Please address the "reference clients" validity

[Thundercluck-incendius]

I mean, come on. The more involved community memed the referenced client as stock MaNGOS from the get go especially those of us who have worked on private projects in the past, we’ve memed the fact that Blizz uses it to justifiably hide their actions behind, but what’s with the contradictions? First Runeblade and now Arcanums?

Buff Cap and Hidden Auras

With scheduled maintenance earlier today, we applied the following hotfix: WoW Classic Enchantments on gear should no longer count as helpful auras. They now count as passive auras. There are still some enchantments occupying helpful slots – notably, the Arcanum enchants that will come from Dire Maul and other enchantments that are applied via item rather than via the enchanting profession. This was the case in our 1.12 reference. Thank you very much!

There are still some enchantments occupying helpful slots – notably, the Arcanum enchants that will come from Dire Maul and other enchantments that are applied via item rather than via the enchanting profession. This was the case in our 1.12 reference.

Enchantment bugs and Buff Slots

Hey everybody! I wanted to provide an update to this topic: With the ZG enchantments coming out, we noticed that a few of those enchantments suffered from a similar bug to the one preventing Devilsaur Armor from granting +2% hit (which we fixed in September). In particular, the Zandalar Signet of Might wasn’t granting its +30 attack power when applied to the Highlander’s Leather Shoulders, which also have +30 attack power. We have a fix ready to deploy with next week’s maintenance to make…

We also noticed that our first round of enchantment fixes to prevent enchantments from consuming buff slots missed some of the enchantments that could be flagged to avoid consuming buff slots. The powerful ZG enchants, and “Arcanum” enchants are among these, and we also have a hotfix to keep these from consuming buff slots, which will also be out by next week’s maintenance.

Which is it? Does the reference client count them as a buff or not? Either the “reference client” isn’t credible at all or Blizzard is greatly out of touch with the Classic meta.

Asking for a friend. What’s the deal?

[Zeliek-moon-guard (Zeliek)]

Don’t worry. 404 incoming.

[Supertroll-atiesh]

@Thundercluck-incendius

What’s the deal?

Do you smell toast?

[Thundercluck-incendius]

I would hope not. I think it’s a very clear and valid question. They have contradicted themselves and I’ve pointed the contradiction out. I’m curious whether or not they’ve walked themselves into a corner here or if the reference client truly isn’t a good tool to base their findings off of if it has now produced a “bug” behavior, but also at the same time has created a “non bug” behavior.

As it stands, it appears that it invalidates the reference client and Blizz is just doing what they think is best. Which truthfully? That’s how Classic should have began from the start. Classic was always going to be a “fun” server type, just like Nostalrius and Kronos before it.

[Stevospeedo-medivh (Stevospeedo)]

There is no reason not to have a test server of the reference client. Players could troubleshoot and help fix all the problems. The real problem is that Blizzard has no interest in fixing bugs or allowing players to see behind the curtain.

[Oriendaria-pagle]

how dare blizzard try to fix something that hasn’t been a part of the game in over 13 years.

[Zeliek-moon-guard (Zeliek)]

They did it for the last thread like this. Yours just doesn’t have the #s in it. You might be safe though because the other one didn’t last 2 hours.

[Sîxx-incendius]

From the very beginning, the goal was about bringing a classic experience that is as close to the reference client as possible but also fixing minor things that WERE exploits, bugs, etc. from vanilla.

There was several changes back in the beta that were #somechanges because it was borderline exploit or an actual exploit. Other things that match the reference client but didn’t make any sense were slightly adjusted or fixed. Classic as a whole has undergone a MASSIVE amount of changes that all haven’t necessarily been #referenceclient. They ultimately decide what stays and what goes. I don’t see this being any different. You can come up with some fallacies of why you think the reference client isn’t real, but you know deep down that it is. If you don’t, then you’ve just not paid attention to some of the mechanics of the game that has been discovered over the course of the last year.

Bottom line, if it’s a bug from vanilla the dev team decides whether it is important enough to fix it or not. Runeblade and this were important enough. That’s just 2 examples. There was an entire changelog from the beta that covered a massive amount of changes that the players documented, not to mention all of the changes undocumented as well.

[Zeliek-moon-guard (Zeliek)]

Their is no reason they need to lie about the changes. They shouldn’t say that the reference client has it one way and then retcon the statement later. Blizzard likes to retcon. We all knew this going in. We just didn’t think they would retcon their own honesty.

@Sîxx-incendius

Runeblade and this were important enough

As he said, they used the reference client as a cloak for the change rather than coming right out and saying that for the health of the game they were changing them.

[Frosto-faerlina]

@Thundercluck-incendius

those of us who have worked on private projects in the past

This would be interesting to dive into.

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@Thundercluck-incendius

we’ve memed the fact that Blizz uses it to justifiably hide their actions behind, but what’s with the contradictions?

What does this mean? What is “it?” in this context?

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@Thundercluck-incendius

First Runeblade and now Arcanums?

@Thundercluck-incendius

There are still some enchantments occupying helpful slots – notably, the Arcanum enchants that will come from Dire Maul and other enchantments that are applied via item rather than via the enchanting profession. This was the case in our 1.12 reference.

Interesting!

@Thundercluck-incendius

Which is it? Does the reference client count them as a buff or not

@Thundercluck-incendius

Either the “reference client” isn’t credible at all or Blizzard is greatly out of touch with the Classic meta.

This is an incredibly interesting statement.

What do you think “The Classic meta” means… ???

And thank you for making me smile

[Zeliek-moon-guard (Zeliek)]

Thanks for your constructive input. For those that have been derailed:

Blizzard said that enchantments from items such as arcanums were staying as helpful buffs and not being moved to the passive category. In this way they still occupy part of the buff limit. Which is how the reference client classified them. Now with the ZG enchants being released we have just learned from blizzard that the reference client classified them as passive buffs so that they don’t count toward the buff limit.

The OP is asking for a clarification for the inconsistency in the use of justification through reference client authority.

This is minus the fluff that some people ^^ just can’t help using to try and remove the legitimacy of the OP asking this question so that it won’t be answered.

[Frosto-faerlina]

@Zeliek-moon-guard

Blizzard said that enchantments from items such as arcanums were staying as helpful buffs and not being moved to the passive category. In this way they still occupy part of the buff limit. Which is how the reference client classified them. Now with the ZG enchants being released we have just learned from blizzard that the reference client classified them as passive buffs so that they don’t count toward the buff limit.

This seems like a blatant contradiction!

Do we have references to the points made?

i.e.

a.) Blizzard said that enchantments from items such as arcanums were staying as helpful buffs and not being moved to the passive category.

b.) Now with the ZG enchants being released we have just learned from blizzard that the reference client classified them as passive buffs so that they don’t count toward the buff limit.

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If we could show that both a.) and b.) are accurate, then we could verify that this contradiction is indeed a contradiction.

(at least, I think that makes sense - do we have something we can point to to support this information?)

[Zeliek-moon-guard (Zeliek)]

The OP has the quoted threads in the OP.

@Kaivax

There are still some enchantments occupying helpful slots – notably, the Arcanum enchants that will come from Dire Maul and other enchantments that are applied via item rather than via the enchanting profession. This was the case in our 1.12 reference.

@Pazorax-1880

We also noticed that our first round of enchantment fixes to prevent enchantments from consuming buff slots missed some of the enchantments that could be flagged to avoid consuming buff slots. The powerful ZG enchants, and “Arcanum” enchants are among these, and we also have a hotfix to keep these from consuming buff slots, which will also be out by next week’s maintenance.

[Frosto-faerlina]

Would you be so kind as to point to precisely what you are responding to?

i.e. are you suggesting that:

@Frosto-faerlina

If we could show that both a.) and b.) are accurate, then we could verify that this contradiction is indeed a contradiction.

Is answered? (then answer it - by simply quoting the OP)

[Nobleshield-bleeding-hollow]

What seems to be the issue is similar things work completely differently. Which is certainly possible but the coding must be terrible is that’s the case (which may be true for vanilla era coding all things considered). Normally similar effects work the same for consistency.

Look at Runeblade vs Diamond Flask. If one doesn’t benefit from snapshotting hps, neither should. Yet we have a statement that the “reference client” shows Diamond Flask does while Runeblade does not and this is intended behavior. Sounds suspicious yet plausible but casts doubt on the validity of the client due to how absurd it seems.

[Iron-pagle]

except blizzard doing 'what activision thinks is best" gave us retail…

[Nobleshield-bleeding-hollow]

Let’s not mince words here until relatively recently this was not nearly as bad a thing as everyone whined about.

[Dropcorezero-malygos]

Read the original post. Or are you instigating with off the wall questions on purpose? Blizzard posted that in the reference client the enchants WERE counted as buff slots. Then they later posted that in the reference client the same enchants WERE NOT counted as buff slots, contradicting themselves on what the true behavior should be.

[Gythriel-windseeker]

@Thundercluck-incendius

or Blizzard is greatly out of touch with the Classic meta.

I dont think the ref client cares about classic meta?

@Stevospeedo-medivh

There is no reason not to have a test server of the reference client.

Well one reason is that it does not run right on some PC’s
Does not work on mine, neither does 1.1 out of the retail box.
Cant identify the video card and crashes.

The ref client by the way, is a version of WoW we had for like 2 months
I dont suppose it is impossible that an issue could have been induced in said version.
No source exists though to build a ref client from an earlier version, say 1.5 or 1.9 to compare against.

So if they run into something that makes no sense in it’s functionality or conflicts with similar logic in the original source, i guess they have to make a judgement call?

[Thundercluck-incendius]

The meta comment was about Blizzard, not the reference client. Originally, Blizzard had told the entire community that in the reference client these buffs were part of the buff cap only to now claim the reference client doesn’t count them towards the buff cap.

The assumption here is that Blizz, per their post, understands that the meta is very much different than Vanilla and enjoys the buff stacking of enchants and wbuffs.

Thus, Blizzard potentially removed the buff cap of the Arcanums in light of this meta shift from what they had originally thought Classic would be, i.e. they didn’t understand the private server meta before they launched and still didn’t understand it when they had originally addressed the issue.

It seems rather obvious to me at least that the “reference client” is not a reliable source. I suppose they can try and weasel themselves out of it saying that they were misinformed from the Developer Team, but it still doesn’t explain other misses such as Runeblade, Guardians, etc.