Patch 4.2 Bugfix Patch, Bnet Invitational, Blue Posts, The Raid, The Daily Blink

[Boubouille]

Patch 4.2 Fast Bugfix Patch Incoming
A new build will be deployed on live realms soon, this new patch (Build 14480, most likely) will only contain bugfixes and update a couple of item tooltips of previously hotfixed items.

It should fix a couple of annoying bugs that have been on live servers for a while (bugged tab targeting, etc), and hopefully it will open the way for Patch 4.3 on PTRs.

We do have a fix for this ready, however, it will require a client-side patch to address. We're in the process of building a small patch to fix this and a few other issues which also need client updates. You're likely to see what we call a fast patch in the near future (a la patch 4.1.0A in recent past: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/patch-notes/4-1-0a).

Who Will Play Against Whom at the 2011 European Battle.net Invitational?

Eight of the best StarCraft II players from across Europe, eight of the continent’s best Arena teams and more than $50,000 in prize money are the key facts of the 2011 European Battle.net Invitational. Remember, you can follow the action live on our HD stream, free of charge. But who will you see clashing for fame and fortune when the games begin on 6 August in Warsaw, Poland?

As a quick reminder, here is a list of participating players and teams:

StarCraft II:

• NaNiWa
• ThorZaIN
• Nerchio
• White-ra
• Tarson
• Ret
• Socke
• Strelok

World of Warcraft 3v3 arena:

• DNAW Trio
• Victorinox
• I can't believe it's not wizard
• Showtime
• Feelin Mad
• Surprise Effect
• x6tence
• Colgate

The seeding has been done and the brackets are ready. Head over to the official event website and check out the first round matchups.

To learn more about the 2011 European Battle.net Invitational, check out our official announcement. Be sure to visit the dedicated event website to find the HD live stream, player and team profiles, and more.

Blue Posts

Unheeded Warning proc changed from 680 Weapon Damage to 1900 Attack Power.
Yes, it was recently changed via a hotfix. I was delayed a bit in updating the documented hotfixes and apologize for that.

[...] In both PvP and PvE, it was scaling disproportionately for Feral druids, to the extent it's been more desirable than 4.2 items for a lot of players, including non-druids. We want the process of obtaining loot to still feel meaningful as new gear is released, so your character is still progressing in power along with the content to which the items are linked. This one just remained a little too good for its level and relative difficulty to obtain. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Posters are back
Sorry, it's been a while since we've communicated anything about this. Our team has been very busy lately working on a lot of cool things, as well as finalizing plans for BlizzCon, but we're trying to keep our eyes on the forums as much as possible in the process. :) (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Delay for Patch 4.2 Bugfix Patch
The process of documenting, troubleshooting, and testing bug fixes is complicated and constant. We've made many fixes since day one of patch 4.2's release, most of which could be done server-side. All the while we've been working on fixes for bugs that can't be addressed without a client-side patch. But the process for creating a stable new patch build to address any known issues is certainly not as easy as I think you're implying. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Tab Targeting and 4.2 Bugfix Patch
To be clear, we know it's an annoying issue and it's unfortunate that it went live. But as I spoke in another thread a while back (a portion of which someone quoted earlier in this thread), this is a relatively complicated issue. We haven't just been sitting on it all this time. We want to make sure the fix is good, while also avoiding throwing together a quick patch to address it at the risk of breaking other things. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Battlegrounds Matchmaking
We think battlegrounds work best when people are able to get into them quickly.

While the matchmaker starts out being stringent it fairly quickly loosens up its search requirements to get people into games within a reasonable amount of time. We could absolutely make it so limiting that it won't place you into a game until X, Y, and Z standards are equal and you could sit in queue for ... maybe ever, but as you still receive rewards for losing, and due to the (intended) quick nature of games, we don't feel that makes sense for how battlegrounds flow.

Getting people in, playing the game, win or lose, and then quickly into the next match is what most players tend to want - and not long queue times or drawn out matches. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

API - Application points and daily request limits
Once again, mostly developer mumbo jumbo that most of you won't be able to understand but I feel it's important to give that kind of news some exposure if we want to see nice tools in the future.

We've received a few questions about how the daily request limit throttler works and I wanted to explain the point system we use for the API.

First of all, every request we receive is associated with an application. Even when an unauthenticated request comes in, we create a temporary fake application with an id generated from the IP address of the request. Each application falls under an application level or type and each of those levels/types has an associated point value.

Instead of throttling applications by the number of requests made, we look at the cost of the requests made. For example, requesting realm status information is very cheap, therefore has a reduced request cost compared to looking up a guild, which is more expensive.

It doesn't make any sense to say what the exact cost of requests are because we regularly evaluate and tweak the cost of requests based on hardware, software and application usage. What I can do is give you some rough guidelines to use when making lots of requests to the API.

• Requests that hit the data APIs and the realm status cost the least. These represent the baseline cost of a request.
• Characters are expensive to request, but we employ considerable caching to reduce this cost. They can be considered 3x the cost of the baseline.
• Guilds are expensive, especially fetching membership information. We cache as much as possible, but they still run about 3x the cost of the baseline.
• When you use HTTP last modified headers and get a cache hit (that is to say no information needs to be returned), the cost of that request is reduced to the baseline.
• Getting the list of AH dumps for a realm is cheap, so we'll consider it the same as the baseline.
• Downloading one of the generated AH dump files has no cost as it is generated offline and served as a static file.

When an application, either anonymous or registered, spends more points in a day than it has available, based on the application type/level, the request is denied.

Reminder - "The Raid" Livestream on August 6th (Today!) @ 6:00PM PST
Blue Loon Films, the studio behind the upcoming World of Warcraft documentary, The Raid, has announced that the live stream of their film will take place on August 6th.

The Raid follows a guild over the course of a few months and features a host of content including in-game and at-home interviews with the players.

To celebrate the release of the film, TypeFrag will be giving away (during the livestream):

• 1 desktop PC by Doghouse Systems
• 5 high-end gaming headsets
• 25, 25-person Ventrilo servers

The PC features an Intel i5 Quad-Core CPU, Windows 7 64-bit, 1TB HDD, 4GB RAM, 2 NVIDIA GTX 460 PCI-E video cards and more!

The live stream of The Raid will take place on August 6th at 6:00PM (PST) and is brought to you in part by TypeFrag, Gamebreaker.tv and Curse!

The Daily Blink - But My Liege, He is But One Man
The Daily Blink figured out the loss of 300k subscribers, nice job!

[Deleted]

Those WoW team names... I dunno them :/. Either they switched players and names around or Blizz has problems getting some good ones to EU damn... But oh well, looking forward to it anyway.

[Viradiance]

Cute blink

[Zatheyll]

Infinilock is... TEH BATMAN.

[HeavensDemise]

I pray this has the crossbow sound fix. I can't stand the gun sound used in this game and can't wait till my crossbow stops sounding like one.

[Asrialol]

"The Batman" line cracked me up. And as the poster above, I sure as hell hope this is the Lava Bolt Crossbow fix, I had to tamper with sound files to be able to use it without going crazy.

[Arrowstormen]

Will the live event be showed on their website, or some other secret place only cool people get to know?

[neehla]

I'd like a link for the live stream as well. >.

[Melilithia]

Ah DailyBlink, love it. As for Hotfixes, I want to know where the chat spam throttler went... they said they had it July 19th... it's Aug 6th now. >:

[Youarefired]

9th! yeahhhhhhh

[Vongimi]

NOoooooooooooooooooo........... I want my xbow to keep sounding like a gun lol. Love guns!

[cheero]

Will the live event be showed on their website, or some other secret place only cool people get to know?

http://theraid.eventbrite.com/

[Deleted]

As much as I like the idea of making wow more understandable to crowd outside computer games, I doubt this is the right way to do. They were better of showing the daily life of a few members or near hardcore raiders, to show that they are not cavedwelling, fat, unsocial unemployed guys that most people take wow players for. Showing social components, discussions about tactics, joy over success. But only "Raiding is cool, duuh" I am not sure. If it was meant for a WoW audience in the first place its ok :P

And for the starcraft tournament... I miss TLO on that list

[greyghost]

Oh lordy, that Daily Blink.

Also, yay for the targeting fix. No more suddenly targeting dead NPCs with /startattack and no more accidentally targeting things on the other side of the room while having 3 things standing right in your face when you tab for the first time, hopefully! Hooray!

[Deleted]

I really hope they finaly fix the tab targeting bug this week. For as tank as myself is freaking anoying randomly targeting dead mobs, or some random mob that is 50 yards away. And Daily Blink is awesome as always.

[Ligier]

So Blizzard are taking war games and invading Poland with them?

[Deleted]

One of the best blinks I've seen

[Cariboulou]

Hahahaha, I'm still laughing from reading the daily blink. Batman, so awesoome!

[webdonkey]

awesome daily blink... !!!!!

[Deleted]

okai, so there are at least people who think that shit is funny, allways asked myself who is laughing about such bullshit. uh yea he said batman, very funny... ha. ha... no wait... *yawn*