A zone in World of Warcraft is almost unplayable. It has been completely ruined by a patch.
That an MMORPG comes without any bugs is something that hardly anyone expects today. The worlds are too large, the games too complex. Every new patch brings one bug or another, and smaller issues might linger a bit longer. However, what players can currently experience in World of Warcraft has never occurred in the almost 22 years of the MMORPG. An area is so mercilessly buggy that normal gameplay there is simply impossible.
Which area is it? We are talking about Arathi Highlands in the Cataclysm variant. This area is currently practically unplayable because it is plagued by numerous bugs and problems. These are partly due to the massive phasing that has apparently scrambled a few things due to a multitude of different quest phases.
What is broken there? When you switch from the phase in Arathi Highlands of the modern version from Battle for Azeroth (or also The War Within) to the Cataclysm variant, you won’t believe your eyes and think the whole game is broken. This is also described by the player southmida in his post on Reddit:
Since last March, this zone has been as broken as I have never seen any other in WoW. The terrain does not change between the new and old version. So when you switch to the Cataclysm version, almost everything is full of bugs: flying NPCs, ores, herbs, and items. Quests that are buried deep in the ground, faulty discoveries, and so on.
I can understand the nature of this bug with the questline around the Red Twilight and the new tutorial, but it is utterly out of this world that a subscription-based game offers such a terrible zone as content. I have never seen such a bad state before, not even on the most questionable private servers and certainly not in retail.
Cortyn says: I complained about the condition of Arathi Highlands a few days ago when it caught my attention during an RP event. What might be funny at first glance is rather embarrassing for Blizzard over such a long period. Because apparently, this condition has existed for nearly 3 months, which should really not be the case in a game of the format of World of Warcraft.
That not everything runs smoothly in the first few days of a patch is something that most have gotten used to. But for entire areas to basically not function correctly for months is a situation that should not exist in a subscription game—or in any game at all. Or how do you see the whole situation?
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!