World of Warcraft Patches to 1.9

Xehn writes "The much-anticipated 1.9 patch has been released and can be downloaded via the Blizzard Downloader." Among many new features the Patch includes a complete revamp of the Paladin class, and the inclusion of the first unlockable 'World Event': The Gates of Ahn'Qiraj. From the patch notes: "Players will now be able to buy and sell goods with greater effectiveness using the Linked Auction House system. Auction Houses in Orgrimmar, Undercity, and Thunder Bluff will now share the same pool of Horde player-created auctions, and Alliance players will find the same to be true when visiting Ironforge, Stormwind City, and Darnassus Auction Houses. This system has been expanded to support the neutral Auction Houses as well."

Comments

Blue Plz!

[Dr. Eggman]

Your Downloader doesn't work! Why can't you just...

Wait...

...

Sorry, wrong site.

Omg

[kpang]

Gimme purpless plz!!11one1!

Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[MarkPNeyer]

The paladin class has not been totally revamped - they just reorganized the paladin talent tree. The class will still be very boring to play solo and entirely 'different than advertised.' I have a paladin that I play with my girlfriend's warlock. It's fun to keep her healed when she does all the damage, but on the rare occasions when I play him alone (like when she decides to level ahead of me) it's boring as hell. I knew that paladins were best at healing, buffing, and assisting other players going into the class, so I knew what to expect, but I can see why people who choose paladins thinking they'd get a 'holy warrior' are irritated with what they've gotten in exchange.

Re:Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[falcon5768]

whats depressing about it is that holy warrior is EXACTLY what the PLD from warcraft was when it was introduced in 2. Forr some reason in WoW they just cut its balls off and said here.

Also they didnt really mention it but it was ALL auction houses, including hord, not just the two sides they mention.

Re:Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[Spleener12]

Ah, have you read the patchnotes? The paladin changes go a bit farther than a simple talent revamp (pretty much all the seals/judgements were messed with, for one thing.)

Re:Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[Chi Hsuan Men]

I knew that paladins were best at healing, buffing, and assisting other players going into the class, so I knew what to expect

This statement on its own makes some sense. After all, Paladins do have a dearth of talents that allow them to buff multiple ways. In addition, if you outfit a Paladin with a decent set of cloth, you have a functional secondary healer. If you play them in a creative manner, Paladins can be extremely flexible and helpful in a party.

but I can see why people who choose paladins thinking they'd get a 'holy warrior' are irritated with what they've gotten in exchange.

This I don't understand. Overall, paladins, on their own, stand up as a class. They won't be the first to finish off a mob, but they will last a lot longer against higher level mobs than most classes. If you do your homework, you're going to find a lot of alliance players complaining that paladins do not do enough damage; however, the flip side of the argument comes from horde players saying that they're impossible to kill. So, if the alliance players get their wish, paladins become death dealing nightmares and if Horde players get their wish, paladins become a class that can't heal or deal damage.

This also goes for anyone who gets angry about warriors not doing the most damage, or how x class cannot do y. Warriors aren't supposed to deal the most damage, they're suppose to tank (or take damage) and maintain aggro (keep an enemy's attention). This is the reason why I stopped wasting my time with the Blizzard forums, as it is simply 2% of the player base constantly whining about how their class was not powerful enough.

Class balance does not mean: "my class is more powerful than everyone elses'".

Re:Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[Sylver Dragon]

I think the reason Paladins complain about their damage is that they are slow to kill stuff while soloing on PvE type stuff. They probably haven't spent much time in BG or just don't realize how powerful their defensive stuff makes them.
As an example, I spent a bunch of time in Warson Gulch, and I play horde. The alliance tends to have a paladin grab the flag and run with it. The reason for this is that a good paladin needs almost no cover. I've seen lone paladins with half a dozen horde players chasing them down make it all the way across the map with the flag. The reason is that they are nearly impossible to kill, especially if they have good equipment and potions. Hence the reason horde players complain about Paladins.
Honestly though, I don't think they really needed to revamp them much. Yes, they were a bitch to drop, but it could be done if the horde players were smart. Tip for horde players: if the paladin isn't dying, stop trying to kill him and look for another healer. Most of the time there will be a priest or druid giving him a bit of healing help, drop that assistance first, and the paladin usually becomes hard to kill, as opposed to impossible. Also, don't try to solo kill a paladin, unless you have several levels on him. Moreover, if you are in the BG stay with the group, and team up on anything you find, soft healers first (e.g. Priests, Druids). Lastly, if you are a rogue and you are fighting a paladin while there is a mage, warlock, druid, or priest in the area, smack yourself, hard. Go gank the squishy cloth wearing thing healing/blasting your tanks, then help out on the enemy tank.

Re:Not a Total Paladin Revamp

[Anonymous Coward]

They did get a nerf to their survivability

-forbearance debuff after using divine protection/shield or blessing of protection preventing them from using an invulnerability for 1 minute
-spiritual focus - which lets them heal while being beaten on - being moved down 5 points in the holy tree
-illumination and divine favour being moved down 5 points each in the holy tree which means that you CAN'T get both DF and the 7th tier ret or prot talent

in exchange for various talented and untalented buffs to their damage.

And, incidentally, the most common complaint about paladins had NOTHING to do with their damage. It was that they were boring to play. This patch (partially at least) solved that problem by increasing their combat options and interactivity. Of the paladins that were asking for more damage, nearly all of them were simply asking for the ability to trade survivability for higher damage.

PS - trading mana for higher DPS (ie casting a damage spell) directly reduces survivability of healing classes by reducing the mana available for healing.

also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Shivetya]

as many changes are directly because of whining by the PvP crowd of WOW which isn't the majority no matter how much they or even Blizzard would pretend otherwise.

Depending on how you count them this is the third nerfing of Paladins and probably the most effective. The new fear is that someone will find a way for his Paladin to dual wield shields :) Paladins are probably the worst implemented class in WoW. Simply put they should probably never have been put in WoW as player conceptions based on past Blizzard products and those of competitors portray an idea that is far from what was implemented in WoW. In WoW Paladins are the hardest things to kill for those with little skill in PvP and probably the easiest character to play badly.

Before commencing on the changes to the class Blizzard asked the community through multiple threads what they thought was wrong with each of the Paladins talents and abilities and why. They got an earful, some were inane comments while others delved into the numbers to explain their position. Come the first preview patch on the Test Realm and it was evident to many that the developers chose to ignore all the responses they received. The primary evidence was a talent named Blessing of Kings. One of the major issues with Paladin players was having this 5 minute Blessing as the top tier of one of the talent trees. Two revisions of the new Talent tree and it finally moved. There were other obvious indicators of developers not acknowledging the issues but this was the most glaring.

Come patch time and Paladins will find a major change. The one and formost speciality of Paladins was their ability to heal under stress. This was because of a talent called Spiritual Focus, when bought fully provided a 70% chance to heal while being wailed upon. This was one of the first talents many Paladins obtained and found in many builds. Now a new Paladin will find previously class defining talent further down the holy tree and the complimentary talents even further down. In other words, what was once the defining ability of a class will not be for only a few of the class.

The second defining ability of Paladins were their shields which gave them short time immunity from about anything, upwards of a dozen seconds. Paladins had two of these and could use them back to back on themselves is necessary. Multiple Paladins could use them on allies for protection from somone important who pulled to much aggro. After incessant whining by PvP players who could not play a FPS without cheat codes this ability now cannot be used on the same target more than once per minute.

Many classes have gone through revisions that greatly enhanced the playability of those classes or fixed glaring issues with one of the three talent trees each class enjoys. Beastmaster Hunters became more viable in 1.7 and Feral Druids became truly viable in 1.9. Druids of other talent trees also enjoyed improvement. Not so with Paladins, in fact many priest players, whose class gets reviewed in 1.10, are now afraid of being "Paladinized".

Paladins can rejoice in knowing they are not the only class to suffer in 1.9. As PvP ruins most PvE play in games it is found in Hunters will enjoy considerable changes in 1.9 No longer will pets have unique abilities because of who they were before training. Players sought out special pets, sometimes at great time expenditure, to give themselve something fairly unique and an advantage. This has been lost as pets are now differentiated only by type and skin texture. Type being wolf,cat, and etc. Skin texture as the only difference between any two wolves will be the texture, same for cats and so on. Used to be you could find pets with fast pursuit speeds, odd attack types, or even slower speeds. No more. Beastmastery specialist top tier power, Bestial Wrath, got the nerf stick as too many cloth wearing PvPers complained it wasn't fair that a pet could kill them. Even food was apparently causing too much benefit to players so that

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Anonymous Coward]

it's fine lern 2 play

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Godai]

I can't believe how much of what you wrote I disagree with.

First, my guild has several pallies and thier intial reactions were mixed. Some liked what they were getting and some hated it. Once they'd all had a chance to mix around on the test server though, they'd pretty much come together at "reasonably happy" to "okay with it". None of our pallies are unhappy anymore, the most displeased now of the opinion that it simply "doesn't do much for what I'd hoped, but at least it does X, Y & Z". About half our pallies PVP too, and a couple of them are consistently high (ie. first, second or third) in the standing at the end of a battleground. Pallies who say their class sucks at PVP are, frankly, poor paladins.

Second, the 'nerf' to hunter pets (as in making them uniform) is hardly unexpected and actually makes a lot of sense when you look at from a different angle. Bliz has been saying for MONTHS that this was coming, and explained why: they have always wanted pet customizability to be soley from pet points, and not from the base pet. The reasoning is actually very simple: if base pet mattered, eventually all hunters would have the same two or three pets, because those two or three would be the 'best'. Not only would this reduce uniqueness, it would create competition for those few pets. The vision of the pet is that players will choose an animal that they like (whether for the slight variation in abilities it can learn or for aethetics) and that will help provide player distinction. In my opinion, this is a far better tack to take.

Finally, I laugh at the notion that unified LFG & General channels will result in only 'local players' being accepted into groups. I can't remember the last time I joined a pick-up group (PUG) and found all 5 (or 10, or whatever) were in Ironforge (I play Alliance); inevitably at least one person is on the other continent and usually more. This is because you could always join a General chat channel from elsewhere if you knew how, and by the upper levels most had figured it out. Linked auction houses is nothing but a Good Thing(tm).

Frankly, this is looking like one of the better patches unless you're one of those Paladins that for some reason thought they'd be promoted into Gods.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[The Kow]

It never fails to astound me just how little paladins seem to recognize that their strength lies in the fact that they are a healer who is virtually impossible to kill. Being that I play a priest, the relevance of this combination of strengths is pretty goddamn distinct, but whatever. As long as paladins are on "the other team", I'll enjoy the fruits of their misguided mental labors.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[HunterZ]

Where did you get this info on pets supposedly being nerfed in 1.9? I don't see it anywhere in the detailed patch notes at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com.nyud.net:8090/patch notes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

I'm neutral on this issue. I didn't mind the idea that some pets are better than others, as it makes pet taming that much more interesting and useful. On the other hand, it again gives those with no life an advantage over casual players.

Also, to whomever it was that mentioned that unequal pets would cause everyone to have the same pet: It's just as bad when the choice is arbitrary. In Guild Wars there is almost no difference between pets, and as a result 95% of Rangers have the cat pet that you are forced to tame as part of an early Ranger quest.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[C0rinthian]

Hunters will enjoy considerable changes in 1.9 No longer will pets have unique abilities because of who they were before training. Players sought out special pets, sometimes at great time expenditure, to give themselve something fairly unique and an advantage. This has been lost as pets are now differentiated only by type and skin texture. Type being wolf,cat, and etc. Skin texture as the only difference between any two wolves will be the texture, same for cats and so on. Used to be you could find pets with fast pursuit speeds, odd attack types, or even slower speeds. No more. Beastmastery specialist top tier power, Bestial Wrath, got the nerf stick as too many cloth wearing PvPers complained it wasn't fair that a pet could kill them.

Pet changes are good. It will mean that I won't see 10 copies of 'The Rake' in a BG anymore. I can pick a pet I like, and give him the abilities I want to make him unique. I also don't think the Bestial Wrath change is a nerf. Yes, the damage mod is dropped, but the DURATION is increased. To me, that means my pet is in the fight longer. If he's on a caster, it means the target can't do anything for longer. That's a buff in my mind.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Spleener12]

The second defining ability of Paladins were their shields which gave them short time immunity from about anything, upwards of a dozen seconds. Paladins had two of these and could use them back to back on themselves is necessary. Multiple Paladins could use them on allies for protection from somone important who pulled to much aggro. After incessant whining by PvP players who could not play a FPS without cheat codes this ability now cannot be used on the same target more than once per minute.

Were you expecting them to buff the DPS of the class (and they did buff the class' DPS, though if you were just a retnoob who puts up SoC and autoattacks you'll have to change your strategy a bit) and NOT nerf their defensive abilities?

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Quikah]

About the only thing I know about being changed with Hunter pets is that their speed was supposedly normalized. This allows you to actually run away from the pets when you are on a mount unlike previously where all the pets seemed to have infinite speed (at least all the ones that hunters who PvP use anyway) able to catch an epic mount.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[obeythefist]

Yeah, alliance players are just like that, though. I play predominantly horde and I'm glad of it. Alliance chat areas are like barrens chat, only *everywhere* you go.

Having said that, I've previously won in PvP bouts against paladins (who weren't doing a great job at PvP). Hopefully this new patch won't overpower them any further. Blizzard have done an outstanding job of making each class very well balanced, with unique and interesting playing styles for each one.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[obeythefist]

Who uses pets in GW anyway? The AI for them is godawful and you lose two very important slots for the privelege.

I don't have any problem with pets being the same, either. Blizzard sells WoW on the basis that casual play doesn't disadvantage you. Giving advantages to people with too much time and too much real world money discourages casual play. I would bet real world money, however, that of those 5 million subscribers, the majority are casual players.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[argStyopa]

^^^ Paladin player, obviously?

The above post should be taken with a grain of salt, however, since apparently he's more concerned with whining than actually stating facts accurately.

I play a Hunter, so that's the only class I can speak to. His comments about Hunter pets are flat-out wrong. PET SPEEDS are made equivalent, but pet attack speed, damage, and secondary attack modes remain quite different (Broken Tooth remains 1.0 attack speed, Ursius 2.30 attack speed). Further pets remain differentiated by what skills they can learn, and the effects of these skills. So there is still a great deal of gameplay in the hunter's pet choice.

Patch notes here: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patchnot es.html

Further, I know a lot of warlocks that are delighted with some of the changes, so it's not entirely gloom and doom.

Look, Blizzard doesn't do anything 100% perfect, few of us do. But by and large this patch is what it's meant to be, a tweaking of gameplay with some additional content. That's pretty much it.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[AlexMax2742]

Why is it any surprise that people can't play their class? When there's barely any penalty for death, good habits don't get beaten into you.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Anonymous Custard]

Pallies in BG PvP (like Arathi Basin) can last very long assaulting an enemy base, often distracting way too many players who'll continue to attack them while their shield is up.

"Healer who's nearly impossible to kill" is a great description for pallies in PvP.

Re:also know as the PvP whiners rejoice patch

[Godai]

Ironically, I play a priest as well, but obviously on the Alliance :) I completely agree with 'healers that are impossible to kill', and I'm sure you find -- as I do -- that this point in particuar is a little grating given how damned easy we are to crush.

Personally I think the pally changes are, for the most part, pretty fair. They seem to have evened out the trees a little, making them more sensible. They've eliminated what is a large source of annoyance for both pallies & their raid team (5 minute blessing).

We get our love next patch and frankly, it'd better be good. I don't know how you're spec'd, but I'm getting awfully sick of being Holy spec'd or 'Free HK' spec'd as it's also known.

Incidentally, I think when Shaman get their review we'll see similar things brought in, like totems that last longer and affect more people. I think their trees need a little work too.

My Thoughts

[The Snowman]

The other day I was playing my paladin and partied with some random guy to work on a quest. He mentioned that he loves partying with paladins because they can buff, heal, and tank. I came up with a quote that captures the essence of the class:

My paladin does not die, and neither do his enemies.

Other than that, I am looking forward to linked auction houses. As it stands right now, all of my characters use Ironforge as their base of operations. While I have a good computer and don't get lag running around, I do get lag when initially loading all those textures and junk from the hard drive. All the memory and GPU in the world won't help you load about 400 MB of data from a hard disk. So, spreading the load around between capitol cities will certainly help. Hell, Darnassus might actually be useful for something now.

Gates of Ahn'Qiraj: meh. Sounds cool at first, but we already have raid instances so it's nothing new. Apparently it will take a few hundred players to unlock the instance. The word "clusterfuck" comes to mind, especially considering that horde and alliance are supposed to work together to git'r done. As if Ironforge and Orgrimmar weren't bad enough, now we're going to have some massive world event that will not only turn our framerate into a slideshow, but likely crash the server as well. Anyone remember the huge battles on the Dark Iron server between PA and PvP? This will be ten times worse.

Still, overall, it sounds like a good patch and it just got done updating my files. I am looking forward to this so bye bye, I have an addiction to support :-)

Re:My Thoughts

[buffer-overflowed]

Survivability is why Paladins can not be allowed to deal decent damage. It would just be positively retarded. About all they needed was a revamp of the judgement system to make it not suck, and a few convienance things. And that's what they got, pretty much. Oh and a few consistancy tweaks so SoC isn't a holy damage version of the windfury lottery kill system.

Imagine Shamans(and their totems need fixed to bring them in line with blessings for raiding, and that's about it) with immunity shields. Gahhh..

Re:My Thoughts

[Krater76]

I'm not on the test server so I don't know but I don't think you will need a few hundred players in the same location at the same time. More likley you will need a few hundred players to gather resources and turn them into a quest giver in the major cities. Might need a 40-man or someone with exalted with Cenarion Hold to truly open the gates.

Frankly, I'm not too excited about AQ. How long until the 20-man and 40-man are down to a science? Probably very quickly. And in the end the 2+ week wait while doing hte gate openings is going to be just a pain and not really unique. It's just another 'key' quest (like Onyxia or UBRS), just everyone has the key once it's opened.

If Blizzard truly wanted to get people excited they would've left the 5-man that was supposed to go in AQ. That was a big mistake leaving that out.

Re:My Thoughts

[Incoherent07]

I don't really understand the argument "ho hum another 20-man and another 40-man but a 5-man dungeon I could get excited about". A 5 man dungeon is going to get cleared and mastered even faster than any larger size dungeon, simply because every raid guild out there is going to send half a dozen groups through it. And there's a severe limitation on what you can require a 5 man group to do; worse, many of those permutations have already been explored in pre-60 content, meaning anything new is going to have to look even harder to find something interesting and yet new that can be done with a 5 man group without unduly requiring a specific set of classes.

Blizzard is in something of a tight spot right now if they're trying to please "casual" players. Consider that all of the following are considered "casual" by different people:
1. Anyone who cannot or does not do 40 man raid instances.
2. Anyone who cannot or does not do 20 man raid instances.
3. Anyone who cannot or does not play for more than X hours at a time.
4. Anyone who cannot or does not play for more than Y hours in a given week, although at one stretch they may play up to Z hours.

So if you're trying to appeal to these people, what do you do? Thus far 20 man instances have been the response; personally I enjoy them, but judging by the huge outcry this doesn't appeal to everyone, and worse people feel marginalized by them because they think Blizzard assumes more out of them than they can get. (Either that, or they insist that they be able to play the game with only their 4 closest friends, without ever having to resort to any other people.) The other response is faction grinding, which is doable by anyone but boring.

So imagine the response to a 5 man dungeon. Either it's a huge step up from Dire Maul, in which case categories 3 and 4 will complain about the length and/or difficulty, or it's not, in which case categories 1 and 2 will complain that they're being marginalized again.

The bigger problem is that Blizzard made a game that's so appealing to such a wide range of players from 1-59 that they didn't think about how to somehow appeal to everyone once they hit 60... which most of them did 6 months ago.

"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

So is this thing gone yet? If it were, I would consider playing WoW. As it stands, I cannot support a company who uses anti-cheating software such as this and sues reverse-engineers. No, I'm not trolling.

Re:"The Warden"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but cheaters are free to join other MMORPGs.

Re:"The Warden"

[C0rinthian]

I like my games cheat-free. You will not be missed.

Re:"The Warden"

[vertinox]

I like my games cheat-free. You will not be missed.

I like my real life lawsuit free. Innovation and free trade will be missed :(

Re:"The Warden"

[obeythefist]

That's a perfectly fair statement to make.

No, Warden isn't gone, much like Raven Shield still uses Punkbuster. I hear even CoD2 is getting anti-cheat software put into the next patch.

Warden is responsible for the 18 odd thousand accounts being removed recently, and I am quite happy for that because the vast majority of those banned would be people violating the terms of use agreement, cheating, and sweatshop farming goldminers.

If you like, you're free to circumvent Warden by using the Sony rootkit, but I for one thank you for not playing WoW and therefore not cheating. WoW is a very easy game to play, and reaching level 60 does not need a "god" mode.

Re:"The Warden"

[zeno_2]

Actually if you start the game with the normal exe, the warden thing doesn't even come up.

If you do start the game with the new patcher system, from what I understand, it lets you know if you have a trojan type program installed that you werent aware of (or maybe you were), but does not transmit that to anyone.

In any case, we all think your pretty cool for not playing a game for the above reasons. I bet your a blast at parties as well.

Re:"The Warden"

[GermanShepherd]

Actually if you start the game with the normal exe, the warden thing doesn't even come up.

Warden is the small program that only runs when WoW.exe is running. No bypassing that. The launcher (that loads when you use the default shortcut) is a cheatware scanner in addition to Warden. http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/misc/launcher.html seems to say that the Blizzard Launcher only notifies the user if you have cheatware. If you disregard the warnings and go ahead and start the game, then it's Warden's job to tell Blizzard that you're cheating and it won't be pretty.

So I'm not exactly sure what you meant... if I misunderstood and corrected with something you already knew, then my apologies, heh.

But I must say: More power to Blizzard for banning all those crazy level 1's with names comprised entirely of consonants that spam-whispered me offers to buy gold and disrupted my roleplaying. Booyah! (...and heck, even if they didn't get 'em all, at least they're trying.)

Re:"The Warden"

[zeno_2]

I'm playing wow right now and I dont have any warden program running.. Does it hide itself somehow?

And yes, those bastard lvl 1 characters named bbgg suck =)

Re:"The Warden"

[zeno_2]

The link you sent doesnt really say anything about warden running if you dont use the launcher. It does mention that the launcher has a cheat detecting program built in, to notify those users who might not know they had installed something like that. They then say that its there to stop those who dont know from getting them detected while playing the game, but id assume that when they say detected, they are talking about other means beyond a program that detects it. They do specifically mention that it wont send anything to blizzard if it finds anything, yet doesn't say anything about a secondary cheat detecting progrram that *does* send stuff to blizzard..

So, i dunno, im pretty sure warden only runs while you run the launcher, if you run wow.exe, you dont get any of that.

Re:"The Warden"

[drsquare]

Why are players allowed to make names composed entirely of consonants? Seems like a failure on Blizzard's part.

Re:"The Warden"

[GermanShepherd]

Well, the Warden scare was brought about long before they added the Blizzard Launcher. It's a small bit of code buried within the WoW.exe file that periodically downloads itself from Blizzard servers (while running the game) and compares open window titles and such to hashes of known cheatware. This ariticle from rootkit.com and this article from Wikipedia seem to indicate that it only occurs during operation of WoW.exe.

What good (used carefully, since I know some people don't think it's good at all, heheh) would Warden be to anybody if people were able to bypass it by skipping the Launcher? Warden is encrypted inside the game itself, and the Launcher (according to Blizzard's explanation) was created to help notify users of cheatware that they may not know about, which by logging into WoW with them, would be banned.

Re:"The Warden"

[zeno_2]

What good (used carefully, since I know some people don't think it's good at all, heheh) would Warden be to anybody if people were able to bypass it by skipping the Launcher?

Im not disagreeing (sp?) here but, the reason it would be handy is if you were not sure if you had a bad program installed on your computer, maybe from the installation of an addon or whatnot. I'll have to read the links when I get off work, thanks for the further reading.

By the way, we went to zg last night, and our entire raid crashed everytime a beserker feared us. Fun good new patch stuff, woot..

Cablitin
Proudmore

Re:"The Warden"

[Sylver Dragon]

Good, take your cheating ass back to CS.
Why in the world would anyone be against anti-cheat programs? I've played CS enough to see people aim-botting and speed hacking regularly. On the other hand, when playing Wolfenstein:Enemy Territory it was rare to see someone whom I could definatly say was cheating. The difference: Punkbuster.
While I'm not a big fan of the way Blizzard went after BNetd, I can sort of see their point. With Battle.net they were able to keep people from using the same CD-Key on several machines, BNetd didn't impliment this. From Blizzards point of view, BNetd was gutting the one control Blizzard had over copyright infringment. Heck, they didn't even try to check CD-keys when you were running a LAN games, so if you really just wanted to use a kengen and a No-CD crack for a few of the players, you could get away with it.
That said I fully support companies building anti-cheating programs into their online games. There are too many cheaters and griefers out there who make the game unplayable for those of us who aren't hardcore players. In CS I was a so-so player, though I can never be sure how much of this was just me sucking and how much was me facing aimbots. In Wolf:ET I was a fairly good player, usually near the top of the standings on any given round, and I know that this was all me. Yes, I did see the occasional cheater on ET, these tended to be the obvious ones (you'd spec them and see their cross-hairs jumping from head to head); but, there were far less than I saw on CS.
Now that I play WoW, I'm glad to see that they have something in there for preventing cheaters. Is it perfect, I doubt it, but, it's better than nothing. I love to go to the battlegrounds, and I would hate to have to deal with cheaters in there, paladins are bad enough (he's almost dead, no wait, he's at full health).

Power to the Forsaken!

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

I for one thank you for not playing WoW and therefore not cheating.

So because I don't support spyware, that makes me a cheater? I would hope that you realize your statement logically does not follow from what I said. Note that my post said that I wasn't playing WoW because of Blizzard's ethics, not because I want to cheat. Your statement here is analagous to a statement like "if you don't submit to a cavity search and let the FBI scan your hard drive, bank accounts, and all personal files you keep at home, you're a terrorist".

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

I like my games free of judgemental assholes who assume malice where there is none. You will not be missed.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

Good, take your cheating ass back to CS.

I didn't realize that not supporting a company because I disagree with their ethics made me a cheater. Here's my reply.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

Actually if you start the game with the normal exe, the warden thing doesn't even come up.

If by "doesn't come up", you mean that it doesn't show up in the Windows task manager, then yes, you're correct. Except "Warden" is just the name for some of the code inside the WoW exe. So it wouldn't show up in the task manager as a seperate application.

In any case, we all think your pretty cool for not playing a game for the above reasons. I bet your a blast at parties as well.

Said better than I ever could.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

So because I dislike Blizzard's ethics, that makes me a cheater? Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't realize that.

Re:"The Warden"

[Sylver Dragon]

No, the fact that you don't want to run anti-cheating software for an online game makes it a good bet you are a cheater. I can understand not wanting to support a company which goes after people who reverse engineer their software, and if that was all you had brought up, I could see your point, but the crack about the anti-cheating software has no place in that, hence the assumption.
Given the vast number of cheats, and cheaters using them, for games which don't impliment something I don't see how you can logically defend the idea that not wanting to run an anti-cheat system is an ethical choice. Anti-cheat systems make online games playable.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

No, the fact that you don't want to run anti-cheating software for an online game makes it a good bet you are a cheater.

Such a beautiful assertion. Yet it is incorrect. This is the same as saying all privacy advocates are criminals.

But more relevant to this topic, I have read how the Warden works, and I consider it an invasion of my privacy. I am not opposed to anti-cheating measures, so long as I believe they are ethical. If you thought I was opposed to all anti-cheat software, that was not my intent. And while the Warden may not transmit identifiable information as of now, how can you be sure Blizzard won't make that tiny step forward and start sending back other info that's read from your computer? The EULA and TOS almost certainly cover their ass for such a move, at least from a legal standpoint. And no one would know until somebody reverse-engineered it. So no thanks, I don't want to become an expert in machine language and disassemble each patch just to make sure some corporation isn't spying on me.

I can understand not wanting to support a company which goes after people who reverse engineer their software, and if that was all you had brought up, I could see your point, but the crack about the anti-cheating software has no place in that, hence the assumption.

From my original post:
---BEGIN---
So is this thing gone yet? If it were, I would consider playing WoW. As it stands, I cannot support a company who uses anti-cheating software such as this and sues reverse-engineers.
---END---
I guess I should've said I was opposed to the way Warden works, not the fact that it's anti-cheating.

I don't see how you can logically defend the idea that not wanting to run an anti-cheat system is an ethical choice.

This is like saying "I don't see how you can logically defend the idea of privacy from the government as an ethical choice". Yeah, there's no logical argument against letting third parties do whatever they want with my property or information! How dumb!

Re:"The Warden"

[obeythefist]

Warden is spyware as much as Punkbuster is spyware, with one possible worsening factor, there is no opt-out in using Warden if you want to play WoW (although, likewise, if you want to play on a decent RavenShield server, you really need to use Punkbuster if you don't want wallhacking kiddies camping you).

Warden does not run if WoW is not running, it is a component of WoW. Warden only searches for specific running processes known to be cheat enabling (like Punkbuster). The illusion of privacy, however, is a flimsy one as always. If Blizzard really wanted all your data, they wouldn't have any problems gathering it, you've already installed WoW. The only way you can be certain they're not getting your data is if you firewall off all of Blizzard's ip ranges. Have fun trying to play WoW under those circumstances.

By your logic, people shouldn't use Windows or Linux autoupdaters because they "spy" on your system to determine which patches and so on are available. Obviously, however, as you mentioned, I am suggesting you are clearly a terrorist because you want the freedom to cheat when playing WoW (which is effectively what you are asking for). Nice Godwin, however. Please call me a nazi in your reply to make sure the circle is complete.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

You originally stated that because I didn't want to run WoW with The Warden, I was a cheater. I pointed out the flaw in your logic, so you go on to peripheral arguments, and invoke Godwin. Good job. Next time, just insult me without the superflous arguments. It will save time for both of us. Or better yet, don't reply.

Re:"The Warden"

[Damvan]

"So is this thing gone yet? If it were, I would consider playing WoW. As it stands, I cannot support a company who uses anti-cheating software such as this and sues reverse-engineers. No, I'm not trolling." The word spyware or ethics do not appear anywhere in that post. How the fuck are we supposed to know that you are opposed to Blizzard's ethics based on the above post, rather than think you are opposed to anti-cheating software. And then you attack people for thinking, based on your post, that you are against anti-cheating software. We aren't psychics. Asshole.

Re:"The Warden"

[ClamIAm]

I admit that my original post was pretty dense (in terms of how the information was presented). I guess I figured the average intelligence of slashdot was a little higher than it apparently is. So let's recap.

As it stands, I cannot support a company who uses anti-cheating software such as this and sues reverse-engineers.

Looking at my reasoning for not supporting Blizzard, the only two reasons I can think of for not supporting them (based on this statement) would be if I'm either ethically opposed to their business practices, or I want to cheat. So you just assume I'm a cheater. Way to go, Chief. I hope you never serve jury duty, as that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing probably wouldn't go over too well with you.

But aside from that, why in the hell would a cheater post something like this on a mainstream, heavy-traffic, non-shady news site? They would certainly know that they'd get flamed to hell (unless that's what they wanted). So barring me being a self-sacrificial flame-seeking cheater, there isn't much of a reason to think I cheat.

And then you attack people for thinking, based on your post, that you are against anti-cheating software. We aren't psychics. Asshole.

Yeah, I should just take the abuse of a bunch of people assuming that I'm a cheater. You aren't a psychic. Asshole.

God!

[Wilson_6500]

Why call them paladins if they can't swing a sword or a mace or whatever? Call them Priests in Plate or Hateful Healers or something. Paladins are traditionally (in game terms) the folks who the men of the cloth turn to when they need someone to go out and _hurt_ something. Why rely on the expectations and the weight of the _name_ of a familiar gaming Job when you're not willing to work in the familiar idiom of that Job? Why pass up the chance to bolster your "lore" with a little creative license? If you want Paladins to run around half-naked with a sword in each hand, fighting for some greater cause using the art of War Dancing--fine! They're still un/holy warriors fighting for a higher power. By calling Doctor Tank a "Paladin," you're giving new players the idea that they will be able to play one out as a traditional paladin. I'm not saying that they should be in a party to do _all_ the damage or to manage Hate (through Provoke, or whatever WoW uses)--if they were, why have Warrior classes?

Everything I read about WoW makes it out to be the most nonsensical number crunch yet, wrapped up all pretty in the famous Blizzard brand name.

Re:God!

[fatboyslack]

Pally's do damage, just that it is all comparative.... eg a mage who wears his bed sheets for protection does a stack of damage *compared* to the pally. When compared to hostile ingame characters that are killed for XP / sadistic fun / quests, the Pally can beat mobs several levels above itself.

Of course, my hunter can also do this, but only because I have plenty of pet food to feed it when it dies. It dies a lot.

Re:God!

[Wilson_6500]

I've got "RDM-itis" from FFXI. Red Mages wore real armor, swung a real sword, and could cast damage-causing spells in addition to heals, debuffs, and (crappy) buffs. Problem is that they didn't do any of these well: they couldn't tank, they couldn't manage Hate, they couldn't do crap for damage with sword or spell. In most parties, they were basically a backup healer and debuff manager: they took one load partially off of the White mage and one almost totally off the Black mage. They sure as hell couldn't solo very well, although I had all indications that this is something at which they should be quite good--imagine a warrior that can heal himself _enough to keep himself alive._ They were better than white mages, at least. (They also had the wrong class ability--since they have such low MP but NEED to cast lots of spells in a row, they should have had infinite MP instead of Chainspell--but that's beyond the scope of this rant.)

I don't like to see classes hobbled in this way. I realize that a class can't be good at everything, but when you give someone a good set of armor, a good weapon, healing AND attack spells, you kinda expect that they should at LEAST be able to solo a mob at their level. Couldn't with my RDM. If you're going to let a player make a fighter/mage, then that character should at least be able to grind at a rate comparable to a pure mage or pure fighter.

Then again, balance is hard.

I understand the comparative damage aspect. We all understand, though, that an MMO is about maximizing numbers--damage per second or whatever. If a party can grind through mobs faster because their Wizard can pour out damage at a stupid--not merely a ludicrous--rate, then they'll go with that. Nobody wants to grind forever, so this is understandable. Still, if a Paladin is being told "your damage is worthless: hide in the front lines, tank, cast, and do crap for damage with your weapon," they aren't doing what a traditional Paladin should do, and should probably be named something else.

Re:God!

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously didn't play very far into FFXI. Certainly, you never got a character above level 40. The comments you make about Red Mages are only valid in the very early stages of the game (levels 1-40 probably aren't even 25% of the total xp grind needed to fully level a job to 75). Above level 40, Red Mages are one of the most sought after jobs in the game, because they fill a vitally important niche role that only they and the (far rarer) Bards can fill.

This is because they get two white magic spells that no other job can cast, namely Dispel and Refresh. Dispel is picked up in the low 30s and quickly becomes essential for fighting most xp mobs, particularly beetles and crawlers, which have defence-boosting abilities. Bards can replicate this effect with their Finale song. Refresh is picked up at 41 and works like the regen spell, except instead of regenerating hp, it works for mp. This can allow a decent party, where the mages know how to show restraint, to essentially eliminate all downtime in an xp party. Furthermore, the Red Mage's Convert ability, which it gained at level 40, was a perfectly good fix to the low-mp problem.

In short, Red Mage was just one of those jobs, like Monk, Ninja and Summoner, where the early levels were a fairly grim little prelude to be slogged through until you get to the real meat of the job at the higher levels. I have no problems with that, nor do most of the other people who play the jobs I mentioned.

And if you want to be soloing, you shouldn't be playing FFXI. Square-Enix have never made any attempt to hide the fact that their game offers nothing to people who want to play solo.

Re:God!

[Wilson_6500]

I played until about 30RDM - 5WHM or so. I knew about "Convert," and it frankly didn't seem like the solution I wanted. I bailed on FFXI (and MMOs) a long time ago.

I also don't call having one extra (if vital) debuff (Dispel is a debuff, no matter how it's used) and one extra heal function exactly a wealth of opportunity for the class, especially when all it does is allow a party to maximize a number. I sorta LIKED downtime, because it's the only time the party members would actually TALK with one another.

What I'd like to see is a party of _specialized_ Red Mages being able to basically get along as well as any other party, if at a slower pace.

No, scratch that. I'd like to see an MMO where people aren't _happy_ that they only have to grind 40 levels before grinding levels becomes less tedious.

+1 Geek Points

[(trb001)]

Didn't realize until last night that the Blizzard downloader used P2P to grab the patch, good geek points there. Took me about an hour to fully assemble the 76Mb patch file, but it was great afterwards...never seen the server that empty. Ironforge was clearly less laggy, even on my beefless laptop. However, Stormwind was noticably MORE laggy, so we'll see how that affects game play in the days to come. While I hated having to go into Ironforge during peak hours, at least I could auction during non-peak hours...if I can't get around Stormwind/Darnassus on a day-to-day basis, that's going to suck.

Biggest addition, other than revamping the Priest talents (btw...check your talents when you log in, I noticed they refunded all priest's talent points because they completely redid the tree), had to be the Soul Shard bags. Along with that new tailoring recipe, it was fun to watch how the world economy dynamically shifted. Normally I can sell (been playing for only a couple of weeks, take with appropriate grain of salt) light leather stacks for between 20s and 50s depending on the market that day...last night I was selling stacks for 1-2g, and they were selling by the time I closed the auction window.

--trb

Re:+1 Geek Points

[jayhawk88]

That world event is also probably one of the major reasons leathers are in so much demand, just FYI. People are buying the shit out of metals, cloths, and leathers to turn into the dudes in the IF Warriors area.

Re:+1 Geek Points

[C0rinthian]

While I hated having to go into Ironforge during peak hours, at least I could auction during non-peak hours...if I can't get around Stormwind/Darnassus on a day-to-day basis, that's going to suck.

Why would you need to? It's the same auction house in all three cities.

other than revamping the Priest talents (btw...check your talents when you log in, I noticed they refunded all priest's talent points because they completely redid the tree)

They didn't touch priest talents. Unless you think priests are the guys running around in plate and blessing everyone. Heres a hint: Those are PALADINS.

Re:+1 Geek Points

[(trb001)]

Why would you need to? It's the same auction house in all three cities.

I've been playing a human warlock and a night-elf warrior, so I've only needed to go to Ironforge to auction with my lvl 1 dwarf. Ironforge has been sucking because of all the lag associated with the auction house, but at least it's only been in Ironforge. However, with auction houses in Stormwind and Darnassus now, I assume that those cities will become more crowded, taking the load off of Ironforge and redistributing it so that ALL capitol cities are more laggy instead of Ironforge being unbearbly so.

I think it's a moot point though. Having been on for a few hours last night, both Ironforge and Stormwind were managable, so the patch may have indeed helped out.

Heres a hint: Those are PALADINS.

doh...you are correct. My mistake.

--trb

Re:+1 Geek Points

[C0rinthian]

I've been able to relocate my base of operations to Undercity because of the linked auction houses, and couldn't be happier with that fact. (Being able to use a mount inside Undercity is just icing on the cake)

And we all make mistakes. You just got my hopes up is all. ;)

How about a "Quality" Quality Department?

[Deluxe_247]

I read enough of this Paladin whining and crying on the official Forums. Instead of focusing on that, how about the complete lack of Internal Quality Assurance Testing that Blizzard has yet again displayed? They throw these patches on the Test Server and allow a public 'stress' test of changes - then turn the Test Server off, make 'additional changes' and throw it down to the live servers.

Let's just see a few of the more 'rediculous' bugs that made it into this patch:

Firemaw reflecting ALL SPELLS cast at him (This has apparently been hotfixed)
Nefarian respawns immediately upon being kill in Dragon Form. (Yes, he immediately appears back on his throne and you can start the event again - Oddly enough after Phase 1, Phase 2 would not start and then he would stay gone for good so this isn't really a huge issue.)
In MC the Annihilators and Surgers would be banished, becoming immune but still go around beating on people.
In ZG there were multiple reports of fear being bugged
Hakkar was either ninja-buffed or majorly bugged (each equally offensive IMO.)

Im sure the list goes on and on, but these are what I have seen and have been verified for me as of yesterday night. I find it amazing (then again, I expect it from Blizzard now..) that they don't bother to test these things before the patch goes live. How exactly do you give a major boss a "Reflection from all Magical Spells" ability and NOT notice it? Either the game was very poorly programmed (this wouldn't surprise me in the least) or someone is deliberately sabotaging the patches as they are being released on the live realms.

Or maybe someone else has a better explanation, but I find it hard to believe a "Woops!" when things are working perfectly and then suddently take on a completely different aspect or behavior, such as the spell reflection issue of a single boss.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility in the grammar or spelling of this post. I play MMOGs and Im Republican.

Re:How about a "Quality" Quality Department?

[unclethursday]

In ZG there were multiple reports of fear being bugged

Actually, it was a problem noted with the Zerkers. If they feared or thunderclapped you, your client simply CRASHED. Always fun.

Also, Venoxis in ZG had a glitch wherein he could not be reset, and his AoE chain lightning ended up getting an unlimited range.

And, of course, polymorph got FUBARed as well. Now the sheep just wander and wander far away, potentially aggroing other mobs of their type when they unsheep.

sketchy

[Nukleus]

still some sketchy bugs that need to be worked out in 1.9 especially in ZG however the new tier 2 epics look amazing

Re:sketchy

[Anonymous Coward]

As a hunter, I have 1 word:

Barneystalker

The most exciting thing about Ahn'Qiraj

[philipkd]

The most interesting development in the 1.9 patch is the introduction of a server-wide event.

Skip this paragraph if you are already familiar with WoW: There are about 100+ servers in WoW, with anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 gamers per server. And on each server there are numerous guilds with anywhere from 30-200 members. And every server has like 10 elite guilds, those that have killed some of the top bosses like Nefarian or Ragnaros.

With Ahn'Qiraj, apparently they're letting guilds compete in a mission to be the first to open up the gates to Ahn'Qiraj. The gates can only be open once per server. And the guild that does it, rumor has it, gets an artifact item. This is rarer than legendaries (orange), which are rarer than epics (purple). Most of the elite guilds only have one legendary among their whole guild. Now there will be at most one guild on each server with an artifact.

Mad props to Blizzard for adding this. My friend who is in a hardcore guild is saying that their guild is gathering together like an armada to be the first to open these gates. Yay for WoW crack. If you're not already playing WoW, you need to get on it.

Patch explained

[aLEczapKA]

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3479

There ya go, what does this patch really means ;)