Update: Added today's hotfixes.

2.1.2 PTR Patch Notes, PTR is Now Live!

Goblins vs Gnomes Card Reveal: Anodized Robo Cub, Fel Cannon, Screwjank Clunker

Hero Rotation for November 18

Message from J. Allen Brack
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
WoW Community:

I know how much everyone was looking forward to this expansion, and once you were able to get in and start having fun, all the comments I've seen indicate that this is one of our best yet. But the quality of the content does not excuse the subpar launch experience we delivered, and I apologize for that.

The first two days of the expansion were not a great experience, with many of you facing high queues or significant gameplay problems. We worked around the clock to tackle the demand issues and technical challenges, and fortunately things started looking better on Saturday. While millions of you were able to get in and play over the weekend, with many already reaching level 100, others still ran into very lengthy queues, particularly on the highest-population realms.

To help address this, we’ve expanded the new instancing tech we used to improve queues on Saturday and we’re continuing the process of applying that to raise the capacity of all realms again. This will result in approximately double the prelaunch capacity on each realm, which should greatly reduce queue times for most realms if not eliminate queues altogether.

In recognition of the difficulties so many of you ran into when trying to play over the first few days, we're adding five days’ worth of extra time to every subscription in the Americas, Oceania, and Europe that was active as of Friday, November 14. Things are already in a much better place than they were going into the weekend, so I hope you’ll now be able to focus on having a ton of fun with this expansion.

I also hope you'll accept my apology and keep your faith in us. The support voiced by many of you as we worked through the challenges was immensely appreciated. We're extremely grateful to be part of such a passionate community. We love World of Warcraft, and we're very proud of this expansion, so stumbling out of the gates like this was very disappointing for all of us.

On behalf of the World of Warcraft development team, as well as everyone at Blizzard, thank you all again for your patience and understanding.

See you in Draenor.

Sincerely,
J. Allen Brack
Executive Producer, World of Warcraft

6.0.3 Hotfixes: November 18
Blizzard is working on a hotfix for Tier 2 Trading Posts not unlocking rep gains with Sha'tari Defense or Laughing Skull.
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Garrisons, Followers, and Outposts
  • Fishing Shack: The building should now correctly still provide a bonus while it's under construction.
  • Frostwall Mine: Fixed a number of True Iron Deposits that were spawning inside of pillars and terrain.
  • Mage Tower/Spirit Lodge: Characters under a shapeshifting effect should now be able to use an Ogre Waygate to return to their Garrisons.
  • Outpost, Nagrand: The building bonus for having a Corral should no longer incorrectly dismount Herbalists while harvesting resource nodes.
  • [Requires a realm restart.] Outpost, Spires of Arak: Bonus for the building should now switch correctly when changing buildings for the outpost.
  • Salvage Yard: The building should now correctly still provide a bonus while it's under construction.
  • Followers
    • Followers that are 3 or more levels below the mission level now receive 10% of the mission XP and bonus XP (up from 0%). Additional information on how Followers and mission level affects their XP gain can be found in a forum thread titled Followers and Garrison Missions XP.

Classes
  • Druid (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Balance
      • Empowered Moonkin's clearcasting effect should no longer be incorrectly consumed if it's triggered while the Moonkin is in the middle of casting a spell.
  • Mage (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Talents
      • Comet Storm should now correctly belong to the Frost school and is no longer usable if that school is locked.
  • Paladin (Forums / Skills / Talent Calculator)
    • Talents
      • [Requires a realm restart.] Holy Shield should now correctly deal damage when blocking normal attacks as well.

Quests
  • Bonus Objective: The Forgotten Caves: Gorg the Host should no longer be getting stuck in evade mode.
  • Bonus Objective: The Howling Crag: Further increased the spawn rates of Pale Orcs and Rylak Eggs.
  • For the Children!: Manastorm's Duplicator should now be correctly awarded to characters that complete the quest.
  • Moving In: Characters that abandon the quest should now have an easier time reacquiring the quest and resume their progress on the main quest line.
  • Ogre Diplomacy: Players that have completed Into the Heart of Madness should no longer sometimes be placed into an incorrect phase and be unable to complete the quest.
  • Safety Measures: Increased the spawn rate of bog denizens.
  • Shadowmoon Invasion! is now automatically removed from the character's quest log if they upgrade to a Tier 3 Garrison as this quest is only available for Tier 2 Garrisons.
  • Skimming Off The Top: Increased the drop rates for Volatile Oil.
  • Strike While the Iron is Hot: Blocked off the entrance to the Iron Docks so players won't accidentally wander out of the quest area and wind up getting lost.
  • The Defense of Karabor: Players resurrecting at a graveyard during this quest should no longer be immediately attacked by Iron Horde NPCs.
  • The Iron Wolf: Players should now be able to receive completion credit if they've died and released during the quest.
  • Thunderlord Invasion!: The quest is now automatically removed from the character's quest log if they upgrade to a Tier 3 Garrison as this quest is only available for Tier 2 Garrisons.

Creatures and NPCs
  • Apexis Traders Dawn-Seeker Krek (Alliance) and Dawn-Seeker Alkset (Horde) are now offering Exceptional gear (item level 645) for sale.
    • Developer Commentary: The vendors' offerings were previously tied to the Highmaul raid unlock, but we wanted to make sure that players have useful items to spend their Apexis Crystals on, rather than positioning them exclusively as a catch-up item vendor. The final tier of Flawless gear (item level 655) will now unlock when the Highmaul raid becomes available, rather than when Blackrock Foundry becomes available.
  • Increased the spawn rates for creatures and NPCs in the Skettis Ruins area in Spires of Arak. [Requires a realm restart.] Additionally, resolved an issue where some creatures were incorrectly sharing loot with other players.
  • Grizzled Frostwolf Veteran's icon should no longer persist on the mini map after being defeated.
  • Rangari Jonaa now has a cooldown on their Scatter Shot ability.
  • Rotcap's icon should no longer persist on the mini map after being defeated.
  • Typhon's icon should no longer persist on the mini map after being defeated.

Dungeons, Raids, and Scenarios
  • Characters with Warlords PvP gear that had its secondary item level activated due to being in PvP combat temporarily disqualifies them from queuing for Dungeons and Raid Finder. It can take up to 20 seconds after ending PvP combat before the character will be eligible to queue up normally.
  • Upper Blackrock Spire
    • During the Commander Tharbek encounter, players should no longer be kept in a constant state of combat between waves.

PvP
  • Reverted a hotfix from October 15 that reduced all PvP damage by 25%.
  • Gnomes are now able to increase their reputation with Wrynn's Vanguard.

Items
  • Coil of Sturdy Rope, a Horde quest item should no longer be incorrectly dropping for Alliance characters.
  • Miner's Coffee movement speed buff should now stack correctly with other movement speed buffs.
  • Solium Band rings can now be equipped at level 98 (down from level 100).

Legendary Ring Quest Line and Apexis Crystals
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Here to provide additional clarification on the hotfix note that went out yesterday, November 17.

Quests
  • Draenor's Secret Power: Completion of this quest is now required before being able to move onto the next step of the Legendary quest chain. For characters that skipped this quest, completion of this quest has also been made into a requirement before being eligible for the next upgrade.

This means players that skipped the quest will still have to complete Draenor's Secret Power before being eligible for the next upgrade. That last part wasn't included until now cause I was tunnel visioning on hotfixes and glossed over the supplemental email for the change. Hope this clears any confusion up.
This article was originally published in forum thread: Message from J. Allen Brack - Five Free Days of Gametime started by chaud View original post
Comments 199 Comments
  1. solshine2510's Avatar
    Me and bunch of friends in WoW are not subscribed, we all use prepaid time, our times haven't been extended. If this is only for subscribers, then this is so lame.
  1. Zauruz's Avatar
    Respect to Blizzard
  1. Ianus's Avatar
    as much as i had issues i must say this is if not the best gameplay wise expansion, lorewise Wotlk is still topping it but i must say gj Blizzard for quality of expansion excluding server issues and some bugs..
  1. Velos's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by solshine2510 View Post
    Me and bunch of friends in WoW are not subscribed, we all use prepaid time, our times haven't been extended. If this is only for subscribers, then this is so lame.
    Pre-paid time is the same. As long your account is active, you count as a sub.
  1. Druidjezus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by solshine2510 View Post
    Me and bunch of friends in WoW are not subscribed, we all use prepaid time, our times haven't been extended. If this is only for subscribers, then this is so lame.
    It hasn't been applied yet, if you have a game time card applied that counts as an active 'subscription', you'll just get 5 days added on to your available time when they apply the time credit.
  1. Mauth's Avatar
    I personally appreciate it when a company can own up to their mistakes. Yeah, it sucked that there were issues. Hell, i got stuck on the Nagrand bugged questline personally, but Blizzard launches have always been a bit of a challenge due to their MASSIVE playerbase.

    Anyone who was surprised by the issues either hasn't been part of a blizzard launch before, or they simply don't pay attention.

    As bad as it was, they took responsibility, hooked everyone up with some comp time, and came right out and owned the issues like a proper company should. No beating around the bush, no ignoring it until it got resolved, no overwhelming silence with nothing to show for it. This is how a company can maintain proper PR and keep people coming back. I've only had a few experiences that have absolutely sold me on a company.

    Nu Yalk Pizza.
    Fantasy Flight Games.
    Blizzard Entertainment.

    I'd recommend these companies to anyone, and i've got good personal experiences to back up my opinion.

    Kudos!
  1. Dracbane's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Treeh View Post
    I didn't get gametime.... Why?
    It is probably being added to accounts in small batches at a time.
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Velos View Post
    Pre-paid time is the same. As long your account is active, you count as a sub.
    i dont see any sub-time raise yet in my pre-paid time - gonna see tomorrow if they added anything.
  1. Cheerbleeder's Avatar
    Thank you Blizz for the apology and stepping up to the plate and offering your customers game time. Respect goes a long way for both the customer and business. Thank you for reaching out even though its been a rough week for all. Just talk to us more, that's all we really want. It gives us comfort, but most importantly makes us feel like we belong, that we're a participant.
  1. ChaosWolf's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jabberie View Post
    Nice, probably will not be enough for some people but at least it's something....
    Of course it won't be enough for them - they will accept nothing less than personal direct apology from Metzen and direct hard-line access to WoW's servers, because they are entitled little shits.
  1. Tinykong's Avatar
    I hope they apply this to all accounts, I "cancelled" my account before WoD launched to change credit cards, and just added the new card today as my time expires in 3-4 days.
  1. ashblond's Avatar
    What can I say? Apology accepted.
  1. Archangel Tyrael's Avatar
    That was very nice of them.

    I wasn't expecting an ''apology'', but hey... Blizzard did it well this time I guess.
  1. Keile's Avatar
    My guess is the free game time will kick shortly.

    Honestly, five free days is more than I was expecting and I am thankful they went that extra mile. I figured we'd get two (since that's roughly how many days the MAJOR problems went on for). I do, however, greatly appreciate that he manned up and accepted that they dropped the ball for the launch.

    I accept their apology, Blizzard has been good to me over the years. One fuck up like this isn't enough to make me turn on them.
  1. Korru's Avatar
    Well gosh, thx for the apology and game time.
  1. Sesto's Avatar
    I expected Blizzard to do this, but 5 days was quite a surprise. Awesome.

    Quote Originally Posted by ChaosWolf View Post
    Of course it won't be enough for them - they will accept nothing less than personal direct apology from Metzen and direct hard-line access to WoW's servers, because they are entitled little shits.
    Certainly better than drones who enjoy taking it up the ass from large businesses.
  1. fa3sr011's Avatar
    Apology Greatly Accepted!
    For those of us who had taken off work to power level and chew through what I believe is the best expansion to date the loss of game time due to outages was significantly disappointing. Once things stabilized and I was able to enjoy massive amounts of content and truly enjoy what WoD has to offer. 5 days is a perfect gift and I appreciate it because I know this comes at a great cost to the company as well given the number of users who will have been granted this time. I have a lot of faith in Blizzard and things like this reenforce that.
  1. Selacia's Avatar
    They've effectively said all the time from release to now (minus a few hours) was free, and now that things are working, you can resume paying for the game time. Very classy, I like it.
  1. mmoc48e3d08f2b's Avatar
    Wow, good job Blizzard!

    Although this shouldn't have happened at all, I'm glad they finally decided to upgrade the old servers and bring the game into 2014.

    The 5 days extra is fair and I'm glad they compensated us for the messy launch.

    This expansion is amazing and I'm glad we're all having fun together now!

    X
  1. azuraji's Avatar
    Doesn't seem to have been applied to EU accounts yet. My game time expires tomorrow 8 PM, hopefully it'll get extended before that

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