receive quest completition credit once they get to the top of the ramp.
  • Quakefist: Quakefist’s health now scales based on the number of players fighting it.
  • These Colors Don’t Run: Multiple players can now place a banner on a Bladespire Ogre if they had tap rights.

Creatures

  • Various Kaliri in the Spires of Arak area should no longer be too high off the ground to be attacked.
  • Various creatures should now correctly have a chance to drop fur that could be used for tailoring.

Items

  • Abberant’s Paw, Gnarled Goren Jaw, and Redclaw’s Gutripper now give a bonus to Spell Power.
  • Toy Train Set has been temporarily disabled.

Update 1: 1:30pm PST

Classes

  • Druid
    • Balance
      • Resolved an issue where the Eclipse indicator in the UI can sometimes not match the Druid’s current Balance power.

Quests

  • Back to Work / Looking for Lumber: Greatly increased the number of trees available to mark for both Horde and Alliance versions of the quest. Additionally, Lunarfall Ravens respawn much more quickly now.
  • Closing the Door: Resolved an issue where Void Portals may sometimes not close correctly.
  • Honor Has Its Rewards: The Shamanstone no longer requires characters to interact with it and will grant its blessing to players that are nearby.
  • Quakefist: Quakefist now spawns outside of the cave, making it easier to locate.
  • Ship Salvage / What We Need: Drudgeboat Salvage should now respawn more quickly.
  • The Clarity Elixir: Pristine Star Lily can now be looted by multiple players at the same time.
  • These Colors Don’t Run: Greatly increased the spawn rates for Bladespire Ogres and made them share tap credit.
  • Vengeance for the Fallen: Bleeding Hollow orcs respawn much more quickly now.

Creatures

  • Durotan at Beastwatch in Gorgrond is now significantly tougher.
  • Gorum can now be tapped by multiple characters. All players who contributed to defeating Gorum will now become eligible for loot.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios

  • Challenge Mode
    • Characters can switch specializations once more after the Challenge Mode has started.

Twitch Warlords Dev Q&A Summary

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The devs had a live Q&A session on twitch, here’s a summary of the session with Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas and Lead Class Designer Kris Zierhut  right before the WoD launch.

  • Competing factions like Aldor / Scryer could return in the future if they make sense to add to the game.
  • It’s expected that some time in the future (not 7.) ability/item level pruning will have to happen again. This is due to the amount of power increase that’s required in progression.
  • There will be a cool visual effect to show you have the legendary ring.
  • The limit on wearing crafted gear in WoD allows the developers to make crafted gear more powerful.
  • The Vale of Eternal Blossoms will not be restored in the future.
  • A hide shoulders feature along with hide helmet and hide cloak will likely not happen as it’s a large part of your character’s silhouette.
  • Mythic trash is harder than heroic trash. It’s not in the league of heroic to mythic boss, but it is still harder. This means there will be mythic trash loot!
  • The “keys” to skip to the end of the raid that was mentioned at blizzcon 2013 is still in in Blackrock Foundry. After the Iron Maidens there’s an orc blacksmith that will forge the key if you’ve cleared on the difficulty your raid instance is 4 times.
  • Secondary Professions will likely not be made account wide. But it is something they could consider.
  • There will be a second pass on lower level abilities. Later in the expansion they’ll have more of a chance to fix things that might be broken at the lower level.
  • Where it makes sense the graphical quality of old armor/weapon sets will be upgraded in the future. The orc/human guard armors are an example of this.
  • Active mana regeneration could potentially return in the future. The danger of it is getting the balance right. If it’s designed around the assumption you always use it in the downtime then that would put an additional burden on the healers.
  • A “Heroic” LFR will not be added. It’s seen as a way to see the content in a very accessible way. If you’re looking to progress your character more they’re hoping you’ll go into normal mode. The new group finder can help you find a group for this.
  • Gladiator stance was something they wanted like to design as a valid dps option. It satisfies the fantasy of being a gladiator with a 1handed weapon and a shield.
  • Questing zones will not automatically be cross-realm at the beginning of the expansion.
  • Tenaan Jungle can be split into multiple instances for the same realm to make sure it’s still a good experience.
  • Simulationcraft is a useful source of feedback but it’s not a completely correct source. They make different assumptions when simulating the dps. It can still expose errors though.
  • Armor/shield clipping in Tauren for example are viewed as bugs, so report them if you come across them.
  • Changing skin color in the barber shop is a completely reasonable feature to request.
  • The heirloom tab is looked at as a hopefully a warlords patch feature.
  • Arms warrior changes were based on WotLK design, to make them feel like Arms did back then. (In reference to Whirlwind)
  • World bosses will not be available at launch. Two will become available in the week of december 2nd. One week one will spawn, the next the other.
  • Warlords will just unlock at midnight.
  • Features for expansions are chosen through giant wishlists, brain sessions, lessons from the previous expansion and other ways. Per expansion it’s looked at what they want to put in the world they’re creating.
  • Worgen and goblin models will eventually be updated but they have a lower priority.
  • Hybrid healing in PvP is something they’re watching. Possible major changes will come in patch 6.1. Also at level 100 it will be a lot better.
  • In WoD we can expect to see “story patches”  between raid patches. 6.1 will likely be more focussed on systems updates and moving the story forward and 6.2 will be a major raid update.
  • Increasing the friends list capacity on battle.net beyond 100 friends is something they want to do, but there are technical limitations to sort out.
  • They have cool plans for class quests in the future, but nothing to share yet.
  • There will not be more glyph slots in the future. They need to be a hard choice.
  • You don’t want to stack versatility on every character because it’s not as good as other stats from an offensive point of view.
  • Fel flame was removed because they wanted lower the amount of mobile damage players had.
  • The postmaster returning everything has been fixed, he’s not as overzealous with armor scraps.
  • The Stacking The Deck buff rewards gold. This buff is given if you enter a queue with a premade group or if you requeue with a group you met through random group finder.
  • Transmogging fist weapons to swords and other 1handers is still not possible due to technical problems under the hood of transmogrification.
  • Blood DKs feel like they’re not using their weapon enough right now.
  • One of the lessons learned from phasing is they need to use phasing less.
  • A revamp for druid forms could happen in the future.
  • When designing talents/spells for a class they start from the perspective of the fantasy/lore of that class/spec.
  • They don’t want all class/specs to be the exact same on single target dps and aoe dps.
  • They still want secondary stats to be different in importance for players. But they don’t want a stat to be terrible for a class/spec.

Warlords Launch Mini-FAQ

Quote from: Blizzard
I’ve seen a handful of questions with regards to what happens when Warlords of Draenor launches, so here’s a brief FAQ that should hopefully clear up questions.

When will the launch of the game happen for my time zone/region?
Warlords of Draenor will launch in:

  • Europe at 12:00 a.m. CET on Thursday, November 13
  • North America (US) at 12:00 a.m. PST (1:00 a.m. Mountain, 2:00 a.m. CST, 3:00 a.m. EST) on Thursday, November 13
  • Oceanic will launch at the same time as the US.
  • Korea at 12:00 a.m. KST on Tuesday, November 18
  • Taiwan at 12:00 a.m. CST on Tuesday, November 18
  • China at 12:00 a.m. CST on Tuesday, November 18Don’t see the exact time listed for your area? Check out this handy Time Zone Converter.

    How do I get to Draenor?
    When the clock hits midnight (or whatever respective time zone you’re in), you’ll see the following things happen:

  • A server message (yellow text in your chat window) will be displayed, signaling the launch of Warlords of Draenor!
  • If you’ve already upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, a quest will popup in your quest log, directing you to the Blasted Lands. You do not need to be in a major city to receive this quest. If you haven’t upgraded your account, you won’t be able to receive the quest or venture in Draenor until you do.
  • Once you get to Blasted Lands, speak to Khadgar outside the Dark Portal to head to Draenor!
  • Note: you don’t need to be online at midnight to get the quest, it’ll be waiting for you whenever you do decide to login.
    Do I need to install Warlords of Draenor or use the install disc?
    If you’re already playing on retail realms, you have all the files you need to play Warlords of Draenor – no further downloads or installs are required. If you haven’t updated your WoW client to version 6.0.3 yet, you can either just run the Battle.net app to do so, or install the game using the Game Disc DVD (if you bought a Box Copy of Warlords of Draenor).

    Do i need to logout at midnight before I start leveling?
    Nope! If you’ve already upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, you won’t need to do anything! You can always double check your account status by logging into the Account Management page at https://us.battle.net/account/management/

    What happens if I boost a character to level 90 after Warlords of Draenor launches?

  • If you haven’t upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor yet, your boosted character will be placed in Blasted Lands.
  • If you’ve upgraded your account to Warlords of Draenor, boosted characters are placed directly in Tanaan Jungle.
    If you have any other questions related to the launch of Warlords of Draenor, feel free to post them in this thread!

Warlords of Draenor Launch Night Information

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Blizzard released some information confirming there will be no restarts or patches needed to get into Draenor once midnight strikes!

Quote from: Blizzard
We are expecting a smooth transition from Mists of Pandaria into Warlords of Draenor, no server restarts are planned and there will be no patch on launch night.

If you are already ingame before midnight, you do not need to restart your client or log out of the game to activate Warlords of Draenor content.

Simply keep playing and you should be able to head straight into the fight against the Iron Horde in Draenor!

New Age of Iron Trailer

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Blizzard has released a really good trailer for Warlords of Draenor! Check it out below:

Quote from: Blizzard
Beyond the Dark Portal, clouds of war grow ever darker. It’s up to the heroes of Azeroth to put a stop to the Iron Horde before they renew their efforts to invade Azeroth. Watch the new Age of Iron Trailer now and prepare to take your place on the front lines.
Join the fight Thursday, November 13.

Warlords of Draenor Region Launch Times

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Wondering when Warlords will go live in your region? Look no further! Blizzard has updated a WoD signing post with the release times for all regions!

Quote from: Blizzard

When will the launch of the game happen for my time zone/region?

Warlords of Draenor will launch in:

  • North America (US) at 12:00 a.m. PST (1:00 a.m. Mountain, 2:00 a.m. CST, 3:00 a.m. EST) on Thursday, November 13
    • Oceanic will launch at the same time as the US.
  • Europe at 12:00 a.m. CET on Thursday, November 13
  • Korea at 12:00 a.m. KST on Tuesday, November 18
  • Taiwan at 12:00 a.m. CST on Tuesday, November 18
  • China at 12:00 a.m. CST on Tuesday, November 18

Don’t see the exact time listed for your area? Check out this handy Time Zone Converter.