World of Warcraft: Forever hotfix puts a stop to super speedy flag carriers that were dominating PvP battlegrounds

World of Warcraft: Forever has received its first major hotfix patch, which among other things has put an end to an especially powerful bug that made PvP battlegrounds like Warsong Gulch favoured to the Horde's advantage.

Cowabungle.

While Taurens are running, they gradually build up stacks of increased movement speed. They gain a two percent movement speed bonus per stack, and it stacks up to 30 times. That means a Tauren can gain 60 percent increased movement speed, though it's worth noting that when they stop moving, these stacks decrease. In short, cows run fast.

The Hotfix, detailed in this Blizzard blog post, stops the Tauren's plainsrunning passive from stacking during a battleground's preparation phase. What players were doing to exploit this was running back and forth in the minutes before the Warsong Gulch battleground let both teams loose. It's a capture the flag game mode, so once the gates opened, Taurens were sprinting ahead of everyone else, allowing them to quickly push towards the enemy base for a potential early flag capture.

In addition, the hotfix removes any plainsrunning stacks from Taurens once they pick up the enemy flag, and prevents them from gaining stacks while the flag is in their possession. The goal of the enemy team is to stop and kill the enemy flag carrier as soon as possible, so a Tauren moving far faster than any of your team made this pretty difficult.

Tauren's could be tanky warriors or druids too, which further added to the difficulty in killing them. With this change they're now easier to lock down, though it's worth noting a Tauren can still make use of Plainsrunning to rush into the enemy base early. They just don't have that wild speed boost from the jump.

Surely this was the only reason my Alliance Warsong Gulch games were all lost this morning, and not because my faction is for chumps. In other World of Warcraft: Forever news, the launch earlier this week was applauded as one of the smoothest in the series history, save for a few broken boats and zeppelins.

The hotfix has also decreased the respawn time of the NPC Deathstalker Erland who is needed for an escort quest. People were mulling around his spawn and wasting away while waiting for him to respawn. Also, supply vendors on the Zephras Isle have been stocked with handy tradeskill bags that you could find in other starter zones. It's the shipping I assume, it takes a while for stock to make it all the way up there.

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