I have been a beta tester in each World of Warcraft expansion since 2004. A Technical Alpha tester in Legion and BFA too. This is by far the most insidious bug I have encountered since the Blood of Hakkar epidemic bug. A fan called this the Groundhog Day bug.
I reported the bug, in-game, a couple of times to explain what happened. However, to understand the entire thing you should be familiar with Sci-fi TV shows like Star Trek.
There was a Star Trek: Generations episode titled Cause and Effect, where the crew is stuck in a loop for 17 days. Or the episode Time Squared.
In this particular World of Warcraft world quest, you click the Dormant Ravager to control it. It becomes a vehicle or disguise that you control with three unique abilities. The objective is to kill 25 minions located inside a nearby mining cave. That’s how things go in a normal day.
However, things quickly became evident to me that something was wrong in this build.
The Dormant Ravager can’t be interacted with the normal way. You can’t click him to mount him as a vehicle/disguise. Ok, no problem. Let’s move on to the next World Quest and let Blizzard fix the problem, and another day I can come back. Right?
Wrong. I was trapped.
1. As soon as you get in range of Timbered Strand – Drustvar, and this World Quest is active: Where My Witches At?, you are jailed permanently in that area until one of two things happen:
a) The world quest expires in 22+ hours.
b) Until you outsmart the bug
2. Attempting to Leave Timbered Strand:
a) By foot or mount: yanks you/teleports you back to the Dormant Ravager.
b) Using the Flight Master’s Whistle returns you to the Timbered Strand flight master.
c) Login out, and back in won’t fix it.
d) Using the Hearthstone: You get two loading screens because you get instantly yanked back to the Dormant Ravager.
e) Astral Recall (Shaman): does the same as when you used the Hearthstone earlier. You are yanked back.
d) dying? The ghost can’t leave Timbered Strand. It gets teleported back to the Dormant Ravager.
3) Help/Stuck? Nope, it sends you to the nearest graveyard, which happens to be in… Timbered Strand.
This felt like that episode from Star Trek: Generations where you are stuck in a loop, unable to leave the area.
So I outsmarted the loop with two workarounds.
1. You can’t click the Dormant Ravager, but if you zoom out the camera, and move it to a 45 angle above the dormant ravager, for a brief moment the mouse cursor turns into a hand to interact with the Dormant Ravager to mount it.
Another problem with the loop? No way!
Well, yup. Entering the cave as a Dormant Ravager, teleports you back where you started. So you have only 2 seconds to kill stuff that may credit you toward the slay 25/25 Heartsbane minions.
That’s the only way you can get out of the loop. Except you have to wait for respawns, but beats waiting 22 hours until the world quest expires.
The whole experience felt challenging. Twilight Zone-ish.
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