Sony Online Entertainment's Game Updates for February 6 for the EverQuest 2 MMORPG has finally been posted. This is pretty timely considering update 42 for the game has just been released. If you want to see all the changes implemented, click on the "read more" link below to get to the full article.

A lot of people have been on the unfortunate receiving end of a recent bug that has been plaguing MMORPG players in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The MMORPG company giant has been getting a lot of flak lately due to the steps they should be taking to fix the notorious Battle Grounds bug so many PvP savvy players have been complaining about.

However, there may just be a small silver lining to this annoying little problem. While there hasn't been any official word on when the bug will be fixed, Blizzard poster Aeus has listed some easy steps on how to deal with the issue in the meantime:

We are aware that some players might currently be getting stuck at the end of combat in the Battle Grounds. A solution is being worked on and we will let you know when we have more information. Until a fix is made available there are two possible workarounds:

1. Close the client and restart the game.

2. Do /afk at the end of the BG; this has proven to work for some players as well.

Knowing how bugs just pop up everywhere in any new gaming patch, we'll all just have to sit tight and be a little patient until the boys at Blizzard find a more permanent solution to this problem.

Despite the anti-AFK measures that were set in place in World of Warcraft, AFKers would still - inevitably - affect other players. The current setup in the PTR is that other players can report an AFKer in the field and if there are enough reports, the AFKer will get a debuff after 30 seconds if they don't participate in combat, and they won't be able to gain honor.

Fantastiko posed a question in the WoW Forums if whether or not people would report an AFKer or go AFK as well and get some quick Honor. Abominae also addressed the anti-AFK fix by saying that issuing a 30-second warning isn't enough.

Blizzard rep Nethaera explains the issue, and at the same answers Fantastiko's question, saying:

We also have some other things that are going to be changed in AV at some point as Kalgan mentioned at BlizzCon so perhaps the incentive to AFK won't be as great with the report function and the upcoming changes.

I'll be reporting AFKers if I see them.

So if you are morally against AFKers or simply don't like 'em, we should be seeing some new changes to address the issue soon. For now, you can report them and hope they don't use the 30 seconds to do a quick heal and then go AFK again.

 

In a complaint against the Alliance's diminishing Battlegrounds performance against the now dominating Horde in World of Warcraft, community manager Nethaera reminded of the new AFK fix for the Battlegrounds system. The fix would allow a debuff to be granted to AFKers, often regarded as Honor leechers, to keep such offending players from earning Honor while in Battleground maps.

But there's a catch: in order for this debuff to work, offended players will have to observe suspected AFKers and then report them to be fair. Once the number of reports reaches a certain amount, the debuff will then be applied and the player reported will no longer earn Honor. This debuff immediately nullifies once the player engages in combat, however.

Now many negative implications have been brought up because of this system. For the most part, players will have to be idle themselves just to observe potential AFKers properly. And the degree to the conditions of AFK are in question, too. Does AFK apply to those avoiding combat altogether? Or those who are simply not moving, yet move after irregular lengths of idle times?

The fix is expected to make landfall in World of Warcraft's 2.2.0 patch, which is currently under testing phase at the Public Test Realms.

 

With the AFK issue in Alterac Valley still being debated by many players despite Blizzard having recently implemented a reporting feature, it looks like the company responsible for the legendary MMORPG World of Warcraft is once again heeding the call to arms, this time with some yet-to-be-declared changes that promise not only to resolve the issue, but also to balance things out.

In a response to a thread discussing these changes that are yet to be implemented in the game, Blizzard Poster Drysc sheds some light on the topic at hand - namely, revealing just what Blizzard is planning to do. Here is the post, as is and unedited:

Obviously as most people know we have the anti-afk reporting measure, by which you can right click on someone in the battleground and mark them as AFK. With enough reports they receive a debuff that keeps them from earning honor in that battleground, and only by entering combat can they remove that debuff. It's going to help, but it's certainly not enough on its own.

Other things we're doing are changing or pulling out NPCs in key locations to help even out the balance of time and effort each side has to take to push through. As well as some minor changes to locations that people find are easily exploited to advance faster. We're shifting some of the honor from the earlier NPCs, that help make AFKing so lucrative, to the end of the battleground and more for actually winning.

The graveyard spawning is being changed so that players aren't sent back to the cave unless there is nowhere else to spawn, which should help encourage horde to play a bit more defense if they're being beaten back. And we're also correcting the ... I think Jeff referred to them as "creative pulling mechanics" with the general's.

Everything together, we feel, should help encourage players to participate, while also improving overall balance.

Certainly a long list, and a very much-needed one at that. After all, it's not much fun participating when you realize that the other side has it just a tad better than yours in terms of terrain advantage, is it? We'll keep you up to date on this issue as developments unfold.

Players are currently complaining as to when Blizzard will roll out the Battleground Matchmaking System in World of Warcraft. However, the truth of the matter is, the system has been in placed for some time now. If that's the case, it is then interesting to know why players are having these complaints at all.

But as forum moderator Drysc recently pointed out at the official WoW community forums, there are a lot of contributing factors why it seems and feels like the system is not working as intended. One of the most obvious one is that not a lot of players are interested in the Battlegrounds.

The blue poster added that Blizzard made the BG matchmaking system working loosely because it doesn't want players spending several hours just waiting for an opponent. Drysc mentioned that this will change if the population of the battlegrounds increase in the future. He elaborated:

That is mostly based on the battlegrounds themselves, new battlegrounds coming, and probably ultimately how well they're incentivized. All things we're aware of, and all things that (AV changes, AFK reporting, queue changes, new battlegrounds, new rewards) we're seeing come to a solution at a single point on the horizon.

We hope this thing sorts itself soon because we don't want to see the arrival of the Lich King being spoiled and players getting disappointed just because of problems like this.

Among the discussions that goes into World of Warcraft, one topic that's gotten the attention of the devs is the matter of User Interface (UI). With that said, we'll be making mention of Cogwheel's post from months back, which detailed a comprehensive list of UI-related suggestions for the game by the players.

The post has recently gotten the attention of Slouken - Blizzard's resident UI guru - who replied with a series of comments on what UIs the Blizz devs would indeed be implementing in the upcoming patches.

Given that the list was scattered through various posts at the WoW Forums thread, we've got WoWInsider to thank for summarizing the list into one cohesive form. We'll start off with which UIs Blizzard has decided not to use:

• Declined:
• Generic /sequence command
• Spell Queuing
• Vendor value without being at a vendor
• API to retrieve DND or AFK status message from another player
• Finer-grained action button enable/disable events with some logic moved C-side
• /stopcasting
• /swapgroup
• Some way to iterate over the pet spell lists of pets you're not currently using (client doesn't have this information)
  
• In Patch 2.3
• Eliminate the need for /stopcasting in macros that have multiple instant, non-GCD spells
• /petautocasttoggle
• /targetlastenemy, /targetlastfriend
• There is a new Frame member function: registered = Frame:IsEventRegistered("event")
• There will be a function to query which frames are registered for an event: frame1, frame2, ... = GetFramesRegisteredForEvent("event")

View the full list plus a few notes right at the full article!

A common complaint among players in World of Warcraft is the AFK'ers in Battlegrounds. The AFK'ers would just join the battle and wait in the bunkers or the cave to see which side will win; if it's their group, they quickly join in to reap the rewards.

So how many people really do this? Numbers aren't that alarming, but it's large enough to bother the whole community. So a lot of WoW Players have been griping about this and finally Blizzard Poster/Forum Moderator Nethaera gave her two cents on the topic.

I've never gone AFK unless it was because I got pulled away by a phone call or something. If I go into a battleground, I'm there to participate. We are aware of the concerns that people have in regard to other players AFKing in AV. We are also aware of concerns players have for the future of AV.

More than that, I couldn't say at this time. I know that's a much hated answer, but it's what I can give you right now. I can say that with any battle or encounter, we want people to be participating and AFKing does go against the spirit of what is intended.

I think that's one of the major complaints that I see the most is that others feel they are being shorted their victories because others aren't helping to make those victories happen. Yes, I'm aware there are other concerns that players have about what they see as flaws in AV, but that doesn't negate the general feeling of abandonment I see players speaking of when they talk of the battlegrounds.

What you are doing when you AFK is basically abandoning others for the sake of yourself and then reaping the rewards of their labors. In a nutshell, it's lazy and selfish. That is largely the issue that you see other players complaining about. They want to feel they are a part of a successful team or at the least a team that is at least putting their heart into it.

I think this rather long post sums up the topic quite well. It's sad that some players profit from the work of others but it's a part of the game. Hopefully, the GMs will be able to find a solution to these leechers soon, but till they do we're going to have to put up with them.

Another bug has reportedly been fixed for World of Warcraft patch 2.1. The bug in question concerns the PLAYER_REGEN_ENABLED event which, as pointed out by WoW forums member Trevion in the official WoW forums, does not fire when a player is in combat and leaves an instance. Here are a few observations posted by Trevion regarding the bug:

Enter an instance such as Stockade and enter combat with a mob, then exit the instance .. or simply /afk out of a BG while in combat. You will notice for a moment that InCombatLockdown() is true then it will switch to false but PLAYER_REGEN_ENABLED never fires. This could simply be a semantic problem, but if so is there an event for when the lockdown is about to begin and after it ends?

I have seen the following documented:

• PLAYER_REGEN_DISABLED is sent before protected frames are locked down
• PLAYER_REGEN_ENABLED is sent after protected frames are unlocked

and

• PLAYER_REGEN_DISABLED : Fired whenever you get aggro, as normal regen rates are disabled during combat.
• PLAYER_REGEN_ENABLED : Fired after ending combat, as regen rates return to normal. Useful for determining when a player has lost aggro.

Anyway, as we have said, the bug is now fixed for WoW 2.1. According to Blizzard poster Slouken, players will get PLAYER_REGEN_ENABLED before PLAYER_LEAVING_WORLD fires.

Here's another worthwhile World of Warcraft debate for gamers to ponder. There's a growing thread on the WoW forums that discusses whether or not respawns and respawn rates kill WoW gameplay.

On one side of the argument, respawns encourage quick and masterful handling of the game's nuances. Getting through Scholomance quickly as 60's, for example, requires a good grasp of enemy patterns and speed in handling mobs, preferably with as little dying as possible. With huge battles like the "18 straight fights of The Black Morass" event in the future for many endgame players, coordination and speed is worthwhile even at an early stage of play.

On the other side of the argument is the frustration factor. Who doesn't hate the sinking feeling of wiping repeatedly after working so hard to clear a dungeon, just because of an ill-timed wipe and the respawns that follow? Worse still is that feeling of knowing that you or the group your in may just be really undergeared to tackle an event or just really suck.

Drysc, one of Blizzard's GMs, put it best by explaining that respawns are "one of the few mechanics that lets you know your group... well, sucks, or that the guy that AFK logged and you all waited for was the cause. You can then take that and apply what you've learned to your next attempt." Respawns and wipes are part of the learning experience for many would-be heroes of Azeroth, and you have to go through some hardship if you expect to know what it means to be truly victorious in the end.