Ever since Patch 4.0.1 went live, I’ve had this minor annoyance while playing my alts.

I’m gonna tell you what it is, and as soon as I start, you’re gonna slap your forehead and say, ‘Wow, what an idiot.’

But I’m gonna tell you anyway… because I was put on this Earth to amuse you, and to give you someone to feel superior to.

Here we go.

I’ve been playing these alts, like my Warrior and my Death Knight and my Mage…

… and I’ve been wondering why, all of a sudden, the tooltips that pop up when I mouseover spells are worthless, vague crap.

No specifics, no stats, just generic advice.

Like, oh… say, for example, the Warrior spell Charge.

When I mouse over the ability on my bar, the tooltip pops up, and it tells me that it’s Charge, it gives me the basic stats for when I can use it, and then gives advice on what it does.

Like so;

Now, seriously. Are you for real? This is what you consider a useful tooltip?

So sure, I’ve been going along like this, not really paying too much attention, because I figure I know what these things do from my own researches out of game.

But tonight, finally, I just kinda got a wild hair up my big ol’ Bear butt, and I decide I’m going to get to the bottom of this “can you vague that up for me” tooltip bullshit.

I hit Escape and pull open the Interface menu, and I start going hunting. Something changed somewhere, not even Blizzard would remove useful information like that, and if they did, I figure the howl of nerdrage could be heard through the vacuum of cold, hard space.

Low and behold, what should I find but some new options in the Help tab, options I sure don’t remember ever seeing before;

So, just for the sake of being a bold, brash adventurer into the unknown, I remove the checkmark next to “Beginner Tooltips”.

Now, this seems counter-intuitive to me. What do I know, right?

To me, if I was a beginner, what I’d want is an option to turn on tooltips for beginners like me, that would tell me clearly what the abilities do… exactly.

Like, in precise terms. So I KNOW.

Once I’m experienced, hell, I can turn em off altogether, or maybe just a little single sentence to remind me of ranges and such. Won’t need the whole big verbose thingie anymore.

But I remove the checkmark, and this is what I now see;

Wow. What a world of difference a single checkmark in an options menu can make, isn’t it?

Generates rage, huh? Stuns the enemy? Oh boy howdy, that’s pretty cool.

As a beginner, lord knows I wouldn’t need to know something like that.

I mean, seriously folks. W. T. F.???

Am I the only one to get hit by this as a new default?

I had a cranky post all set to go up, and then I really thought about it.

If you’re excited about WoW and you’re attending Blizzcon and you’re really feeling up and happy, the last thing you need is some schlub being pissy and dragging the room down with crankiness.

Hey, go, have fun, enjoy the weekend, meet people and see things and capture that feeling of excitement and fun.

I hope everyone has a really good time!

I’ll say this; Cassie played her Hunter, and trained a beautiful rare blue parrot as a combat pet, and it looks great. She’s very happy.

Even when I’m feeling in “write a really tired cranky post” mood, there is still something positive that we can find to think about.

So, even though there are still issues and irritations, go, have fun, enjoy the weekend, and accentuate all the positives the day (and the game) brings.

Time enough to be cranky when you’ve got the hangover on Monday. :)

This is a very specific, focused blog post to address one specific issue.

I, like many others, do not like the default WoW user interface.

I prefer, no, scratch that, I LOVE the X-Perl UnitFrames UI addon.

The changes it implements, on the surface, seem relatively minor, but there is a ton of power lurking under the hood. I like minimalist designs that provide me with tons of tools, designs that leave the majority of the screen real estate for me to actually see the game. If I wanted to see a ton of text describing the action, I’d play Zork.

With the introduction of Patch 4.0.1, there is an existing known bug with Raid UnitFrames addons in general.

The problem is that if you try and right-click onto buffs to dispel them in your addon, it will introduce what is called a “Taint”, and that causes bad things.

In X-Perl UnitFrames, the ability to right-click to dispell buffs has been temporarily disabled to prevent “Taints” from occuring.

If you use X-Perl, it also currently prevents you from right-clicking buffs displayed by the normal UI.

For just a second, I’m going to quote a description of Taints, just so you know I’m not talking ’bout “Taint one thing nor the other”, ’cause I know my audience.

From a discussion on WoWwiki;

When WoW starts executing lua code, the execution starts off ‘secure’, and able to run protected functions. Execution remains secure until it encounters ‘taint’ – which is an indicator that a function or object came from an untrusted (AddOn or /script) source. The basic idea is that execution becomes ‘tainted’ as soon as it reads tainted data or executes tainted code, and any data written by a tainted execution is itself tainted. Protected functions refuse to operate when called from an execution path that is not secure.

When the UI first loads, all code and data from Blizzard signed FrameXML and AddOns (plus their saved variables) is secure, and all code and data from user provided AddOns (plus their saved variables) is tainted.

 Okay, so right now, if you love and want to run X-Perl UnitFrames but run into buffs you need to be able to click off, you have to either logout your character to disable your addon, use another addon that allows you to temporarily disable addons from within the game without logging out, (such as Addon Control Panel), or specifically cancel the buff by using a line item command such as “/cancelaura Buffname”.

Is this earth shattering? Of course not.

At least, not unless, oh, they did something like release a All Hallows Eve holiday event a week after the patch that includes Trick or Treating, and the tricks gave you buffs of costumes that last an hour… some of which prevent you from mounting. Or spellcasting. Buffs that… needs to be canceled. Right click style canceling.

Oh wait… Doh!

So, for you few peeps out there that love your X-Perl as much as I do, and want to keep using it, but are sick and tired of having to disable the addon in order to right click your Tricks to dispell them, here’s a solution that finally works.

First, make sure you have the very latest beta build of X-Perl. To do this, you have to visit the project page for X-Perl UnitFrames at WoWAce. They’re posting fresh builds constantly as they make corrections.

Second, with your current X-Perl UnitFrames Options open, go to the Player Tab. Within the Player Tab, look at the Player Buffs section and UNCHECK the “Hide Default Buffs” checkbox.

What this has done is display the default WoW UI buff panel, in addition to your X-Perl setup. Yes, a second set of buffs. For me, it’s worth it.

Now, this alone has not fixed the problem. There is one extra step you have to take.

Remember the description of a “Taint”, from above? It all comes from running code that isn’t “secure”. Code that is secure comes from Blizzard’s FrameXML data, then takes input from addons.

Well, as a purely short term fix, here is what you can do;

Go to the official Blizzard download site for the Interface Addon Kit, and download the appropriate version for your language. In my case, that’s US-English.

When you unzip that file, you copy the FrameXML folder, and you place it in your World of Warcraft game folder, at C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface (or whatever your destination folder may be, ending within the Interface folder).

This establishes the correct baseline FrameXML data for you to fall back on when right clicking those buffs on the default WoW UI buff bar.

Now, this is strictly a short term solution for JUST until there is a new patch.

The reason for this is, FrameXML is establishing a set of frame data specific to the game build it was created for. If a significant patch is released changing the frames (or actually fixing the core issue causing the bug in the first place), leaving this FrameXML in there will cause you lots of headaches.

BUT… for the pure short term, it will correct the problem. 

Can you believe the bug has annoyed me so much I went to these lengths to find a solution?

Wanna know what really annoys me? I start writing this, go to various websites looking up links to copy to send you to the right reference locations, and what do I find? A poster named Twintails over at WoWAce posted this solution already, just hours before I started the post.

I hereby proclaim this entire idea as belonging to Twintails, and I thank them very, very much for their helpfulness to the community. Especially since I don’t really know anything about addons, and I was only guessing at things to try and make it work, and clearly they actually knew what they were doing and went to the Interface Addon Kit intentionally.

I just wish I’da seen that before I started writing.

UPDATE: This post was correct as of X-Perl UnitFrames beta build r448, and the patch status as of 10/20/10.

It’s been almost a full week since Patch 4.0.1 went into effect, with it’s myriad of mechanics changes to World of Warcraft.

In that week, every class in the game had it’s Talent Trees, all three of them, drastically remapped with different functionality.

The entire Glyph system was revamped, with the implementation of a third tier of Glyph, Primes, and most existing Glpyhs were moved around to adapt to the new Glyph categories, filling out the Prime slots. In addition, with the changes to existing Talents and new spells being added, many Glyphs changed functionality.

Some cuts have changed gem colors, and with new spells and rotation importances many folks find themselves needing to regem to get back to optimum potential.

With new mechanics, many Enchants have shifted in value, also bringing the player seeking top performance to examine making potentially expensive changes.

Speaking of Enchants, one thing I have read that I have not tested out personally, is the word that Engineering Tinkering now stacks with gear Enchants. So things like Rocket Boots, Guantlet missile launchers and agility/parachute tinkers on Cloaks might be able to be combined with real Enchants. Pretty amazing if true.

Yeah, I know, you know all this.

My point?

If you’ve been playing any length of time at all, you began thinking of your characters in terms of mains, alts, leveling characters, perhaps characters you farm on, things like that.

Now, when the Patch came back, every player was faced with the decision of “who do I rebuild first?”

What I’m curious about is, who did YOU decide was the character you just had to rebuild first… and why?

Secondly, did your decision change anything about how you see your priorities in the game?

As an example, did you suddenly realise that the character you thought of as your “main” isn’t the character you wanted to get rebuilt first in order to play?

With so many of us having had the time to level multiple characters to max level, It’s just something I found myself curious about. How many people playing their mains suddenly decided that the character they wanted fixed first was that “alt” they were really excited about trying out.

For myself, the first character I rebuilt was my Feral Druid… but I haven’t redone my Resto spec yet. I even took all my Resto gear out of my bags and put it in the bank.

No, my second character I rebuilt was…. my level 54 Mage.

My Hunter and Paladin are 3rd and 4th, but it’s still funny how excited I’ve been with the Frost Mage playstyle.

So, what about it? Has the Patch changed who you love to play most?

No, not the ones you already know.

Just the ones the trainer has to give you if you are leveling the Alchemy Profession now.

This is a major issue for anyone that is thinking of taking Alchemy, or who is in the process of learning Alchemy. Once you hit level 450, all existing recipes turn grey. Previously, at 450, the Epic Gem transmutes were made available for purchase, you trained those, and there was also the quest offered by the trainer to learn the Transmute of Cardinal Rubies… that requires 5 Epic Gem Transmutes to turn in.

You can’t complete the quest, because you can’t get the Epic Gem Transmute recipes anymore.

Is it a bug? Is it intended?

There is absolutely no way of knowing at the moment, because there has been zero response from Blizzard on this issue to date. No Blue forum posts, no Patch notes, and multiple in game tickets have gone unanswered, or answered with “Geez, I dunno, is there anything else I can help you with? Please fill out our survey.”

There has literally been nothing but silence from Blizzard concering an issue that has crippled a Profession for anyone training it right now.

Posts entered into the official US forums concerning this issue are not only being ignored by Blue posters, but I have confirmed that even very politely framed requests for help or information are simply being deleted by moderators… much as the posts about being hacked that were entered into the Customer Service forum used to be when Blizzard took no response in years past, before they stopped pretending it wasn’t happening and developed an actual customer service response.

Hey, bugs happen. A lot of Alchemists are upset about varying gem transmute cooldown timer issues. This was a huge patch, and I’m sure not everything is going to be perfect.

But the current attitude from Blizzard is insulting. As customers, we pay money for the opportunity to spend time playing the game with persistant characters. It is money for time. When a significant investment of that time is invalidated or deleted, possibly due to a bug or not, then it seems reasonable to expect an acknowledgement that they are aware of the issue, a clarification of what the nature of the issue really is (bug or intended removal, perhaps as recipes to be discovered via Discovery mechanics), and a timeline for resolution, such as “someday in a future hotfix”.

What I do not think is a reasonable response is deleting posts asking for help or clarification of the issue, ignoring the existence of the issue itself, and sticking their heads in the sand as if we might all just shut up and go away. 

I tell you, just when I dare to think that Blizzard has implemented solutions for customer service concerns that make them the leader in the MMO software industry, such as their responses to hacking issues and return of lost items, the development of authenticators to improve account security, the addition of security levels to Guild functionality, the continuous improvement to the balancing and fun of the game, and the communication by “Blue” moderators in the official forums, something like this comes up.