2.3.3 is on the way. - Page 2

Playered · 01/16/08, 7:55 PM

This fix should be going in with the 2.3.3 patch which is now being put on the PTRs. We'd greatly appreciate it if those of you with macro issues could try your macros on the PTR, and let us know both here and in the Test Realm forum if you encounter issues using your macros there.

source

Looks like it will be up this week atleast.

World of Warcraft PTR Patch 2.3.3

The latest test realm patch notes can always be found at
WoW -> Test Realm Patch Notes

The latest patch notes can always be found at
WoW -> Patch Notes -> Current Patch Notes

General
- Some players may notice improved data load times when newly entering
the world and after zoning into new areas.
- Character/NPC load times have been decreased, and now should appear
faster. You’re not hearing voices, there really are people in
Shattrath!

Bug Fixes
- Felspine the Greater in Shadowmoon Valley will no longer evade when
engaged.
- Players will now be correctly credited with their arena points if
they purchase an arena item during weekly arena calculations.
- Using a castsequence macro on a target moving out of range will no
longer cause it to stop working.

Kalman · 01/16/08, 8:18 PM

- Character/NPC load times have been decreased, and now should appear
faster. You’re not hearing voices, there really are people in
Shattrath!

This one note both enthralls and terrifies me. So much potential for good (hey, you mean mining nodes might appear BEFORE I fly past them?) and bad (if the opposite occurs and devilsaurs eat my alt before they render.)

Mikari · 01/16/08, 8:25 PM

General
- Some players may notice improved data load times when newly entering
the world and after zoning into new areas.
- Character/NPC load times have been decreased, and now should appear
faster. You’re not hearing voices, there really are people in
Shattrath!

These just seem to be the Windows Media player fix being added to WoW's code. Currently if you start Windows Media Player before you start WoW you get much faster zoning/NPC load times.

Baalzaman · 01/16/08, 8:26 PM

What that means is they are implementing into the game code the effect that running WMP has (more precise timers or something).
Heres hoping they do a better job than what was done with the network "fix" to reduce latency they put in place last patch.

[edit: beaten to it!]

deanx · 01/16/08, 9:19 PM

Do you need to keep WMP open while you play, or can you close it after you load into game?

Dollar · 01/16/08, 10:06 PM

I'm still confused as to what having WMP open is actually supposed to do. I timed my load time from pressing enter world until the loading screen disappeared and with or without WMP my load times were still within one second of eachother. Is this not the intended side effect?

bv728 · 01/16/08, 10:18 PM

Originally Posted by Dollar

I'm still confused as to what having WMP open is actually supposed to do. I timed my load time from pressing enter world until the loading screen disappeared and with or without WMP my load times were still within one second of eachother. Is this not the intended side effect?

Older Dual Processor Rigs had issues with loadtimes, because the cores would desync and cause problems.

WMP runs a set of microcode 'fixes' that make the cores sync signifigatly better, apparently, eliminating the issue and causing signifigant speedups for a large set of users.

Pyros · 01/16/08, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by bv728

Older Dual Processor Rigs had issues with loadtimes, because the cores would desync and cause problems.

WMP runs a set of microcode 'fixes' that make the cores sync signifigatly better, apparently, eliminating the issue and causing signifigant speedups for a large set of users.

And it works insanely good. I have a quite high end machine, but since 2.3, my loading times were terrible. Like, 20-25secs. If I have wmp in background, I load anything in less than 5secs. Even ingame, items/portals/people and such wouldn't pop before a small delay, which was terribly annoying, since my old computer would load them faster(playing both at the same time).

Shadout · 01/16/08, 10:49 PM

Still feels like they are trying to delay 2.4 as much as they (the PR) think are reasonable. To reduce the time between 2.4 and Wotlk of course.

Going to be interesting how long time this patch will be on ptr.

Baalzaman · 01/16/08, 11:12 PM

Originally Posted by bv728

Older Dual Processor Rigs had issues with loadtimes, because the cores would desync and cause problems.

WMP runs a set of microcode 'fixes' that make the cores sync signifigatly better, apparently, eliminating the issue and causing signifigant speedups for a large set of users.

Nope.

Consider the following program:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>

int main(void)
{
timeBeginPeriod(1);
printf("Press any key to restore normal timer frequency.\n");
getchar();
timeEndPeriod(1);
return 0;
}

Which may be downloaded from here: FilePlanet: Srcdsfpsboost.exe for PHL Server Guide

Running this program in the background has exactly the same effect on WoW (faster load times etc) as running WMP in the background (and at a fraction of the resource use I might add!).

While I'm a bit fuzzy on the "hows" my understanding is it alters a timer used by Windows from the default value of 10 (I believe) to 1, resulting in more (but shorter) processor timeslices that can be allocated to active processes. A programmer may be able to enlighten us better on this.

Nothing to do with microcode.

Anarkii · 01/16/08, 11:26 PM

It doesn't actually alter the timer used by Windows. When multiple processes are running, Windows picks the timer that is the lowest requested one amongst all of them. So, if Process 1(like WoW.exe) has it at 10, and Process 2(WMP or the piece of code above) has it at 1, Windows just picks 1 as long as Process 2 is running.

Akka · 01/17/08, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by Boneitis

Lastly, and I'm guessing here, but I think they're intentionally delaying WotLK so that more people could see the content, ie BT and Illidan. There was a lot of negative PR on how few people experienced Naxx back in the day and how the people who did see it wouldn't shut up about how amazing it was. So they brought it back for WotLK and don't want to repeat the mistake of blocking people out of the main lore content, as shown with what they claim to be doing with Arthas and how Kael is going to be in the 5man somehow.

Quite true. Except that by delaying the Sunwell, they short the time available to beat it, which will means that either it's a very forgetable instance that not many will miss, either it'll be Naxx all over again.

Additionnally, there is still only a tiny amount of people wading through BT, which has barely increased in six monthes, and I don't see it getting a lot bigger unless they nerf all the T5 content big time.

dreadai · 01/17/08, 7:51 AM

We have quite slow progression as a server, with only 3 guild having killed Illidan and 1 more working on him.

We do however have a good 20 or so guilds at various stages of T5 content, and 4 or 5 others at T6 stage. For the bulk of the WoW playerbase, the pacing of the content will be just fine, those who raid will be close to done, or done with BT/MH and can farm it a bit while progressing sunwell, those who started raiding late can skip bits of content if they want, or work through the content same as they always did.

Personally, I'd rather farm Illidan for another 2-3 months than have a half baked slipshod Sunwell patch that is full of cockblocks and badly tuned encounters.

Gogusrl · 01/17/08, 8:33 AM

Am I the only one that thinks arena season 4 will come with Sunwell ?! They already said there is going to be a season 4, and if it takes a few weeks to get 2.4 on the ptr and they keep it there for ~2 months it would be the right time to start another season.

songster · 01/17/08, 8:46 AM

Originally Posted by dreadai

We have quite slow progression as a server, with only 3 guild having killed Illidan and 1 more working on him.

That's not slow, that's considerably better than average. Latest Wowjutsu says that 1 in 3 servers doesn't have Illidan down at all. May be a little out of date, but it's not going to be that far wrong. In particular, Argent Dawn (EU) ranks 66/237 in the EU. EU is somewhat better progressed on average than US - your server's score would put you 25th in the US rankings.

Just saying. Always remember that the EJ community pretty much operates in a tiny bubble drawn from the top guilds on the top servers.

Akka · 01/17/08, 9:11 AM

Originally Posted by dreadai

We have quite slow progression as a server, with only 3 guild having killed Illidan and 1 more working on him.

We do however have a good 20 or so guilds at various stages of T5 content, and 4 or 5 others at T6 stage.

That's not a "slow progression" server at all, you know...
Many servers have only one Illidan-killing guilds, many others haven't killed Illidan at all yet.
Ours have 3 Illidan-Killing guilds, but only two other BT-level ones.

For the bulk of the WoW playerbase, the pacing of the content will be just fine, those who raid will be close to done, or done with BT/MH and can farm it a bit while progressing sunwell, those who started raiding late can skip bits of content if they want, or work through the content same as they always did.

For the bulk of WoW playerbase, they will barely have put foot on the T5 content (VR and perhaps Lurker/Hydross, and that's all), if they reach it at all, unless massive nerfing of the instances. I don't see how you can see the "bulk" reaching BT, much less killing Illidan, in the current situation.

Vaccine · 01/17/08, 9:15 AM

Originally Posted by Stella

2. If WotLK had even half the outdoor zones done, it would be in beta by now.

This is a point I really want to emphasise.

[tinfoil hat] If you look at the screenshots released and information before the beta of TBC was introduced we were getting lots of info and screenshots about 6 months before than we've had of WotLK. 95% of the WotLK screenshots so far have been of the two starting zones, specifically the new towns and architecture. Whilst thats great and the Forsaken town looks beautiful and captures the feeling of the race well, you have to think that theres been a major slowdown/delay in the production of the expansion. Now as far as we know there are two totally seperate teams on the expansion and on 2.4 but I get the feeling as soon as 2.4 is polished off all the developers are going to be diving into the WotLK team to rush it through asap.

With still no information about a beta so far, that leads me to think they've not even sorted some of the basics out yet like new talents and skills. Is this related to the 2.4 balancing of classes in pvp? Possibly, I think we are going to see a 2.5 which will bring Season 4 of arena and the 51 (or 46 hopefully) point talents for the same reason as we got them before TBC, to try to tide us over to the release of the expansion. I honestly don't see it being released before August. The method of accessing Sunwell bosses just kind of reinforces the idea for me, it gives them control, even through such a blatant cockblock, of when they want to release the content. Its like releasing half the dungeon now and saving the second half for a midway point between the release of 2.4 and the release of 2.5/WotLK.
[/tinfoil hat]

Nuveena · 01/17/08, 9:16 AM

Originally Posted by Akka

Additionnally, there is still only a tiny amount of people wading through BT, which has barely increased in six monthes, and I don't see it getting a lot bigger unless they nerf all the T5 content big time.

That's not entirely true. Let me illustrate. This is a graph with the total number of T6 content clears at any given point in time.

The source is of course WoWJutsu. As you can see, the rate of clearing T6 is increasing rapidly. And the pace isn't appearing to slow down much either, with some 200 guilds working on Illidan at this moment, so we can expect those to be kills over the next few weeks. It is of course anyones guess when the pace will eventually slow down. Shame I don't have comparable data for Kael'Thas kills to compare with, but there are roughly 3,000 guilds in T6 content at this time as far as I can tell so you'd expect the number of Illidan kills to match that in 2-3 months. A bit of speculation for sure, but that would point at a similar shape to the curve continuing at least a few months into the future.

Akka · 01/17/08, 9:22 AM

Originally Posted by Nuveena

That's not entirely true. Let me illustrate. This is a graph with the total number of T6 content clears at any given point in time.

Yes, the numbers increase.
The problem is that they are so small to begin with, that they're still in a tiny scope of the total population, and will stay in it unless massive changes. Even if the progression kept at the same pace (which it probably won't, because at some time all the "hardcore enough" will have reach this point), it would barely reach 4 or 5 % of the whole population by next year.

♦ Praetorian · 01/17/08, 9:31 AM

These points have been beaten to death and there's no useful discussion in this thread.

As much as I really, really want to read another ten pages of speculation and percentages from wowjutsu and personal anecdotes, I think I'll go ahead and close this now.