Last night was a pitch-black day for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. Everything went wrong at Blizzard.
In MMORPGs, there are always occasional game glitches. Bugs and issues are quite common, and even a large company like Blizzard with World of Warcraft is not exempt from them. But what happened on September 4th on the American servers might set a new record.
In fact, many new contents from Battle for Azeroth were supposed to be available yesterday afternoon after the maintenance. In addition to Warfronts (for which we have a great guide), the first new season in PvP started, Mythic+ dungeons opened their gates, world bosses spawned, and the raid Uldir finally launched. But a lot went wrong.
Mythic+? More like Problems+!
The biggest annoyance was likely that numerous players suddenly could open a reward chest that was supposed to be available at the end of the week for completing “Mythic+” dungeons. This chest contained rewards that were significantly above the item level that should be accessible to players. Several players reported receiving items well beyond item level 380 – even weapons with item level 415 were said to be available.
The reason for the error was that the reward chest was calculated after the last week of Legion. Therefore, those who completed a “Mythic+15” dungeon in August received an item as if they had completed a “Mythic+15” dungeon in Battle for Azeroth.
What did Blizzard do? Blizzard disabled the chest and began to reclaim the illegitimate rewards from players. Currently, there are no rewards from the chest anymore, only starting next week – and then only according to performance in the current week.
By the way: The error also led to players receiving extremely high keystones. So some players now have a keystone for “Shrine of the Storms +22”. Good luck!
Delays in PvP Season
Especially the PvP fans who have been waiting for the start of the PvP season since the launch of Battle for Azeroth were terribly disappointed. Just a few hours after the maintenance, Blizzard announced that the current PvP season was temporarily “suspended” due to unexpected errors.
What happened in PvP? Blizzard does not disclose all the errors, but at least one became known: just like with the “Mythic+” chests for dungeons, PvP players were already able to open PvP chests with powerful rewards. These items were far too powerful and would likely have completely disrupted the balance in the coming weeks.
What did Blizzard do? Shortly after the discovery of the errors, the PvP season was paused. Players who accidentally received too powerful items later found that Blizzard had removed these items. An apology letter was also sent by mail.
World Bosses Without Limits
Two more issues occurred with the world bosses that could also spawn now. Players were able to enjoy loot that exceeded the actual item level limit. Many players received items from the world bosses with an item level of 400 or more. This is still above the loot from the Mythic version of Uldir.
Moreover, players who were particularly early woke up could defeat the world boss twice and loot twice – including the two “Bonus Rolls”. A clear advantage in the coming days.
Outcry on Social Media: “Rollback Now!”
All these errors led to the official forums, Twitter, and Reddit being filled with complaints. At times on Reddit, the seven most popular posts were those demanding a “rollback,” meaning a reset of the game state to a previous date.
The tone became aggressive and offensive, as the community manager Ythisens was attacked in the forum, being told to “stop farming world quests and finally do his job”.
After all, it was already “1 hour and 30 minutes after his working start” and there had been no statement from him. Yes, this shows the bold side of some members of the WoW community.
Europe Stayed Unaffected
The only good thing about the whole situation is that we European players were completely spared from all the mistakes. Since our weekly maintenance – and thus also the releases for raids – are carried out a few hours later, we escaped these errors. The corresponding hotfixes are already active for us and we can enjoy the game a bit freer from bugs.
Nevertheless, this incident must have been quite embarrassing for Blizzard. Such massive problems did not even occur at the launch of the expansion. Let’s hope this was the most chaotic day in the history of Battle for Azeroth.
