Filed under: Hotfixes

The fix to Fras Siabi's Barely Bigger Beer was something that was actually implemented a few weeks ago. However, we now have an official announcement: Giant, tromping players on ridiculously huge mounts are no longer permitted. Sorry, everyone -- you'll just have to stick to Potions of Illusion for your wacky hijinks.

---

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.

---

First off, we know that game balance is an eternal goal. As the game evolves and becomes more complex (as it does every expansion, because new abilities are introduced and new classes or races make their debut), balancing them all for every role they can fill and every aspect of the game (Arena PvP, BGs, 5-man instances, raiding) becomes ever more complicated. Abilities that seem minor in impact can mushroom in importance due to synergy with other talents or abilities. As an example, Vengeance in PvP became important enough to cause it to be turned off, as gear improved and health pools rose.

This has been the case in World of Warcraft since its debut. Heck, thanks to Indalamar, warriors got nerfed before the game went live. Balance is ephemeral. Your class may be on top one day, but your day will end. Anyone who's tanked for the past six years can attest to the roller coaster of which class is best at which aspect of the role. There was a time where paladins were the undisputed kings of AoE tanking, a time before Death and Decay or Blood and Thunder.

• Healers coming back via Scroll of Resurrection will no longer find strength on their starter sets.
• In Madness of Deathwing, Burning Blood will no longer prematurely spike to 100 stacks if you happen to damage the Arm and Wing Tentacles quickly.

A fresh round of hotfixes landed tonight, including a pair that will relieve the pain of many achievement hunters and event celebrants this week. The following fixes are included in this round:

• Players are now able to receive Lovely Charms while on the quest Test Your Strength, when the player's inventory has both the Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide and Lovely Charm Collector's Kit.
• Players now have the chance to receive both the Lovely Charm and Grisly Trophy from a single kill.

Hit the break for the full list of tonight's hotfixes, including an Ultraxion trash nerf.

If you're working toward your new Darkmoon Faire achievements, you've no doubt been frustrated by the event's inability to save your progress from month to month. Today, there's some good news: Starting with the February Faire and moving forward, achievement progress will be saved. The bad news? All the progress you made in past months can't be restored -- you still have to work from scratch.

Darkmoon Faire Achievement Progress - Update, 03/02

January's Darkmoon Faire achievement progress status was cleared prior to the launch of February's faire. Any achievements that were started but not completed have had their criteria reset. Completed achievements are unaffected.

However, any future achievement progress (February included) will be saved to your character and will continue to contribute towards progression of those achievements in subsequent visits to Darkmoon Faire.

Regrettably, we are not able to restore any progress you may have made during January's faire. We do appreciate the impact this may have had and sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused.

source

I'm not sure whether or not we should be playing the Final Fantasy 7 victory theme on this one or whether we should be playing the The Price is Right losing horns. What do they do when someone plays Plinko but only gets like $200 out of it?

---

Enjoy working on achievements? The Overachiever is here to help! Count on us for advice on patch 4.3 achievements, our guide to Mountain O' Mounts, and a good, hard look at what's wrong with archaeology and how Blizzard could fix it.

---

• Darkmoon items The Captured Journal and The Enemy's Insignia should now be able to be completed, even if they've been turned in in previous months.
• Darkmoon Tonks and Darkmoon Zeppelins will no longer become a Horde Balloon after faction-switching from Alliance to Horde.
• The proc damage from the Vial of Shadows trinket should now be increased by ranged attack power for hunters.
• Killing bosses in a guild group while using the Dungeon Finder should now award guild reputation and experience.

Follow after the break for the full list of hotfixes.

A big batch of new hotfixes has just been released for patch 4.3. Some of the more notable ones include:

• The Mass Regeneration effect from the druid tier 13 bonus now heals 25% of the healing received by the druid from Frenzied Regeneration, down from 50%. The tooltip will be updated in a later patch.
• Damage done by Forgotten Ones, Void Bolt AoE, and Searing Blood has been reduced on 25-person heroic difficulty.
• Yor'sahj's health has been reduced by 10% on 25 person heroic difficulty.
• The health pools for Burning Tendon, Corrupted Blood, Corruption, and Hideous Amalgamation have been reduced by 6% to 11% for 25-person raids on both normal and heroic difficulty.
• Damage done by Deathwing's Elementium Blast, Corrupted Blood, and Blistering Heat have been lowered on Raid Finder difficulty.

Blizzard makes it clear on Twitter that several of the raid hotfixes will not be active until after tomorrow's realm maintenance. So don't expect to see them if you're currently engaged in the encounters.

The full list after the break.

You want some hotfixes, you say? Well, you're in luck! Blizzard has released one heck of a large list of hotfixes this evening, dealing with everything form class abilities to very big pains like the Yor'sahj encounter in the Raid Finder.

Some of the highlights include:

• Yor'sahj had its Raid Finder HP for slimes, mana voids, and forgotten ones nerfed by 20%.
• Ball damage is now splitting correctly on Zon'ozz in the Raid Finder.
• Echo of Baine trash is hitting for less.
• Deep Wounds is working better (more correctly) for warriors.

Lots and lots of changes after the break.

Hotfixes are in for Dec. 2, with the expected fix to the Raid Finder exploit that was causing incredibly fast gear-ups for players who queued over and over. Raid Finder loot should now work in its intended fashion. Dragon Soul and the three new 5-man dungeons also got some quick fixes for a few annoying bugs. Hit the jump for the full list of hotfixes.

The launch of patch 4.3 has been smooth overall, but there's one major exception: The Dungeon Finder has developed a case of narcolepsy. If you've been in the queue for any of the new Hour of Twilight dungeons tonight, chances are good you've noticed the system suffering from crashes with extreme frequency.

Good news: There's a fix in the works, and we're likely to see it tonight. Cross your fingers.

Bashiok - LFD Tool Down?

There's a known issue causing the LFG servers to crash, which is kicking people out of queue. A hotfix is already in production and we expect will be implemented this evening.

There's also an issue that's causing long queue times, and again a hotfix is in progress.

source

---

Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!

---

In a recent post on the forums, Bashiok responded to the idea that 1.35% of all WoW players have completed normal Firelands and what that does or does not mean for the recent changes implemented to the raid instance. It's a very interesting and information-filled post that I think deserves a thorough examination, as it reveals elements of Blizzard's current design philosophy and how and why it chooses to alter raids from their initial difficulty levels.

I intend to go over the entire post carefully, but here are some highlights to ponder up front:

• The 1.35% number is just plain wrong. Blizzard has its own numbers that it's not going to share, but the 1.35% is probably as accurate as could be expected without access to Blizzard's internal data gathering.
• Blizzard's design intent is to make content for all of the playerbase. "It's both a blessing and a curse that the WoW player base is as large and diverse as it is."
• Players raid for many different reasons, some challenge, others loot, and others just to see the content. Some players are happy if they just see a boss once, while others enjoy weekly clearing.
• The idea of being willing to wipe a hundred or more times to clear a boss, a staple of the raider mentality for years, is not appealing to most players.

OK, so now that we've picked out a few highlights, let's go over the entire post and really consider the implications of designing for as many players as possible.

Hello. I'm Ol' Grumpy. You may remember me from such posts as Ol' Grumpy's first week with Patch 4.1, Ol' Grumpy's guide to player reeducation, or perhaps Ol' Grumpy's guide to outdated content and you. As my name suggests, I am a hilariously old and crotchety curmudgeon who probably has forgotten more about hating things than you've ever known. Seriously, I hate everything, especially the things I enjoy. It's why I'm called Ol' Grumpy and not Ol' Smiley.

So, this time I've been called back into service to talk about the recent Firelands adjustments, or as I like to call them, significant nerfs. Quite frankly, my take on these is a bit more nuanced than the last time, so I sadly won't get to grump around as much as I prefer. Frankly, there are several key differences between this series of nerfs and the ones to T11 content that make the situation a little less cut-and-dried.

• This time, both normal and heroic content is being nerfed. Last time, normal mode fights were nerfed across the board, but heroic content was left unchanged so that people who wanted to experience it at the original challenge level could do so. This is a decision I lauded at the time, and I find the different implementation this time kind of baffling.
• We got half as much time with tier 12 as we did tier 11 before the changes. Now, to some degree this isn't an entirely fair comparison because we also had to level from 80 to 85 before we got a chance to do tier 11, and in addition there were 13 total fights in tier 11 content plus a bonus heroic only encounter. Tier 12 has eight, seven in Firelands and one in Baradin Hold that barely even counts. But it still seems very early to nerf this content.
• These are some serious nerfs to content that is still relevant. Unlike the T11 changes, which took place as T12 dropped, these fights are still the fights that we're all doing. There's nothing to replace them, no place for the players who have done it before the nerfs to go if they want to stay on the cutting edge of content. This is the cutting edge, and it's now between 15% and 25% less sharp.

All of this adds up to my being not exactly angry or disappointed but very much confused by the reasoning for these changes. And it makes me wonder: Did fewer people clear Firelands than Blizzard was expecting? What's happening with this raid tier, and just how close are we to patch 4.3? Probably closer than I expected a week ago.

• Bottle of Dalaran Red, Bottle of Aged Dalaran Red, Cask of Dalaran Red, and Cask of Aged Dalaran Red should no longer award the player the next tier of Dalaran Red when placed on the ground.
• Alliance and Horde players are able to teleport to Anachronos as many times as they wish even after abandoning and re-accepting the quest A Legendary Engagement.
• Players will no longer go invisible in Uldum during the quest Premature Explosionation. If players log out or disconnect during the cutscene, they will return to Khartut's Tomb instead of being ported to a nearby graveyard.

A number of hotfixes have been (or will be) applied to live realms today. One is a particularly noteworthy PVE retribution paladin fix intended to bring ret DPS up to match the competition in the Firelands, as paladin DPS has fallen a bit behind in this raid tier. Paladins will be receiving a +40% damage boost to Censure, the stacking DOT associated with Seal of Truth.

The other hotfixes are aimed at quest-related bugs that may have been interfering with players' solo progression. The explanation for the retribution buff and the details of these quest hotfixes can both be found after the break below.

Blizzard has just updated patch 4.2 with some new hotfixes, including confirmation of the dreaded Smouldering Essence-gate that is plaguing the community at this very moment. In case you have been out of the loop, Blizzard is drastically lowering the number of Smouldering Essences that drop off Firelands bosses for the Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest quest line in order to complete the legendary staff.

Guilds in 25-man raiding groups were completing the staff too quickly, making it easy for each guild to obtain many of the legendaries. Having multiple legendaries per guild, especially when moving into the next tier of content, is going to be a pain to balance, so Blizzard has put the kibosh on being able to reasonably get multiple staffs per raiding group. Such is the way of things. Hit the jump for all of the new hotfixes.