Patch 6.0.2

October 15th Baby!

WoD Beta and PTR - My Latest Observations.

Apparently patch 6.0.2 is up on the PTR with the Blasted Lands/Dark Portal changes.

I thought I would go and have a look on the Beta. Apparently the Dark Portal is red now.

Nethergarde keep has been taken over by the horde but it does still shows as having an Alliance flight path on the map. I reported this as a bug.

The alliance seem to have a base on the beach just south east of Nethergarde but no-one seemed to have a quest for me.

I then went to the Red Portal but you can't just go through it. It turns out you have to speak to Kadgar via his dialog box and he will sen you through.

As he does so there is a great cinematic and the otherside of the portal is quite a daunting; until youdrop back into the game and it's nowhere near as scary!

Stood there at the top of the steps looking out over Hellfire Peninsula, or whatever it's called in Beta, took me right back to TBC :)

WoD Beta - Mists Gear Doesn't Change Stats in WoD!

Well, it would appear that your MoP gear doesn't change stats when you change specs. I popped into the Beta tonight and joined a dungeon queue as a healer.

Once I got in I let the crew know that this was my first outing as a healer in Beta.

I had heard, like Blizz claimed for MoP also, that the healing was not going to be about keeping everyone topped off but more about keeping the team stable around 60% maybe. So I was mentally prepared for what could look quite scary.

Off we go and things turn VERY SCARY very quickly. Everyone keeps dropping down super fast and my heals are doing maybe 5-10% repair work! People keep dying and ressing right at the start of the dungeon and running straight back into the fight and dying again.

It is not helped of course that I am portrait click, heal button press healing as I do not have my healing spells macroed and have no addons installed. Come back Grid, all is forgiven.

As it turns out this was not my problem. I had assumed that all my Ret gear had turned into  Healing gear when I spec-switched. After a full wipe the tank asked in /party why I was in strength gear. "Doesn't it swap?" I asked. "Not MoP stuff" was the answer - DOH!

I quickly changed gear and we pull again and soon wipe on the first boss. This time it is purely down to click press healing. I make my apologies and say the group deserves a better healer and leave.

They were all very nice and amicable about it though, not a single "Nub!"

WoD Beta - The New Quest Log

WoD Beta - Character Copy Progress

Well, my theory that you had to be in the same region didn't immediately bear fruit as I found out yesterday. However, this evening when I logged onto Beta I spotted a new drop down menu at the top of the character copy window in game where you can select region.

However after several minutes it is still sat with the "Copy in Progress" window open and nothing is happening. Hrmph!

So looks like, at least for me, the character copy is still not working :(

WoD Beta - Download Progress

Over the course of the last few days we have gotten down to 6GB remaining! YAY!

WoD Beta - Still downloading ...

The desktop client has just decided it has 12.37GB remaining to download and it has (yet again) gone back to red meaning it is unplayable.

Probably explains why at 20:00 GMT last night all the realms were offline!

WoD Beta - Not Finished Downloading

Well last night when I booted up the client finally accepted there was still some downloading to do. So I left it on overnight and it went from 17.6 to 16.4 GB remaining.

I then left it on all day whilst I was at work and when I came home the internet down. When we finally got back on there was no downloading. I'm not falling for this again, it can't have done all 17GB.

Edit: A day later it still won't admit to needing to download anything else!

WoD Beta - How to get Into Warlords of Draenor Beta

I still don't know whether for some bizarre reason I had Alpha access, but now my Battle.net desktop app does actually say Beta, rather than Alpha.

The guys over at The Instance and Convert To Raid were debating last week as to what contributes being a veteran, which grants you an invite to Warlords of Destruction (sic) Beta.

Well, I'll tell you my circumstances.

• I began playing in Vanilla (sorry Koltrane - I mean Classic!!) before the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj patch. 
• I have never let that account's subscription lapse (except maybe a day here and there). 
• I have had a second account since the start of TBC and that has also rarely lapsed and was merged along with my main account into my battle.net account as soon as it was possible to do so. 
• I have a third account which was active for a couple of years but is now dormant. 
• I bought the 1 year subscription to get me into MOP Beta and did actually log into it and use the Beta Account. 
• I have Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 + Expansion on my Battle.net account. 
• I have a Hearthstone account. 
• Very importantly I opted in for the beta.

 So, I think the criteria are:

1. You opted in for Beta
2. You have an active account in good standing
3. You have played since Vanilla 

 There you go, that's my theory. Prove me wrong!

WoD Beta - Fix For The CAS system was unable to initialize

TL;DR at the bottom ...

When I first got into Alpha/Beta/Gamma/Whateva the battle.net client told me it was downloading 26GB.

I was verty surprised that after less than 15-20 minutes on my 512KB - 1MB broadband connection I had got to playable stage.

When I went to bed that night I left it downloading and the following evening it was still at around 22GB to download.

The next day it didn't try to download anything but after a restart it went back to 22GB remaining. So before I went away for the weekend I booted up the desktop app again hoping for 2 days of uninterrupted broadband to download a size-able chunk. Except the client said it was at v6.0.xxx again so nothing to download. I left it on anyway!

When I got back I tried to boot up Beta and after waiting with the client telling me the game was running for some time I eventaully got the green WoD icon appear on my taskbar, but all that was telling me was ..

The CAS system was unable to initialize: CASInitialize() timed out waiting for container creation mutex.

Mutex??? What the ???

CAS is the new file system that is replacing MPQs in WoD. This system allows for smoother patching and better client/server stuff apparently as well as speeding things up. Well not today.

I had had this problem when I first installed the beta and found the solution on the interwebs, maybe it was something to do with deleting a load of files or restating; but I'd forgotten exactly what though so had to re-search.

Unfortunately this time I had no luck except for a cheeky blue post on the official forums saying ...

Cheeky!

Well, I tried deleting some cache files and restarting the client and no go. Eventually I rebooted my system, still no joy.

TL;DR
The solution I found was to go into options and select the "use 32 bit Client" this worked and I have an inkling this was the solution I found last time and an update must have overwritten those settings.

WoD Beta - Ingame Character Copy: Can't Copy Won't Copy

I've been trying to copy MarcusMaximi over to the Beta to see how he performs and to get a heads up on the quests he will be facing when Warlords of Destruction (sic) finally does to come but I can't copy him over.

I never even tried to copy a character over for MoP. I created a Pandaren Monk and tooled around the starting area with him a bit but that was about it, I was at an all time WoW interest low at the time.

Now, however, I want to get MM over to check out what he's going to be like; but I can't.

I've looked at the account management page on my battle.net account and it says the character transfer is down for maintenance.

Several blue posts say that the character copy has now moved into the client but it does work.

Well, I go back into the game and yes there is a window and a button to copy in live account data. Except when I use it it says 'copy has failed'.

Very frustrating. More searching suggest that you need to empty you characters mail box and log into them so that the armoury refreshes if you haven't done that for a while.

None of these work for me. :(

Edit: The latest info I have gleened is that it may be because my account is EU and the server I am on is US. I'll try it on Mekkatorque tonight.

WoD Beta - NPC: Friend or Foe and Level 90.

One of the things I had heard of about WoD was that the way that NPCs (and maybe PCs as well) are shown to you will change so that as soon as you mouse over them the will be surrounded by a shining hue to identify whether they are friendly or aggressive.

Here you can see my newbie orc hunter talking to one of the friendly NPCs surrounded by his eerie green glow.

A little while later I managed to create a level 90 template character on Gilneas called Ed - It's nice to be able to create a 2 character name.

The first thing he saw was a massive Khadgar standing at the gates of Stormwind and I think he wanted me to go to the Dark Portal. So off I went.

After waiting around for a not inconsiderable amount of time most things had loaded. But most of the Dark Portal was just plain and gray, like plain concrete. I hope this is just textures they haven't added yet!

So I picked up a quest and went off to kill things with my unimpressive number squished damage not seeming to do a heck of a lot of damage. Here you can see the aggressive red glow of an Iron Horde Orc.

After a little while I realised I hadn't chosen a spec or talents or, well, anything - Ooops!

Once I had figured that things started going a lot smoother!

WoD Beta - The Toy Box

There you go. Your first look at the toy box. Looks a bit empty to me, but then again this was on my new level 1 Orc Hunter.

The Orc Hunter is now up to level 6 or so and wandering over to have a chat with Voljin.

Check back soon to see what he's up to.

Next time on WoW WoD Wroundup - new character Highlighting and level 90 quests.

WoD Beta - First Impressions

The first night was insane trying to get anything to work with the Alpha/Beta.

First of all there was the waiting to get to playable. Then all kinds of errors involving reboots, deleting files and changing settngs and then waiting for the game to do anythign.

I eventually managed to get in and create some characters on Gilneas (US) including an Orc Hunter. I did some quests on him and checked out some of the new features.

The first thing I noticed in my bags was this ...

I think it just sorted stuff into rarity order. I'll have a play round and see if it does anything else obvious. Maybe it will sell greys to a vendor if you are stood by one.

I also noticed a Garrison Abilty in my spell book. Not entriely sure what that does either, it didn't seem to do much for me!

Next time - The Toy Box

WoW - Warlords of Draenor Beta Access

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After my last post I checked my attached email account and there is an email in there received at 08:00 this morning entitled "Warlords of Draenor Beta Invitation‏" and tells me to do stuff with the battle.net desktop app so it must be legit right?

Well, I go to my battle.net account and see that I actually do have Beta access to WoD on my account!!

YAY!!!

Weird that the battle.net desktop app still says Alpha, maybe I was invited to alpha (no email found) or maybe they haven't updated the desktop app.

Who cares? I am in WoD Beta Baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WoW: Warlords of Draenor Alpha / Beta Access

The #‎Warlords‬ of Draenor beta is now live! First wave of invites are on their way:http://ow.ly/ywpNA according to the WoW Facebook group.

It directs you to update your battle.net client and then In the Region/Account drop-down menu above the Play button, choose Beta: Warlords of Draenor (listed under In Development)

I thought I'd just have a look and see. It looks like I had Alpha access!!!!!!!!!!! WTF??? I am currently downloading a 26GB patch over a rubbish broadband connection. It will take me a while to find out whether a) everyone had the download option but not actually game access and b) whether Alpha access is still available and/or automatically converts to Beta access!!