View Full Forums : New patch!


Yrys
09-30-2004, 01:43 AM
A new patch (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/patch-9-29-04.shtml) has been released. The patch notes:

General

* Access to the console has been disabled. If you find that you have been regularly relying on the console to operate a certain function, please use the /suggest command to let us know so we can allow access to those functions without the use of the console.

* Undead players no longer speak Common. They now speak Gutterspeak (Native) and Orcish (Horde Common).

* Gnome Warriors and Rogues can now learn the Bows proficiency.

* Night Elf Warriors, Hunters and Rogues can now learn the Guns proficiency.

* Eastern and Western Plaguelands have been given several spawning improvements/adjustments.

* More Rare Healing/Mana potion vendors placed around the world.

* Gnomish Death Ray range shortened to 20 yards.

* Your skill level with abilities that require an equipped weapon is equivalent to your skill level with that weapon.

* Ashenvale has had a face lift, and will have new content soon.

* Stonetalon is in the process of getting a face lift, with some work left to be done.

* You can now chat with the auction window open. As a result, the enter key is no longer bound to the "search" button in the auction interface.

* Several improvements to the Mail system have been made:

o The mail interface no longer changes back to the inbox after sending a new mail (it remains in the send mail tab).

o Mail that has been read is now greyed-out.

o When all attachments from a mail have been removed (including text), the mail is automatically deleted.

o There is now a confirmation box for accepting C.O.D mail.

o There is now a confirmation box for deleting mail that has an item or money attached, when the delete option is available.

* Several improvements to the Auction system have been made

o Minimum bid increment has been changed to 5% of current sale price

o The granularity of auction bids has increased for low-price auctions

o Default starting prices have been reduced by 25% of their previous value

o Auction notifications are now sent as system messages that can be filtered in the chat interface

Quests

* Tremors of Earth and Broken Alliances quests reduced to level 50.

* Fixed quest, 'The Name of the Beast.' Lord Arkkoroc should now be more amiable towards players.

* Fixed an issue that was forcing the High Priestess of Thaurissan to spawn 100% of the time when only one person in a party had completed the Princess Bronzebeard rescue quest series (Alliance or Horde). Princess Bronzebeard will now be up for parties adventuring in Blackrock Depths UNLESS everyone in the party has done the questline - at which point the princess will be gone and the High Priestess will be in her place.

* More Quests added to both Eastern and Western Plaguelands

Items

* In an effort to have items stats feel more meaningful, items have been reworked. Most items will have changed in terms of stats. However, total amount of stat points you should receive from all your gear combined should not be significantly different.

* Higher level healing and mana potions now drop in game.

* Testament of Hope has been fixed.

* Six Demon Bag will create a level appropriate felhound.

* Items that increase percentages to block, dodge, crit, parry, and hit chance now stack.

* There are no longer cloth, leather and mail cloaks. All cloaks can be worn by all classes.

* Fixed a bug with Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin's loot table.

Spells

* Water walking won't work on lava or slime.

* Casting Dispel Magic on a friend under the influence of charm will dispel the charm.

* The new Spellbook is in (although not quite finished) and it should be much easier to use than the old spellbook style.

Warlock:

* Due to some technical changes Soulstone will be broken this patch. It will return next patch.
*Note: The in game patch notes do not reflect the above change. Soulstones will not work this patch.

* Seduction now has a short cast time. Cooldown timer has been removed.

* New Spell: Curse of Shadow (Level 44).

* New Spell: Create Spellstone (Level 36).

* New Spell: Searing Pain (Level 18).

* New Spell: Soul Fire (Level 48).

* New Spell: Death Coil (Level 42).

* New Spell (Voidwalker): Suffering (Level 24).

* New Spell (Voidwalker): Consume Shadows (Level 18).

* New Spell: Howl of Terror (Level 40).

* New Spell: Create Firestone (Level 28).

* Curse of the Elements changed. It now reduces Fire and Frost resistances.

* Corruption - duration, damage, and mana cost reduced. Deals damage much faster.

* Curse of Agony - duration, damage, and mana cost reduced. Deals damage much faster.

* Hellfire - duration, damage, and mana cost increased and is now instant cast. This spell is now quite dangerous.

* Immolate - duration, damage, and mana cost reduced. Deals damage faster.

* The imp no longer runs away from melee attackers.

* You can command your imp to cancel Blood Pact.

* Most of the Warlock's Destruction and Affliction talents are now available.

Rogue:

* Player vs. Player stealth detection range has been reduced.

* Sap - targets now have a chance of waking up before the duration ends.

* Sprint can now be used while stealthed.

Hunter:

* Tame Beast no longer requires the Hunter or the target beast to be out of combat.

* When a group member is attacked while buffed by Aspect of the Pack, the daze effect now applies to that member, not the Hunter who cast Aspect of the Pack.

Shaman:

* Stoneclaw Totem has had its increased health increased.

Druid:

* Dash can now be used while prowling.

Mage:

* Portals - you must now right-click on portals to use them.

Pets:

* Pet formation movement is much more responsive.

* You no longer gain threat from the actions of your pet.

* Pets take damage from lava and slime.

Non-Player Characters:

* Starting NPCs now have their faction PvP crests.

* You can no longer buff or heal enemy PvP-enabling NPCs. (NPCs with a shield icon in their portrait.)

* Patrolling NPCs should stop less often on their paths.

* Guard posts will send existing guards before creating new ones.

* Creatures returning from combat move more smoothly.

* Scattered NPC formation movement does not appear to stutter anymore.

Professions:

* New Alchemy recipes are in the game, but you will not be able to make most of these recipes until the high level herbs are placed in a future patch.

* All profession equipped items have had their stats tweaked to make them more desirable.

* All zones now have fishing, with Artisan Fishing added to support the new zones. Some of the zones are going to be pretty hard to fish in and will require bait and a good fishing pole. *Note that some fish can only be caught at certain times of day.

* New cooking recipes are now in to support the new fish types that you can catch. Artisan Cooking has been added to support these new recipes.

Miscellaneous:

* Falling through the world is now fatal to your character, and you should page a GM if this happens to you.

* If you alt-tab away from the game, your character now stops moving unless you are on auto-run.

* Icon that indicates what you are tracking (Herbs, Minerals, Undead, etc) is now part of the mini-map.

* You cannot enter Korean characters into numeric edit fields.

* You can no longer logout while in combat.

* The "+" from elite mobs UI elements has now been removed. Where applicable, the word Elite has been added.

Crimson13
09-30-2004, 01:23 PM
Well it seems to have improved performance for me a great deal, as my video card is by far the most impressive part of my system and my processor was slowing down the 2d rendering and killing my framerates... There's a soft glow to everything now that will appeal to some, for those who want the older look back without the glow you can simply go into your video options in game and turn the "full-screen bloom" setting off, so far i'm not sure whether i like it better on or off.

The switch to a 3d cursor and changing the combat numbers from sprites to 3d rendered effects is a nice improvement too, and some of the other effects in game are vastly improved.

My rogue and druids stealth and prowl respectively no longer look as strange, where you used to be able to see all the polygon faces through yourself when you stealthed, now you only see what you'd normally see when you aren't semi-transparent, it's a small thing but a nice touch.

They've also fixed the standing while riding bug when things hit you etc. Now you sort of stand then slide back into position, it's a huge improvement.

Blizzard says this is a small patch without a lot in it. It seems to have improved things a lot more than they give themselves credit for.

As a side note, some players using ATI graphics cards are seeing pixelization, that's due to the full screen bloom effect, turn it off until ATI updates their drivers to support the pixel shaders properly.

LauranCoromell
10-01-2004, 03:06 PM
What size are your WoW folders now? It seems that the new patches don't override the old ones? This last patch required 2.4GB of free space.

Crimson13
10-01-2004, 06:02 PM
blizzard has done "dirty" patching up until this last push in the beta, basically just making the game look at newer files of the same name. It looks like they may be going a cleaner way now by having the patcher replace files instead of just duplicating them.

Keep in mind that the files aren't compressed or optimized as they will be in release, and if you want a smaller install you're best bet is to grab the latest client released and patch that up to date (it's a fair bit smaller)

Kebster
10-04-2004, 09:48 AM
I have crashed more with this patch than any of the previous ones =/

Doesnt seem to be as stable any more.

Crimson13
10-04-2004, 12:26 PM
I have noticed some issues on my machine here at work, thought at home it's been the most rock solid patch yet. More than anything it's been the known bugs that are bothering me, such as the locked/inaccessable UI while on a gryphon etc (reloadui in the console fixes that, but it has to be done every ride).

Kerech
10-04-2004, 02:33 PM
I noticed that wisps around Dolanaar are now black instead of white - could be a graphics driver thing, but it wasn't happening before the last patch :)

Crimson13
10-04-2004, 03:20 PM
If you have an ATI card make sure you have the absolute latest drivers, as a lot of the 9.0c implementations are borking older ATI driver versions.

Kerech
10-04-2004, 05:19 PM
Yeah, I have an ATI card - it had the latest drivers as of August 3rd when I installed Doom3, because that required an update as well :)

I'll check for a later one. Thanks ;)

Crimson13
10-04-2004, 05:32 PM
last ati catalyst pack was released september 9th, grab em :)