Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Patch 2.4.3 - End of Raid Herpes

I'm not sure how I missed this part of the patch notes before. I thought I read it; I usually do. But in the released Patch Notes for today's patch, it reads the following:
"Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag."
It's possible that I didn't read it because it's listed under the PvP section. But still... No more, getting on a bird before we summon you. No more having to have the entire raid flag PvP because somebody forgot to unflag. I'm not sure I've ever had a PvP flag and set off Raid Herpes, but it's nice to know that it's no longer an issue.

But it does raise a concern. I can easily see the exploit here. There's generally a ton of people parked just outside of any major instance. Karazhan is the first one that comes to mind. With just one person flagged, it usually causes some form of chaos. Now, you can flag, start to fight, and then if you're low on health, just run in to Karazhan and come right back out... unflagged. Just seems, well... kind of cheap.

I think I would have rather have seen the implementation that you don't get flagged PvP while buffing/healing a party member that is flagged PvP while in an instance. But then that sounds like a heck of a lot more code that Blizzard would have had to have write. And being that I'd much rather that they work on other things... it makes a nice change... for now.

p.s. Oh, and "Summon Warhorse is now available at level 30." Yep... you can guess the first thing I'm doing tonight.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, this is the first time seeing this myself. I recently experienced "Raid Herpes" as you refered to it. I play on a PVE realm. I ran an instance of SM with some people. Well things quickly went south, and there was a corpse run. As I am zoning out of the instance to head back to Undercity, I get ganked by 5 60's who happened to be hanging outside. I was pretty pissed, so I rezzed at the GY and took the hit in armour. This is a change I welcome.

Anonymous said...

Ok, forgot to add, the reason for being ganked...some idiot in the raid was flagged the whole run, and being a pally..I of course buffed him. I wish they would remove that "feature"

Anonymous said...

I've been playing WoW since Nov 2005 and only just discovered a few days ago that Remove Curse on a flagged player will flag you. I thought only heals and buffs did that, not debuff-removal. Live and learn...

As for the buffing-gets-you-flagged (or healing- or debuff-removal-), I agree that's kind of hokey. I wish Blizzard would make things smart enough so that buffs would be linked to the person that cast them, and if the buff is dismissed it would remove the flag from the "buffer" (assuming they weren't flagged in the first place and did nothing in the interim to get flagged). So if I accidentally buff someone who's flagged, causing me to become flagged myself, I could ask them to dismiss the buff in order to remove my flag immediately.

As for healing and debuff-removal, I don't think those should cause flagging unless the damage being healed, or the debuff, was originally caused by a hostile entity that was flagged (this would require Blizzard's code to track "flagged" damage/debuffs separately from "unflagged" damage/debuffs, but that's what they pay their programmers for right?). (The reason I say "hostile entity" is that there are ways to self-damage, or to damage friendlies, e.g. Bloodrage, Life Tap, Dark Rune, Blessing of Sacrifice, etc and that damage shouldn't be "flagged" because it's not inherently relevant to PvP).

Anonymous said...

This is the greatest thing since mounts at level 30 (which is in the same patch:). You don't have to worry any more about getting ganked because of a party member you went into a dungeon/raid with was flagged. Actually, I don't think I ever got ganked. Most of the time we all flagged pvp because some AOE affects would not affect all players.

I disagree with Leiandra though. Flagging your self as PVP may start a fight, but you will be the first one hit, it's not like some super secret attack that lets you kill unflagged people. Anyone dumb enough to hit the person deserves to get jumped by others around him. And of course, they can always duck into kara too, bubble ftw!!!

I did think of one other use. Some quests require you to go PVP. One way to quickly get rid of it is to go run into a dungeon real quick. Most dungeons will be out of the way though. It's just a thought.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, I meant Nov 2006. I was a bit of a latecomer.

@Jimbo: Some quests are specifically tagged as "PvP quests" and I have no problem with those flagging you, but what I find really stupid are the non-PvP quests that involve fighting flagged NPCs (e.g. the quest line for the Seal of Wrynn). I was flagged from that one time when Horde was raiding Stormwind Keep, and got hit with a nasty Seed of Corruption AoE. Ouch!

Leiandra said...

I see your point, Jimbo. But say I'm in Battlegrounds, and I get summoned out to Kara. Once there, I run straight to the door because I was flagged. Before I get there, some rogue jumps me, stunlocks me, does some damage, and then jumps in to Kara. Then he jumps back out, and I can't hit him, so as I'm finally walking towards the instance, he stunlocks me again, does damage, etc. (Yes, there's many flaws there, just focus on the concept.)

I guess I just don't understand why you're still flagged after leaving Battlegrounds or Arenas. It seems like it would fit more along the lines of what they're trying to accomplish. Maybe I'm wrong.

@Ega. Interesting thoughts... sounds kinda complex though, and I'd really rather they be focusing on other parts of development. Yeah, it's what we pay them for... but do I really care? it's like the flying mounts in Azeroth. They can do it, but how many hours. Would it be worth it for my lvl 70/80 can fly through Azeroth? Nope... work on more content.