Another bug report coming in, at least if you're a resident player at World of Warcraft's Public Test realms. Deceptionx reported via a thread that every time his rogue attempted to go into stealth, the game instead swapped the visuals for the mage's invisibility spell. Blizzard troubleshooter Hortus dropped by shortly to inform Deceptionx to do the following:

Please do not disable shaders, it is important that we identify this issue and eliminate it before the patch goes live. Deceptionx, can you please delete your wowtest folder from within the World of Warcraft directory and re-install the PTR client? Please post here if the issue continues or not.

At the time of this report, we haven't heard from either the poster or Hortus. In case the guys here are experiencing similar problems, we advise them to drop back in case this topic gets resolved. There's also the WoW thread via the source link if you're wondering what the other players had to say to help.

Have World of Warcraft's shamans received some new nerfing? Not exactly it seems, but it sure looked like one, according to Gilora over at the WoW forums.

The thread starter reports that the Shaman's lightning bolt spell appears to have altered visuals come its patch 2.2 expansion. Originally a literal "bolt" of crackling energy, the patch now portrayed the bolt as just a glowing orb.

Blizzard troubleshooter Hortus dropped by later to address the problem. Far from some unannounced tweaking to the spell, Hortus explained that the new look was due to a bug. Expect fixes to be made for this PTR-related problem to be implemented soon. Now, in case you're wondering just how lightning bolt looks before and after the patch, Gilora posted comparison videos in the threads as evidence. You can access them via the source link below.

Here's more World of Warcraft patch 2.2 updates coming your way. As expected, the current patch on the Public Test Realm has brought about not only bug fixes and other changes, but aesthetic ones as well. Phosphorus from the World of Warcraft Forums noticed that Draenei shoulders look "a lot smaller and ridiculous."

Blizzard QA Hortus was quick to reply that the change was intended as "Male Draenei shoulders were larger than intended before." If you can tell from the images above, the change is actually slight. Players expressed mixed reactions to the change. Some were thankful, while others thought that the change was... well, ridiculous.

(This writer can't help but think the same thing, what's with the shoulder changes anyway?) We'll see what other changes will come with the WoW patch 2.2. In the meantime, check out the images above, courtesy of Bloodocean.

In case you're also having problems gaining access to World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms, read on. Kittylol over at the WoW forums posted access problems for the game, and noted that attempting to click in a realm (PvE in Kittylol's case) caused it to freeze. Kittylol's running WoW off a Mac Mini computer in case you're wondering.

Blizzard spokesman Hortus dropped by soon after to reply that the devs were looking into the matter. Interestingly, Hortus noted that aside from the Kittylol, they had also received similar reports from players using PCs running on the Windows Vista OS.

Hortus further advised the poster to try plugging a microphone into the Mac, and see what happens next. That's all for the moment, although those experiencing similar problems may want to check out the WoW Forums (the source link) in case Blizzard updates with a proper fix.

It's time for another World of Warcraft bug alert, folks. This time, the bug is actually quite minor but the effect can make you think the game has stalled entirely if you're not careful.

According to Hizu of Draka's report, the bug basically occurs whenever you're on a flightpath from one area to another and have a slowfall effect on your character, which can be easily attained through mage spells or by using the noggenfogger elixir. Apparently, removing the slowfall effect on your character will freeze your character in place, though in reality, the flight is actually continuing normally.

Hortus noted the bug report from Hizu, and also mentioned that this would be fixed in a future PTR build. In the meantime, you'll definitely want to keep yourself from removing those slowfall effects from your character in mid-flight, else you could end up flying blind as well.

 

A bug on the Public Test Realm (PTR) server which stops players from creating new characters was recently brought up on the WoW Forums. This problem was found to occur if you had maximum number of characters on your World of Warcraft account at the time the PTR opened.

There have been quite a few reports on this bug from various users. Blizzard QA Hortus addressed the problems in a recent post, noting that this problem is much like what players encountered with The Burning Crusade. There has been no official news on whether or not this issue will be fixed in the future. Judging from Hortus' response, it doesn't look like this is a priority among the developers as of the moment.

If you find yourself in the same situation, there's really nothing you can do about it but wait. Let this be a reminder to always have a few character slots open. You'll never know when Blizzard will open one up so it's better to be safe than sorry.

If you're playing on the PTR in World of Warcraft, you should take note that Blizzard QA Hortus has detailed all the changes in the PTR 2.2.0 patch notes. The latest changes that were done covered professions and quests.

Jewelcrafters should note that a new recipe for Steady Talasite (boosts resilience and stamina) is now available from the Halaa vendors. You can purchase it for your carefully hoarded research tokens. Blacksmiths get a new recipe for Ragesteel Shoulders which they can obtain from an unknown creature in Shadowmoon Valley.

In addition to this, Blizzard has reduced the number of pieces required to get the benefits of the Ragesteel set bonus, making the armor very viable in PvE and PvP environments now. Finally, Engineers get a cooldown for the engineer-made Parachute Cloak.

On the quest side, you can now get either a Darkrune or a fragmented Darkrune from the quest Banish the Demons. Another quest that had its rewards modified is the Relic's Emanation quest which had the money reward decreased and the Ogri'la faction reward raised. The Bomb Them Again quest has been made slightly easier with the cooldown of the Skyguard bombs lowered to five seconds from the previous 10 seconds.

The changes look pretty sweet, and should make for a more fluid experience in playing WoW. Hopefully, we'll be seeing more changes implemented to balance out the quests and open more options to various professions in the game.

Blizzard poster Hortus dropped by the World of Warcraft Forums earlier to announce that Voice Chat will be coming to the WoW Public Test Realm (PTR) on August 10... er - today.

Voice chat has come with the new PTR build and is currently available for parties, raids and custom channels only. Those who have been waiting for a cross-server battleground voice chat will have to wait a while. Hortus forewarns:

Please be aware, that this is a brand new feature and although it has been tested by Blizzard QA there are still many outstanding issues and we expect to find many more as we roll it out to a larger test group. Please be diligent in reporting bugs either via this forum or the in-game feedback tool, and be patient with us while we work out the kinks in this new system.

In order to facilitate additional testing, a second PVP server has been brought online, and the server population limits have been increased to lessen queues.

Hortus also provided an update that addressed a known issue in the new build. Apparently, the WoW voice chat doesn't work on PowerPC-based Macs but should work fine on Intel Macs. According to the poster, the PowerPC build problem should be resolved in an upcoming PTR update.

If you're good and ready, you should go on ahead to the PTR and check out the new voice chat. Some players have already noticed that the mic volume has to be cranked up and that the sound quality isn't all that hot. We've got to remember though that it is still on the PTR, and is therefore still under testing.

Bugs. Every game has at least one. Without the dedicated assistance of playtesters and Game Masters, some of them may have made their way into the latest version of your favorite games. This is doubly true for a game like Blizzard's World of Warcraft.

Hortus recently put up a list of issues affecting the PTRs in preparation for patch 2.2. As he notes in a disclaimer, these are the list of reported issues people have had while trying out the game on the public test realms and are thus still being tested for confirmation as bugs in the game. That being said, some of these issues have already popped up on our website, such as the issue of priestly Lightwell spamming and the mimicking problem with Hunters' Kill Commands.

We encourage people to check out the list there. It's pretty extensive, and there's bound to be a potential bug or two there that is of special interest to you as a player.

 

Here's a weird World of Warcraft PTR bug that definitely needs addressing. Tig of Draenor reports a rather powerful bug that seems to make any mob mimic a hunter's kill command whenever he uses it.

Tig writes,

Currently, when my pet performs a Kill Command on a mob, that mob will perform it's own Kill Command back at it's target. I say it's target because I received the reflected Kill Command as the mob had me as it's target and my boar Grar performed a Kill Command on it. I tried this with two different pets: Gahiji, a lvl 70 sabre cat that I tamed out in Skettis about an hour ago on the Test Realm, and Grar, a lvl 70 plagued swine that I've had since 60 on the live realms. Gahiji is at loyalty level 1 and Grar is at loyalty level 6. Gahiji knows no other skills except growl, and Grar knows Charge, Gore, Bite and Growl.

I was able to recreate this bug every time I used the Kill Command.

As you can probably guess, that's a pretty big problem compared to the World of Warcraft animation bugs. Under certain circumstances, this can be an annoying bug as it makes bosses forcibly attack for more damage than they normally do.

Blizzard QA Hortus went onto the forum post and asked for additional information, and according to the sources there, it seems as if it happens with mobs on both Outland and Azeroth. Let's hope this bug gets speedily addressed, as it could be devastating if placed live with the next patch.