Beta status: stability restarts, known issues and forced name changes

· ForeverDB

Where the WoW Forever beta stands after its first full week: realm restarts for stability, the current known issues, fixes for EU routing and Mac, the auto-shot bug and forced name changes.

The WoW Forever beta opened on September 17 and runs until October 21, the last full day of testing. Here’s a round-up of what Blizzard has said about the state of the beta so far.

The basics

  • Access: opt in for a chance to be selected, or buy an eligible bundle. The Skyborne Epic Pack and the Warcraft Forever Collection include beta access.
  • Level cap: 20 at the start, rising to 30 later in the beta.
  • Week 1 content: the Skyborne race and Zephras Isle, the Hall of Thanes (levels 13–18), the Ruins of Lordaeron (levels 15–20) and all zone content up to level 20.
  • Coming later: more zones, dungeons and the new battleground. Blizzard also plans a “Server Slam”, when the servers open for several hours so anyone can try the beta. Details haven’t been announced yet.

Stability and maintenance

On September 25, Kaivax said Blizzard was tracking server issues affecting some beta testers, and that the fix would almost certainly mean restarting servers that day. Later that day, the beta was shut down and restarted to apply fixes that should address stability issues, with a very brief maintenance.

The day before, on September 24, the beta went down for maintenance (Blizzard expected at least a couple of hours) to deploy a new build and its development notes. On September 22, a client-only update, WoW Forever 1.60.1 Build 69977, fixed some display and stability issues on Macs, improved controller navigation on the character selection screen and let gamepad players interact with items that start quests.

EU routing: in the first couple of days, EU testers had routing problems that affected movement, interacting with the world and sometimes staying connected. Kaivax said Blizzard has since put solutions in place to streamline routing for the EU region. Some players may still have routing problems that are out of Blizzard’s control, for example when their Internet provider has a connection issue or firewall-type software slows down or blocks the connection.

Finding and fixing game performance issues is a key reason to do a public test like this one. Kaivax, Community Manager

Mac: Kaivax said Blizzard has several analyses and potential fixes for Mac issues underway, and thanked players for detailed bug reports. The September 24 build fixed a water display issue and other display artifacts on Mac.

New known issues (September 24)

Many of the new entries are about spells and effects that can’t be tracked yet:

  • Banes and Curses don’t track properly if you drop your target and pick up a target that already has your bane or curse.
  • Healthstone cooldown, Arcane Blast, pet cooldowns and item enhancements (such as Windfury or rogue poisons) can’t be tracked.
  • Priests track all spells by default.
  • The Mana gem only starts tracking its cooldown properly after the mage casts another spell.
  • Creating or changing a party may move players to a different world instance. Blizzard says it is working on improvements and will post an update soon.
  • The Stormwind minimap has display issues, which will be fixed in a later build.
  • The Personal Resource Display doesn’t show combo points.

Two issues moved to the resolved list, with fixes in the next beta build: Sentinel Lynessa Duskblossom running too fast and spamming Strike during “Escaping Ban’ethil” in Teldrassil, and the Loch Modan quest “Snowbound” giving more XP than intended.

Still on the list

The main known issues post also lists these, among others:

  • Barber chairs cause a LUA error, and character friends are disabled in the beta.
  • The minimap may be partly off the screen.
  • The character pane doesn’t show your level, class or titles yet (work in progress).
  • Several pet stats for Hunters and Warlocks show incorrectly on the character sheet (work in progress).
  • Glancing blows: the chance and damage reduction for casters are wrong at all levels, and the melee damage reduction penalty is wrong against higher-level targets, so the glancing blow chances on the character sheet aren’t accurate (work in progress).
  • Pressing Y before level 25 opens the Legacy System and causes LUA errors on tabs 1 and 3.
  • Some players can’t sign guild charters. As a temporary workaround, you can hand in a guild charter with no signatures.
  • The Cooldown Manager is a work in progress, and how complete it is varies by class.
  • Armor bonuses from consumables and buffs are multiplied by Bear Form’s armor bonuses.
  • Queueing an on-next-attack ability (Heroic Strike, Cleave, Raptor Strike) disables your spell queue window.
  • Taking damage while channeling Arcane Missiles fires a full-damage bolt instead of a truncated one.
  • Resurrection sickness lasts the wrong amount of time at lower levels.

Other bugs Blizzard has commented on

  • Auto-shot: because of a bug, the 0.5-second cast before a Hunter’s auto-shot or a wand shot is much shorter than intended, so Hunters and wand users don’t have to stand still as long as they should. On September 23, Blizzard said it will fix this in an upcoming beta build, hopefully the following week.
  • “A Firm Response”: the event in this Windshaper Skyborne quest on Zephras Isle could stall after Lorthuna spawned. A first fix didn’t work. On September 21, Kaivax said the second fix looked like it worked and testers were completing the quest.
  • “Character with that name already exists”: if you’re locked out of a beta character, Kaivax asks you to report the character’s name and, if possible, the exact time you last played it successfully, to help the team search its logs.

Forced name changes and removals

On September 24, developer Fwoibles said Blizzard is issuing forced name changes to beta characters that break its naming policies, and has removed beta access for some users whose names were far outside the Code of Conduct. The actions were taken directly by the World of Warcraft development team and reviewed individually, and Customer Service can’t help with appeals. Blizzard’s official Bluesky account added that the users with the most extreme violations have been removed from the beta.

Our system for enforcing naming standards will be coming online very shortly, we would appreciate testers refraining from “testing” this system, as you run the risk of being actioned and losing access to the Beta. Fwoibles, WoW Developer

Also this week

  • The first episode of the WoW: Forever Podcast is out, with Senior Game Designer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield, Lead Classic Designer Tim Jones and content creators Countdown To Classic and Xaryu. Aggrend says the next episode will focus heavily on class design, and he is asking players which topics they’d like future episodes to cover.
  • Kaivax posted that increased weather effects are “coming soon to the Beta”.
  • WoW: Forever Escape Together: Horde and Alliance champions face off in head-to-head challenges before a final, Scarlet Monastery-inspired escape room, streamed live on the official Warcraft Twitch and YouTube channels on Friday, October 23. You can also try the escape room in person at Escape Manor in Toronto from October 8 to 11.

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