Reposting my video for newcomers and cause I feel it’s the best example of this problem. But I mean, who needs dialogs anyway right? It’s so trivial and optional
10 Likes
Wow, subbed yesterday to play through SL in prep for dragon flight only to get this big. I’m missing huge parts of the story which is the only reason I subbed. I’m getting a refund.
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The missing Dialogue, especially voiced lines, but also text-only RP, has been happening to me since Legion. This is not just Shadowlands and BfA. This has been happening for THREE Expansions now, and its only getting worse and happening more often as more and more of the game is voice acted or has a text RP scene play out.
I’ve been having the vanishing Dialogue (especially voice acted lines, but text vanishes too) bug since Legion on my account. It’s not just one character, but its more obvious on characters I play more.
This needs to be addressed, especially if Blizzard wants to actually provide decent storytelling in game. And many times the quest dialogue is used to explain the steps in a quest, and when that bugs it makes completing the quest difficult and confusing for players.
Most players assume a long period of silent npcs means they’re done, so they run off without staying for the story, whether they mean to skip it or not. A lot of players are probably not reporting this issue because they don’t even realize they’re missing entire chunks of the story RP. Because when it doesn’t trigger, it’s just a long few minutes of silence and nothing happening.
I’ve submitted many tickets and bug reports, and it’s never been properly addressed. I usually get canned responses from Support, or they blame it on addons or say just turn in the quests and move on. I’ve tried everything on the standard list of ways to ‘fix’ issues. Reset the quest/RP, removed all addons, re-created cache, even re-installed the game. Nothing works to fix it.
Resetting the quest has very rarely caused some of the dialogue to re-appear, but I’ve spent hours resetting a quest to try to get all the dialogue to trigger and still had missing parts. This is not fun or good gameplay for the time wasted trying to enjoy the game. I’ve often had to go to Youtube just to see the entire quest dialogue, and sometimes I’ve seen it bug out on the Youtube videos, or the video ends before the RP plays because the player didn’t realize the RP even existed because it was missing for them too!
This bug is most obvious in voice-acted dialogue when there are long extended periods of silence as the NPC moves around as if they are talking, but say nothing. But I’ve seen it happen with text-only dialogue too during BfA. In Legion, even the popup talking head toast windows failed to trigger along with the voice acted lines.
The most memorable instances off the top of my head happened during major storylines:
- Legion Hunter Class Hall mount scenario. Odyn failing to talk during the Hunt, and his popup talking head window failing to trigger.
- BfA Horde questline in Ashenvale Zoram’Gar outpost during War of Thorns.
Sylvanas and Nathanos text RP lines failed. - Shadowlands Nightfae covenant questline to change/join covenant. The Boon of Shapes quest. Moonberry’s entire speech is missing while my character kneels.
- Shadowlands Zereth Mortis. Taelia and Bolvar’s ‘stay a while and listen’ voiced RP is mostly missing.
- Shadowlands Zereth Mortis, Help from Beyond quest. Droman Aliothe’s entire voiced dialogue is missing. She stares at me for a while in silence, then turns and runs off without saying a thing.
With more and more lines in game being voice acted, and with Blizzard focusing more on telling story through these RP dialogues inside the game, this needs to be fixed. This bug has existed since at least Legion without being addressed. It causes story beats to be missed, and results in a confusing story that doesn’t make sense to the players, who are missing chunks of the story but don’t even realize its missing.
Please fix this Blizzard. It’s only getting worse as you add more RP story dialogue to the game.
7 Likes
Disgusting how we keep watching Classic being hotfixed day after day after day while Retail remains with game breaking major bugs.
Words cannot describe the amount of dissatisfaction Retail players are having right now.
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Seeing this issue as well. Just did the quest ‘Lost Shipment’. Says speak to Katherine Proudmoore. I did, and she just stood their for a solid minute not talking and then Genn Greymane starts his dialogue in response to Katherine.
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So this is still going then? And we have no news on the cause or any trouble shooting methods?
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Still going for more than 2 months. Blizzard gave us a workaround in this thread that doesn’t work in any way, shape or form.
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While I’m pleased (for a lack of better words) to know it’s not just me with this issue… I am completely in awe at Blizzard’s lack of a fix! Have they even acknowledged this issue exists & that it’s still going on?
I re-subbed a couple days ago, after having been away for a good 18+ months. I have a LOT of Shadowlands to do yet, and being as I’m coming back this late in the game (pun intended)… I figured I would take my time and do the whole thing. I’m not in the mood to skip over all this expansion has to offer just so I can participate in the upcoming expansion as soon as it’s released… I would be missing out on half of the story if I did that, and would end up with too many questions to be able to enjoy it.
But, it seems no matter what I do, until Blizzard fixes this, I’m literally “missing half of it” anyways!
I will say this much: If the upcoming expansion is broken & missing half the dialogues & cutscenes like BFA & SL currently is… I fear it will hurt the game & Blizzard, irretrievably!
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Lol, SL is the worst story they have ever done and its almost like they are covering it up by not letting us experience it. What was the work around? I didnt see it anywhere in the thread.
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So I’ve recently been levelling alts since we’re on the bonus experience and I’ve noticed it’s NOT just Shadowlands. I was running an Ally to get that side of the story for BFA and there were countless times that my character just stood there with everyone silently staring at each other. Sometimes booking it half way across town fixed it, sometimes you just got these long awkward silences before the quest just progressed itself. And no, none of these were “Stay a While and Listen” options; these were all basic dialogues in the questlines.
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Yeah BfA is having this issue too, to a lesser extent. Reports of it happening in older expansions and even in Classic as well. This really needs to be patched asap. It’s affecting the game as a whole.
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I’m back. I just decided to give this another chance and the first quest I turned in was broken. Highlord Bolvar just stood there. It took so long that I almost walked out even though I knew it was probably just broken dialog. Sure enough the stupid floating person, who I care zero about because I have no idea what they’re saying/doing, says that the place (whatever place he was talking about) is super bad.
Then more silence. Now there’s an exclamation point above Bolvar’s head like I’m supposed to want to click on it but I’d rather do just about anything else.
Hey Blizzard: I purchased this game because of your advertising. Your game does not work. I have a screen shot of your representative stating in writing that you’re not going to try to fix this because it’s “not a priority”. Are you REALLY sure that’s the image you want to put out there?
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So many times I stand there wondering if I need to wait or start running around to find the next NPC that will give me the next quest to move along.
This is getting frustrating!!
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Just want to add another person to the list of people who have encountered this problem…
Re-subbed to get acquainted with the rest of SL storyline and was looking forwards to hearing the chat between Uther and Jaina while at Keeper’s Respite - only, nothing happened (along with several other examples to boot)
Disappointed to say the least - and im thankful i only sub 1 month at a time, because its easier to throw in the towel when you encounter sh!t like this, lol
4 Likes
Honestly the only thing to do is to blow up chat in game. Start hitting up general chat and ask people to post on these threads. Maybe a content creator will find it funny enough to make a vid about it. It is objectively funny after all. Blizzard broke their game for 3 months and figured no one would notice.
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Does anyone know if the maintenance fixed it? Like many here I am trying to at least hear the story, even if it is not all that great. Pretty disheartening to not know what is happening half the time I am doing things in game.
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If this remains in Dragonflight I am demanding a refund. To be honest it is kind of unacceptable considering the amount of money we have to pay to play the game. I can be patient but I only have so much of that.
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The uproar in these forums if this remains glitched after Dragonflight will be just insane and content creators will also prob step up as well.
1 Like
Still broken. Will have to wait and see if it gets fixed next week.
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I haven’t played in 2 years. I just started playing again and bought shadowlands. I’m experiencing this bug too. It’s so disappointing cause I’m actually liking the story. I’ve tried disabling all my addons and unchecking then rechecking the dialogue audio option, as well as deleting the Interface, WTF, and Cache folder and it hasn’t helped. This is really ruining my experience
4 Likes