Through The Mist: Hot Fixes and Mists of Pandaria Sales Numbers

mists of pandaria sales numbers
Through the Mist is a regular column from Luke Le Page covering everything World of Warcraft. If you’d like something covered in a future column, drop us a line!

This week has seen some a number of changes to pre-raid gearing for this expansion. Justice Point items (pre- raid blue items) have had their ilvl increased to match that of their pvp counterparts AND they have had the reputation requirements removed. Epic items, which had a faction requirement of revered, have been lowered to honoured.  The blue post can be seen in the list of 5.05 hotfixes

This is all great for the casual players except for one minor problem. The ilvl requirement for joining the random dungeon finder to run heroics, which required ilvl 450, now requires 435 ilevel, which players should have prior to reaching level 90. I was at 449 when I dinged. So basically Blizzard have made the items more accessible but also pointless as players can run heroics for higher level items without spending justice points.

There has been quite the negative reaction to Blizzard’s return to the reputation grind by the general community and it appears Blizzard have been listening. There are a number of changes in the works, though they are not yet finalised they could include increased reputation gain on alts when a main characters has achieved exalted reputation; a list of ideas being tossed around can be found here –http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/6794350230?page=1#1

This week also saw the release of Blizzard’s initial Mists of Pandaria sales numbers which you can see in this press release. While it does not give a whole lot of detail in regards to the sales breakdown, I am quite interested to see how digital sales compared to box; it does give us the ball park figure of 2.7 million sales. I will leave it to the guys in the podcast to analyse this as they seem to have a better grasp on these things than I do. (Methinks the author is being too kind – Ed.)

We also saw the clearing of all gold challenge mode dungeons. MMO-Champion have an excellent rundown of the numbers on their chart here. It also saw the completion of Mogu’shan vaults by Exodus and if I am not mistaken the first raid was cleared the day it went live.

We also saw the start if Arena season 12 – while I do not personally arena I will try and keep up to date on the happenings to relay via this column.

Lastly I wanted to mention an addon I recently downloaded for pet battles. Petjournal enhanced has all the features that I wish Blizzard had included. It allows you to sort pets by level, rarity, type  and specialisation as well as offering you the option to filter pets by the zone that you are in to make identifying uncaptured pets easy. I have to say that since downloading this I have already captured a number of pets I had no idea existed. So if you’re into pet battles check it out.

WoW Patch 5.05 Hotfixes

In case you hadn’t realised, Blizzard have been fixing some game issues on the fly over the past week.

Here are the latest ones in full:

September 28

 

  • Classes
    • Vengeance now ignores overkill damage.
    • Arcane Torrent now returns 2% of base mana (was previously an unintended 6%).
    • Priest
      • Void Shift can no longer be cast on Dominate Mind targets.
      • The priest Season 12 four-piece healer set bonus can now only be consumed by the priest that applied it.
      • The priest Season 12 two-piece healer set bonus should now grant Diamond Soul buff to other players when Power Word: Shield is cast on them.
    • Rogue
      • Blind should always land as intended. Other players should not be able to dodge, block, or parry Blind.
      • A priest’s psyfiend’s Psychic Terror should no longer affect targets under a Rogue’s Smoke Bomb.
    • Warrior
      • Second Wind no longer interrupts a Warrior who is eating or sitting down.
  • Creatures
    • Thieving Plainshawks in Valley of the Four Winds now cast Peck while in combat with players and no longer cast Steal Weapon.
    • The humanoids of Pandaria are no longer devoid of coin, and level 86-90 creatures are now occasionally carrying a Vine-Cracked Junkbox in one of their pockets.
    • The Hozen Diver in Jade Forest now has 271k health as opposed to the 135k he had before.
    • Cheung the Stablemaster should now do the duties of a stablemaster, as expected.
  • Items
    • An appropriate amount of spell power has been added to Masterwork Forgewire Axe, Amber Spine of Klaxxi’vess, Amber Saber of Klaxxi’vess, and Forgewire Axe.
    • Zen Alchemist Stone should now work as intended.
    • Mysterious Camel Figurines should again provide the player with the ability to see Dormus.
    • The Quilen Statuette now has an item level of 463 (was 384).
    • Ancient Pandaren Fishing Charm should work as intended to give the player a chance to catch additional fish.
  • Pet Battles
    • Turn inputs should no longer sometimes be inadvertently skipped, causing only one pet to take action that turn.
    • Conceding in a random PVP Pet Battle should now count as a loss.
    • State-dependent abilities should now properly require that the state be present to gain their bonus effects.
    • Strong and Pristine Traps should now properly be awarded when the corresponding achievement is obtained.
    • The Achievement “Win Streak” should now function as expected, and be awarded to players who win 25 consecutive Pet Battles.
  • Quests
    • Players should be able to complete “Burning Down the House” as expected.
    • “SI:7 Report: Fire From the Sky” should always eject the player from Sully “The Pickle” McLeary’s vehicle, and can be completed even if the player dies and returns to camp before completing Sully’s event.
    • “Last Toll of the Yaungol” should only provide you with Xiao Tu’s companionship while you are in Hatred’s Vice.
    • Players who slip and fall from Serpent’s Overlook while on the quest “The Seal is Broken” should be able to find their way back to Serpent’s Spine by first returning to Grookin Hill or Pearlfin Village. Do watch your step!
    • All of the trainers for both the Horde and Alliance versions of “Battle Pet Tamers: Cataclysm” and “Battle Pet Tamers: Pandaria” now properly apply pet recovery once defeated.
    • “Sha Can Awe” quest NPCs should only apply their Languor effect on players who are currently on that quest.
    • “Gardener Fran and the Watering Can” now includes a bit more guidance for new horticulturists.
  • Bug Fixes
    • Loving a Shore Crab in Azshara … as you do … now properly counts towards the Achievement “To All The Squirrels I’ve Loved Before”.
    • The Luck of the Lotus buff should provide a chance to find Plundered Treasure as intended.
    • Crossing a zone boundary while traveling by boat or zeppelin on a multi-passenger mount should no longer result in players being removed from the transport, but may still dismount the passengers from the multi-passenger mount.
    • Players can no longer access different Pandaria daily quests by visiting other realms.
    • Players visiting other realms via RealID or Battletag groups will no longer receive loot from the Salyis’s Warband encounter.

Over to you: how’s your MoP playing experience been so far?

WoW 5.05 Patch Notes

Patch 5.05 has landed and it’s got a nice little swag of bug fixes, including as promised the CPU usage / overheating bug and some class balance changes as well for Druids, Hunters, Paladins and Warlocks.

Here’s the patch notes in all their glory for you:

 

WORLD OF WARCRAFT PATCH 5.0.5

The latest patch notes can always be found at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/

CLASSES

  • Many tooltips have been corrected to account for recent class balance adjustments.
  • Druid
    • The 25% speed increase granted by Cat Form should no longer stack with the speed increase of Dash.
  • Hunter
    • All hunter aspects have been removed from the global cooldown, and they again share a 1 second category cooldown
  • Paladin
    • Holy Shock’s base damage has been reduced, and its spellpower coefficient has been increased.
  • Warlock
    • Havoc’s cooldown has been reduced from 45 to 25 seconds.
    • The missile effect of Chaos Wave should no longer display erratically when cast on a moving target.

BUG FIXES

  • Well of Eternity
    • The spell graphic for Arcane Bomb during the Queen Azshara encounter has been reduced to a reasonable size.
  • Ulduar
    • The Silence and Pacify effects from Conservator’s Grip are now removed from players once they step within the appropriate area radius of a Healthy Spore mushroom.
  • Dragon Soul
    • Player pets should no longer experience pathing issues when attacking Deathwing’s Arm Tentacles.
    • Congealing Bloods now move at slower base speed.
  • Master Looters can again assign loot to players in other groups within a raid.
  • The Refer-A-Friend Summon should again function as expected.
  • Worgen players on pre-Cataclysm accounts should be able to accept and complete all Gilneas quests.
  • Players should again be able to teleport out of the Firelands Hatchery in Hyjal if they have completed Aessina’s Miracle.
  • Players should be able to use the new Fishing spell where appropriate.
  • Crossing coalesced zone boundaries should not duplicate profession recipes.
  • Players should no longer inappropriately receive the “Requires master riding skill” or “Requires artisan riding skill” errors when attempting to mount certain mounts.
  • Items in the Auction House UI should no longer display in reverse order when sorted.
  • The PvP node capture bar should be back in expected locations such as Wintergrasp, Tol Barad and Venture Bay.
  • Players should no longer be placed into battlegrounds that they have downvoted while queueing for a Random battleground.
  • Flying over Wintergrasp when no battle is active should no longer cause a forced dismount.
  • Accepting a quest that flags you for PvP combat should no longer prevent you from accepting further quests.
  • As he deserves, Crithto should now be attackable by both Alliance and Horde players.
  • Resolved a Mac issue related to CPU usage.
  • [Taiwan and China only] Fixed an issue that was preventing the white Murloc pet Terky from appearing in the Pet Journal.