• WoW disconnects
• Lagaran
• Freeze frame boss fights

Sound familiar?

• Uninstall Lagonite!
• Ignore Lagonite users!

Only a few days ago I was musing that WoW disconnects had gotten smarter. There is no real evidence of this, but a couple of things that the comments highlighted were:

1. Since 3.2.2 disconnects have become more frequent, and
2. Thanks to Lethal’s link there are many ways to improve your play experience, including shafting mods with large messaging requirements.

Driving solution to disconnects

My disconnecting stopped once I did a manual update of my net and video drivers (via windows update and vendor website), so that’s a great 1st place to start.

My lag and frame rates got marginally better, but not enough, so I also followed one of the recommendations on the linked forum and installed Fubar_AddonSpamFu, just because I am curious by nature.

Carbonite, GTFO of my Dalaran, Boss fight, Battleground and Server!

Sure enough, one of the 1st offending message spammers I noticed was GearScore. You can shove that in your recycle bin too you elitist emblem lovers!

But the out-and-out “I will adversely effect your game play experience” mod was Carbonite.

Don’t get me wrong, I have used, promoted and even loved Carbonite in the past. Until they went premium, until now…

I’m sure the creators of Carbonite are good folks and they have developed an otherwise excellent mod that I would continue to recommend, under other circumstances, but something has to change.

To think I originally changed to Carbonite because it had a lower footprint than the mod I was using at the time. Our own TreeHuggerDave was pimping it’s gatherer abilities to me only the other day.

I’m using (why does my iPhone spell checker want to correct “using” with Jong?) Quest Helper these days, which you can see is a bit spammy, but only a fraction of Carbonite.

Healbot is also a bit spammy, but I dare say you would prefer my heals to my Carbonite messages, especially mid boss fight. (yes I realize I have 2 versions of LibHeal installed, I didn’t, but I do now. That Guild positions mod is going too!).

Rise up and strike down your spammy foes!

• You like Gold selling Spam?
• You like “Join our Guild, we haz tabard” spam?
• You like anal [pyroblast] spam?

No?

Then why would you put up with Dalaran crippling, Boss fight wiping addon spam?

You wouldn’t?

Good, here’s what to do…

1. Install Fubar_AddonSpamFu and identify the enemies of your play experience.
2. Disable your own Carbonite (if you have it)
3. Post a link to this post in your guild forum (here’s a short one: http://tinyurl.com/yhdcja8 )
4. Whisper your best mates, your guild leader, perfect strangers (just not the Horde) and tell them that you are putting them on /ignore until they too uninstall Carbonite (and GearScore and any other “relatively worthless” addon).
5. Tell Carbonite (and the other spammy mod) creators to reduce the spam, especially if you are paying for a reduced game experience.

I thought mods weren’t allowed to adversely effect our in-game experience.

Blizzard told us they wouldn’t let this happen, I thought they meant in the sense of game play experience, not only we will prevent mod makers from making money.

Blizzard, install Fubar_SpamFu, you can get it here… and strike these addons down with your [Mighty Man Hammer of Anal Jong].

But I can’t live without Carbonite/GearScore/[insert mod of annoyance here]!

Grow up and play the game!

If you MUST use addons (hey, I must, so I’m OK with you needing to), then pick some better ones.

Need to /flex your epeen and exclude appropriately geared players from starting content because the aren’t Triumph Emblem equipped?

Use PugChecker!

Need an arrow to tell you where the 10 Tauren tails are for that quest, use QuestHelper, TomTom (it’s already in Cartographer) etc, or god forbid, look it up on WoWhead

Need a map full of Gatherer nodes (TreeHuggerDave tells me Carbonite Routes now takes the gathering out of gathering… but), use, I don’t know, maybe use Gatherer?

Yes I know Gatherer gets a mention in the forum’s post, but you need to realize I was running Gatherer in those screenshots and it doesn’t even make the Spam-o-meter scoreboard).

Carbonite, GTFO of my Dalaran, Boss fight, Battleground and Server!

A little bit of /silly

Ok, on a majorly lighter note, I need to finish this with a laugh.

Syrana hightlighted a WoW oriented video that she saw (and I missed on WoW.com) the other day. Just on the off chance you aren’t a Lock loving Syrana follower, here it is.

The (unofficial) Unreleased Cataclysm Trailer:

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/09/carbonite-gtfo-of-my-dalaran/

Be careful what you wish for,
You may not get what you want

Only a week or so ago, when patch 3.2.2 landed with a thud, it brought a few changes to the battlegrounds.

One of those changes I was uncertain about.

On the positive side I would always be entering numerically equal battlegrounds.

On the negative side, the price I would pay is having to wait longer for the BG queue to pop.

But wait, there’s more

Combined with these other two changes, I was left will time on my hands.

Bad news if both queues filled the moment before I joined… Hello 30 minute wait.

Bad news if I decide to put the kettle on or anything else that takes longer than 40 seconds. Hello re-queue.

Numerically Unbalanced

But, but something has changed. I think since my wonderful Saturday night (thanks again Blizz!).

I am getting into BGs that aren’t numerically balanced… or even full…

Of Alliance anyway!

This BG scoreboard shot was taken at the height of the Alliance population.

We started at 4 to 10

Long odds even for uber PvPers like myself (cough cough)

• Needless to say the BG was over long before the 25 minute timer.
• Needless to say we lost.
• I probably don’t even need to tell you that we lost 0/3.

Of course when 50% of your potential BG population is waiting to respawn at the GY, and that 50% actually comprises 100% of your forces, there isn’t much to stop the Horde grabbing and capping your flag.

Props to the Alliance (I’ve been throwing them around like sweets lately), we didn’t give up and no one left the BG till it was all over.

Of course the BG finished before we could have hearthed anyway…

#IBlameSyrana Oct 6 666

These days we all blame Syrana, but I have evidence that she is involved.

Well her and 665 of you…

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/07/stealth-unpatched-bgs/

I’ve been disconnecting from WoW a lot lately.

I’m not sure why, everything else is fine, it’s just WoW. Doesn’t appear to be a latency thing, just one minute I am running along, next I am hearing the roar of the starting screen dragon.

Apparently PewPew has been disconnecting too, just not as nicely as me. Not just him but a large proportion of the WoW population.

Mind you disconnects are nothing new to me, I have a long history of DCs. Most of the time it isn’t at an important moment. Even when I am questing and grinding and DC I generally come back to find a corpse at my feet, not my corpse at someone else’s feet. The only reason it’s a concern now is I am the healer, not the disposable DPS, if I DC during a boss fight (and I have), then it may spell disaster (once it did, another time I reconnected in the nick of time).

Something different

So my long history of DCs has made me notice something different lately. Until recently when I DC’d and logged back in I would:

• Be outside the instance door, if I DC’d on an instance.
• At the Battlemaster or point of origin when in a BG.

Lately, no matter where I die, I come back to the same place.

• Mid boss fight, I pop back in to drop some last minute heals.
• Mid BG, I pop back in to collect my BG marks or throw a few more heals.

EotS Disconnect recovery

I mentioned just yesterday how my EoTS team came back from 370 to win the match.

I DC’d when we had 1570 points!

Previously this meant I would return to the Battlemaster with no honor, marks or XP to my name.

This time I collected my loot!

I don’t know what Blizzard changed, but whatever it was GJ!

edit: OK, considering such a large proportion of WoW players have been experiencing this only since the release of 3.2.2, maybe I should rephrase that as GG… and not in the good sense…

Still, if the relog to your last position remains after they fix the DC issues, I’ll be a happy Gnome

edit2: Lethal has provided a link to the official forums with suggested solutions to these problems.  Check it out and if it works for you, get down on bended knee and praise him

lethal:

How I beat the DC Gods in TOGC25

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/10/03/smarter-wow-disconnects/

From memory this has happened to me in Gruul’s and MgT, maybe others as well, I don’t recall.  It’s not happening in BGs, where I have spent most of the last few weeks.

The problem.

You know, you finally get the group together and enter the instance… Buff up… Conjure a table… Grab your 80 croissants… Knock up your Mana Gems.. Ready to set the Instance on fire…

Damn… yep, your dead.  No worries, Ghost form back to the instance ready to regain Health and Mana and… Ummm damn.. where is my food & water?  Going to have to use what’s left of my Mana supply to create something for dinner.

Get to Boss… Carefully watching Mana… OK time to pop a Mana Gem… Damn, Blizzard stole my Mana Gems!

Moral of the story… Don’t die, don’t leave the instance (nope, that new party member can run here for all I care.. no running outside for a summon… at least until conjurables exist through dead and Instance exits…

PS: Please don’t tell me that this is working as intended.. I would hate to think that Arcane dust is being used as gold sink.

Gnomer and Out!