WoW WotLK Classic: Surprisingly high number of bugs in old Northrend
For some players, the following task may sound trivial at first glance: For a new edition of WoW: Wrath of the Lich King Classic, take the latest patch version 3.3.5 from June 22, 2010, implement this version in the modern infrastructure of Blizzard (using, for example, the current version of the Battle.net launcher) and then select the core features of the expansion that you want to provide over the course of several content phases.
However, anyone who has ever dealt with the development of games already suspects that behind these few lines there is a very complex challenge. What content goes live in what form with the launch version, what needs to be adjusted (e.g. exciting with the patch status of the raid bosses)? What bugs from back then that survived all of WotLK could you fix this time? Where are there unwanted interactions from the meeting of the old code, made adjustments and the modern framework? Does each change actually work the way the developers intended?
More severe bugs than Classic and TBC Classic
Although the developers for their classic versions juggle with a patch status that must have had the greatest fine-tuning in the respective era, it is not surprising that there have always been a few bugs in the three new editions so far. In a direct comparison, we even have to say that WoW WotLK Classic is plagued by much more severe errors than in TBC Classic and WoW (buy now ) Classic was the case. But it only really became clear to us when we saw WillE’s video on the subject:
In the following we remember the worst bugs of the previous WotLK Classic era. Which ones torpedoed your gaming fun in particular?
The Wrath Classic Pre-Event
No, The pre-event of Wrath of the Lich King Classic didn’t quite go as announced by the developers in advance. For one thing, the Scourge invasion, scheduled to start on September 13, 2022, began a few days earlier. On the other hand, players had to realize in the middle of the event that the zombie plague was suddenly stopped. Several problems were to blame:
- In the original version of the pre-event, zombie plague and scourge invasion were broken down into eight clearly timed steps. Mistake number 1 the developer affected the communication regarding the start time of the Scourge invasion. According to the timing just mentioned, this should start on day 3 of the zombie plague, which happened. However, September 13, 2022 was communicated as the start time, which of course led to confusion.
- Mistake number 2: The developers had overlooked in the data of the patch that there was a necessary adjustment regarding the end period of the event. The plague got so out of hand that Blizzard had to end the event early in the original pre-patch. For WotLK Classic, on the other hand, the designers wanted the event to run through completely. The adjustments made back then had simply been overlooked.
- There were further problems and bugs which, in combination with the restart servers, on which the zombie plague was carried out with its own clock, caused utter chaos: Everywhere there were different start and end times for the pre-event steps and up Kalimdor was not properly kicking off the Scourge invasion.
The launch of Wrath Classic
The actual start of the Northrend adventure, on the other hand, actually went quite smoothly considering how many players wanted to travel to the two starting areas of the frozen continent at the same time. Some Alliance heroes who were caught in an infinite loop on their ship did not reach their destination: As soon as the loading screen had run through to Northrend, the travelers reappeared near Stormwind.
The developers’ solution: they hired new NPCs, teleport you directly to Northrend at the push of a button. Waiting several minutes for the next zeppelin? Don’t you need it! Endure the flight animation to the berth? But not in 2022/2023! Incidentally, the hard-working helpers are still offering their services.
The Wintergrasp Exploit
Actually, Wintergrasp was designed with the idea that you can join a battle every few hours. However, since the Wrath Classic version of the “Open World” battlefield was instantiated and implemented with cross-server functionality, it was possible at launch to Participate in the Wintergrasp Battles multiple times in a row and thus accumulate enormous amounts of honor in a very short time.
The yield was then maximized by agreements between the factions. The goal: to end the battles as quickly as possible, since losers could also bag a lot of honor. Finally, at the end of September 2022, a hotfix followed that made it impossible to participate in a Wintergrasp game several times in a row. However, the exploiters were allowed to keep their honor.
It’s a trap! In Icecrown there is a daily quest that makes all thieves of Azeroth look old. For Dependent on the saronite you have to rescue ten saronite mine slaves in a cave by interacting with them and choosing a dialogue option. However, players quickly realized that every interaction with the slaves had a negative effect on their own riches. Specifically, every time a character came into contact with one of the NPC workers, 500 gold pieces went down the drain.
After a well-attended forum thread and various Reddit posts (in which players sometimes complained that they had lost tens of thousands of gold pieces as a result of this bug), Blizzard confirmed that the gold lost in this way was refunded and the error was fixed.
The Battle for Undercity
Not only Horde and Alliance fought a battle for the fate of the undercity in Wrath Classic, but also the Blizzard developers. Even in the original Northrend, the instanced event in the undead capital was error-prone. For the Wrath Classic version, Game Producer Aggrend even had to do it in September 2022 issue a clear warning: Avoid the Battle of the Undercity.
WoW: It took a while before you could safely master the Battle of Undercity in WotLK Classic.
Source: buffed
This was due to well-known problems that could not be solved in advance, but also new interactions with the layers that existed on almost all servers due to the high number of players. It happened regularly that the event suddenly stopped in one phase and no further progress was possible. However, this did not only apply to one version of the battle, but to all players on the layer who were in exactly this phase of the event, as well as for all players on the layer who subsequently reached this phase.
Since the problems could not be fixed easily, the developers led Enter two NPCs on September 30, 2022, where affected players could start or cancel the current phase of the event. In October 2022, Blizzard announced that that the battle for the lower city has been largely fixed.
Great, bugs for (almost) all classes!
Certainly some of the classes in Wrath Classic were most affected by bugs. For example, the companion archetypes hunter and warlock were annoyed for some time that their companions appeared with a half-filled health bar after unmounting from a flying animal. In the original WotLK, you could still use mounting and unmounting to quickly heal companions to the max.
The huntsmen, on the other hand, had fun with a bug that enabled them to activate multiple ranks of salvo in parallel. The result was powerfully high damage values in fights against many targets. Blizzard had to apply several hotfixes at once to tame the Hunter’s volley. Even crazier were the death knights, who discovered a ludicrous exploit that allowed them to stack the Frost Claw effect, to ultimately pick up up to 60 percent more speed. In combination with that Gargoyle, who still benefited enormously from speed at this point Incredibly high damage values were also possible.
Over time, designers also prevented raids from dropping the first rank of the Shaman talent Elemental Oath (3 percent critical spell hit chance for the raid) with the effect of moonkin form the druids could combine (5 percent critical spell hit chance for the raid). Or that druids restore their talent Improved composure could stack with the Molten Core Tier 1 set’s 8 set bonus to increase the cooldown of the Emergency Heal serenity just to remove it completely. The group healing achieved this way was just plain absurd. Even more so when you consider what clothes the constantly channeling paramedic is actually wearing… What other notable bugs from the Wrath Classic era so far do you remember?
Reference-www.buffed.de
