It seems that Blizzard CM Shaantie made a crucial error when responding to a World of Warcraft Europe Forum member's inquiry. The error being missing the point of the original post. The post by Loki was simple, in that it basically asked why pet buffs go away when you mount your pet. Shaantie's response is such:

This trouble is Fixed on our latest test version.

On the ground, when you summon your Steed, your pet is dismissed automatically with his buffs and goodness. When you dismount or are dismounted, the same pet reappears and the buffs reapplied.

In the air, it's the same thing. The pet is dismissed when you mount and comes back when you dismount. buffs come back too. This does prevent your pet from trying desperately to follow you on the ground and agro the whole area.

Thing is we already knew all that. This answer does not in anyway refer to or even address the point of the original post in the Forum thread which was, again, a request to make pet buffs work while players are mounted and pets summoned.

Anyhow, CM un-response aside, what's your take on the issue? Should buff's stay on while mounted? Is this a reasonable thing for Blizzard to implement?

There's an ongoing thread on World of Warcraft's official European forums that focuses on graphical bugs found in certain WoW gear. The first item that kicked off the whole thread was the Gladiator's Felshroud set. Forum member Sylvictus also posted a few images of the said item to point out where the problems were. You can check it out up top.

Blizzard poster Shaantie was quick to respond, announcing that the graphics issue on the Gladiator's Felweave Raiment and the Handguards were now fixed in patch 2.1. So that's two items down. Thing is, though, a lot of items have also been found to have graphics bugs, and the thread has been going on since.

Shaantie has been replying pretty fast, though, so if you have anything you wish to report, drop in on the European WoW forums by clicking on the "read" link below.

A new development has arisen regarding the Public Test realms in World of Warcraft's European regions. Testers are reporting they have been experiencing fatal error messages when doing otherwise routine tasks like walking, flying, or transforming (druids, to be exact). As Azmodanii over at the WoW Europe official forums details, this is what the error message looks like:

---------------------------
WoW
---------------------------
This application has encountered a critical error:
ERROR #132 (0x85100084) Fatal Exception
Program: D:GamesWorld of WarcraftWoWTestWoW.exe
Exception: 0xC0000005 (ACCESS_VIOLATION) at 001B:004C7A2B
The instruction at "0x004C7A2B" referenced memory at "0x0000000A".
The memory could not be "read".
Press OK to terminate the application.
---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

In light of this problem, Blizzard made their official statement via spokesman Shaantie:

There is a general problem of instability with this version 6592, we are working on fixing it.
It currently affect lots of areas such as the pet stats UI, the Druid shapeshifts, some mount actions, flying mounts and taxi actions, dressing rooms, ...

Hopefully, those bad crashes should disappear when we generate a new version.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

That is all to report for WoW-Europe's test realms. We advise the readers to keep a stiff upper lip until this matter is fixed.

Okie dokie folks! While fellow blogger Rio S. covered one aspect of your PTR start up problems, we'd like to go over the more obvious solutions to trying out the Public Test Realm. Now we know you all got excited about the 2.1.0 patch going live over PTR and that you'd all like to give it a try, but there are a few things you might want to do before jumping the fence.

First and foremost, clean installs on Test clients are almost only reassuringly "clean" if you delete all content on your Test folder. It's nice to download a fresh, updated client straight from the World of Warcraft website and install its contents into a cleaned out Test folder. Not doing so could cause you a hiccup-load of head-aches.

Because the files that do remain in the Test folder sometimes become a product of a messy update, having messed up code that eventually causes your client to fail. As World of Warcraft EU Quality Assurance Shaantie refers to them, the leftover files are "parasite files."

Because Vitality, a Level 70 Druid Tauren, had some issues starting his own PTR installation. It appeared that his own client wasn't updated to the latest build for the 2.1.0 patch, build 6577. So if your client isn't on build 6577, you're in for a world of hurt. Luckily, even if you run the client un-patched, you can still get a preview of the build version number after it crashes. (*snickers*)

Blizzard Entertainment is pleased to announce that Public Test Realm Patch (PTR) 2.0.12 for World of Warcraft (WoW) is already up and ready to be tested by players. Earlier today, some players had problems logging on to PTR but the developers were quite fast to provide a solution.

If you've been following this development for the past days now, take note that the patch notes are very similar to the live notes that were released a couple of day ago. One thing that was added though is that the various localization fixes have already been applied.

And also, if you are one of the few players who tried getting this patch using Safari, you might have experienced some problems with the download page. Blizzard's Shaantie noted that this glitch has been fixed already. But to make sure, the right filename of the patch is "WoW-2.0.10.6448-to-0.0.12.6531-enGB-downloader.dmg".

WoW PTR Patch 2.0.12, when you really think about it, is all about bug fixes and improvements. Nothing groundbreaking really, but we suggest that you try it just the same. Currently, some fans are discussing a lot of issues over at the MMO video game's official community site and Blizzard's Quality Assurance Team is there to help you with these.

The Public Test Realm (PTR) is the venue for the planned features (for future patches) for the MMORPG World of Warcraft and it's quite understandable that a good number of players would want to try it out. Along with the threads asking for premade characters, some players are also having problems starting PTR.

Mekeel from the WoW forums in Europe was having that very problem. She's given an error message everytime she tries to start the PTR WoW.exe file. Blizzard poster Shaantie was quick to come to the rescue. According to the blue poster, the patch file is working properly and the problem might lie in the player's file system.

First, make sure you have enough space on your disk to allow the patcher to work comfortably. After cleaning up your useless files (including the WoWTest folder and the PTR patch file), please close a maximum of applications and run a Scandisk followed by a Defrag on your disk. This is very, very long (especially for large disks) but very useful for your system. When this is done, restart windows, re download the PTR patch file and restart the patching process. For even more security before patching, you might want to launch the normal game and login, just to make sure the files in your World of Warcraft folder are not corrupt too, repair if necessary.

If you're still having problems, you should contact WoW technical support. They'll surely help you out.

 

Yeah, another bug alert today. Well, that's what our news hamsters are churning up, so we better post about it. Anyhoo, user Grogkar, posts in the WoW Europe Forums that while using Track Humanoids, he was able to see "dummy" entities on the minimap, that is, "stuff that isn't actually visible in the game." Now before you folks think, "Ooh, spooky, he can see dead people," Grogkar actually means that you're able to see things like spawning points, event triggers, etc. ... You know, the technical stuff.

Grogkar notes that the most noticeable example of this bug is the ability to track what he calls "Alliance Guard Alarm Bots" in their settlements. He speculates that these normally invisible  "bots" are responsible for summoning guards with a flying mount when getting close to the town.

He also notes that he was able to track Imp spawning portals in the Shadowmoon Valley.

When asked by Shaantie, of Blizzard EU Quality Assurance, where exactly he saw those invisible entities on his minimap, Grokgar replied that he can't give the exact location on Imp portals, but he does note that one can easily check for the "Alarm Dummies" in Telredor (Zangarmarsh) using Track Humanoids.

No word yet from Blizzard on their course of action regarding this supposed bug.