As the World of Warcraft Brewfest event winds down, some players have been asking if there will be another way for them to get the ram mount for their low-leveled alts. A scenario was proposed where a sub-40 character would start the quest now, and then redeem the ram later when it can finally use the mount.

Community Manager Aeus gave word that power-leveling those characters and getting the mount during the event is the only way their alts will be getting the ram this year. He did propose an alternative option which entails saving up the tickets and getting the ram in the next Brewfest.

This year's Brewfest will be ending by October 16 so players may want to start grinding their alts if they hope to score a Ram mount for their characters this year.

Patch 2.2.3 is now over on the Public Test Realms, and it's time for something new to grace everyone's World of Warcraft login screen. In this case, it's the arrival of patch 2.2.3 on the real servers, and everyone's excited about the activation of voice chat on all of the different realms.

Well, almost all of the different realms. Scattered reports are pouring in that voice chat problems are still occurring, keeping some people from enjoying free voice chat on their servers. Blizzard poster Aeus recently went on the record to assuage people's fears, acknowledging that there are currently problems on the different servers for Blizzard's voice chat system, and that these problems are currently being looked into.

In the meantime, while you're waiting for voice chat to be fully operational, you may want to just make do without it. For those who haven't been playing recently, here are the patch notes that come with Patch 2.2.3. Enjoy!

• Clients utilizing OpenGL video modes will no longer experience graphical anomalies and missing textures after minimizing/maximizing the window.
• Fixed an issue that caused Fel Eye Stalks during the Legion Ring event to not despawn when the event is completed.
• Fixed an issue where zoning after mounting and summoning a pet was disconnecting players.
• Fixed an issue where the Shift key would get stuck in game.
• Using a /equip macro while affected by certain crowd control spells will no longer cause the items in the macro to be stuck in your inventory.
• Using very low values for SetScale() will no longer cause Mac users to disconnect from the game.
• Default sound channels have been changed from 12 to 32.
• Microphone resources will no longer be claimed by World of Warcraft when Voice Chat is disabled.
• Sounds will no longer stutter and pause if large amounts of creatures are being hit with AoE attacks from multiple sources.
• Sounds caused by spells cast on or by the player will now play more consistently.

Feeling nostalgic for your earlier levelling days? There's an ongoing discussion over at Europe's World of Warcraft forums that's asking about another possibility for quest chains.

Rather than your usual demand for some sort of bug fix for WoW's end-game raids, however, it asks if it's possible for the high-level guys to drop back to the world's low-level adventures. As it stands, as soon as you hit a certain level, the exclamation marks seen on a quest-giver's head simply disappears.

This interesting bid was apparently being requested by players who were either questaholics, or simply wanted to finish up any quest lines they may have forgotten as they progressed. Blizzard blue-texter Aeus dropped by the thread with a bit of bad news, however - the devs don't appear to have any plans of adding a new color to that quest NPC's batch of exclamation marks by patch 2.3. Check back again in case Blizzard decides to add this as a part of any future game patches.

 

World of Warcraft players have a lot to celebrate and drink their fill about, as the legendary Brewfest is currently being held in the digital realms of Azeroth. At the same time, however, there's also a lot to seek refuge in the bottom of a digital brew flagon about - as the event itself has some bugs and glitches that can potentially ruin the brew-ha-ha. Fortunately, Blizzard is on the case, as reported by Blizzard poster Aeus. His post, unedited and presented as is:

We are aware that there are issues with some of the Brewfest quests and/or items. We’re looking into this and hope to have more info for you soon.

We apologise for this inconvenience and suggest you try the ram racing while we work on a resolution. (It’s fun!)

While it's certainly annoying that one of the most awesome-sounding events in World of Warcraft is plagued with glitches and bugs, it's also good to know that Blizzard is busy brewing up a solution. In the meantime, let's all go back to nursing our drinks (and rams). As a parting note, Aeus confirms that despite the glitches, there won't be an extension for Brewfest.

A lot of people have been on the unfortunate receiving end of a recent bug that has been plaguing MMORPG players in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The MMORPG company giant has been getting a lot of flak lately due to the steps they should be taking to fix the notorious Battle Grounds bug so many PvP savvy players have been complaining about.

However, there may just be a small silver lining to this annoying little problem. While there hasn't been any official word on when the bug will be fixed, Blizzard poster Aeus has listed some easy steps on how to deal with the issue in the meantime:

We are aware that some players might currently be getting stuck at the end of combat in the Battle Grounds. A solution is being worked on and we will let you know when we have more information. Until a fix is made available there are two possible workarounds:

1. Close the client and restart the game.

2. Do /afk at the end of the BG; this has proven to work for some players as well.

Knowing how bugs just pop up everywhere in any new gaming patch, we'll all just have to sit tight and be a little patient until the boys at Blizzard find a more permanent solution to this problem.

We know a lot of people (about nine million, give or take a couple of thousand) are waiting for news about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK). Well, we know who gets to visit Northrend first: the beta testers.

Blazith from the WoW Europe Forums expressed what you probably are or aren't hoping - which one you are depends on whether or not you were a beta tester for The Burning Crusade. The player hoped that those who tested TBC will be chosen to test WotLK too.

Blizzard poster Aeus came by the said thread and posted a reply, "I haven't heard of or seen a plan yet, but I don't think we'll base the next beta key give aways on the previous ones."

Will we need to go through a number of contests again? That isn't going to be pretty. Anyway, we'll keep a close eye on those WoW: Wrath of the Lich King beta keys when they become available.

Aeus certainly knows how to tease the World of Warcraft-playing masses. He recently posted some comments that should certainly please owners of the incredibly rare Spectral Tiger mount. According to what he posted, there's a good chance that we might see upgraded looks for the spectral tiger mount in the future.

The comment came about in a post where Drennity of Aszune felt underwhelmed by the current looks of the Spectral Tiger mount. Aeus replied, "I may have heard rumours about the look being somewhat upgraded in a future patch." He further noted at a later point in the post that the said "rumor" also mentioned that such a look upgrade would occur before the next expansion.

In the comparison on the picture to your right, Aeus described the differences between the Blizzard's rendering and the current render of the mount: "The one with black armour is the current one. But in-game it looks a bit weird in certain places. It seems it will look better with more of a homogeneous colour to it."

Hopefully, Aeus won't tease us with just rumors, and add a bit of a date to that, not only to the spectral tiger mount upgrade, but also to the future patch that introduces new content to the game.

World of Warcraft's European chapter appears to have experienced some down time recently among its realms. As Aeus reported over at the region's WoW Forums, players have been reporting connection problems to the following servers (listed in alphabetical order):

• Ahn'Qiraj
• Bronzebeard
• Chromaggus
• Dentarg, Drak'thul
• Emeriss, Executus
• Hakkar
• Khadgar, Kul Tiras
• Mazrigos, Moonglade
• Scarshield Legion, Steamwheedle Cartel
• Talnivarr, Trollbane
• Xavius
  

On last report, Aeus dropped by the thread to announce that the connections problems appear to have been resolved. And while we don't have any confirmation of this, we think this may be connected to the recently reported realm exploit over in North America. The said exploit was causing the local realms to crash, and was reportedly affecting EU's territory as well. Of course, this is just speculation on this author's part. Drop back in case Europe's connection status gets an important update.

As much as World of Warcraft is an excellent MMO video game, there are a few annoying things about it simply because if its very nature. MMORPGs deal with real people and it is not totally impossible that you will meet people who will either PK you or disturb your raiding sessions.

Given that premise, it is a great thing that Blizzard decided to implement an in-game tool that allows players to ignore others players. However, the more intriguing thing here is why there's a limit to this "ignore list". Is it a technical issue? Or is it something else? Blizzard forum moderator Aeus explained:

Since this is a massive multi-player game, we really value the social aspect of it. It is hardly ever necessary to permanently have someone in your ignore list and I think limiting the slots will make every player a little more conscious of whom they're blocking and why and to not turn this game into a FPS.

Well, that is a good explanation but we hope Blizzard thought of all the other players who create WoW accounts not for fun and progress in the game but to pester other people.

While using mods or addons for World of Warcraft is always a welcome way to make gameplay easier, there will always be risk that some of these mods violate Blizzard's Terms and Conditions (as was the case with WoWGlider). This was the topic of an inquiry made by Orinakarr over at the WoW Europe Forums, regarding the Gatherer mod.

For the guys haven't heard of it, Gatherer is a tracking tool for herbalists, miners and treasure hunters. Quoting the wowui site, here's a full explanation of what it does:

The Addon does not track like a tracking ability does, rather it 'remembers' where you have found various items in the past. It does this whenever you gather (perform herbalism, mining or opening) on an item, and records the specific map location in it's history. From then on, whenever the item comes into range of being one of the closest 1-25 (configurable) items to your present location, it will pop up on you minimap.

Getting back to the subject matter, Orinakarr wasn't sure of this mod would give players an unfair advantage during the game - as this counts for a clear violation of Blizz's conditions. Spokesman Aeus dropped by a little later to explain that the addon was clean:

Gatherer just sees where you are when a skill is triggered and adds an icon to the map. As far as I know it consists only of the "standard" Addon files like .lua, .toc and .xml. No executable files are involved. So knock yourself out.

So there you have it. We hope guys also using this addon will breathe a little easier, knowing they don't risk getting banned for using it in gathering resources.