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Friday, June 26, 2009

Dying on a Taxi

Well, I thought I'd seen it all. Apparently not. This morning my Pally took the "plane" from Dalaran to the Skybreaker ship in Icecrown. A simple taxi ride, rite?? I went AFK, of course, but when I got back... surprise!!! I was lying dead on the ground somewhere below where the ship was supposed to be. So with a 4G repair bill and pissed, I wrote Blizzard a ticket. Now mind you, I wouldn't care about the repair bill if it was my fault but this is really stupid.

So what happened? I have no idea. Perhaps the plane missed the "landing pad". Perhaps it passed through a "hole" in the world. If my Pally fell from that height and I would have been at my desk, it would have been a simple matter to bubble and save myself. Unfortunately, there was no warning. It might also be that my realm being laggy had something to do with this.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has experienced this. It seems that the plane is definitely bugged because another time I took the same ride with my Hunter from Dalaran and right after the plane left I realized I wasn't supposed to go to Icecrown but rather Storm Peaks. I had meant to take the regular taxi. So I exited the game believing that on logging back in I would be placed where I started from, i.e. in Dalaran. If I recall correctly, that's how normal taxis work: if you get disconnected, you will find yourself back at your starting point. When I logged back in, I found myself dead, outside Dalaran's parapets, with no way to reach my corpse. Spirit Res is so much fun!

10 comments:

Skaut said...

Those planes are definitely bugged somehow. Last ride I took was my Blood Elf Death Knight-who was promptly plopped down on the Alliance ship! At least I was there to grab the keyboard(while trying to figure what the HECK happened!) and managed to make it to the side and jumped! Freaked me out, I tell ya, I'm just not ready to trust those airlines anymore!

Kring said...

Back in vanilla the ships used to disappear in the open sea and you drowned. Problem is, you couldn't reach the corp and had to use the spirit rezz which made it way more expensive.

Filed a ticked back then but didn't get the money back. :-)

Once after a BG ended, in the first week when you were brought back were you entered and not to the battle master, I was returned to the correct location. Flying in Icecrown... But on my ground mount which I was using in the BG when it exitied and not in flight form how I entered the BG...

Maebius said...

I have found myself dead near Dalaran's outer ring before, or on top of the Storm peak mountains a few times (maybe 3?) over the past month. Once, was when I got disconnected moments after leaving Krasus Landing, and once while I was watching and was about to land on the ship. The ship, I was watching and I disembarked the taxi juuuust at the edge of the flying ship. Luckily as a priest I could Levitate, but it was still a good WTF moment.
Pesky goblin engineering!

Joe said...

Had a similar issue with the taxi from dalaran to SB, somewhere between the two i had come off the taxi round wintergrasp, the error saying you can't fly there (whilst ont eh taxi!!!)

Fortunately is wasnt a huge fall, so my safe fall helped, but i was annoyed i got dumped there.

Anonymous said...

I would guess that the plane to the ship doesn't work the same way as a normal flight point, because the end location - the ship - is constantly moving and isn't fixed. This is the same for other, similar things, such as the quest (in Storm Peaks?) where you ride a plane with Brann and shoot at mobs, or the introductory quest to Sholozar Basin where you get shot out of the air and land in the jungle.

It's not impossible therefore that instead of actually being on a taxi, you're in a kind of vehicle, just one without a visible exit button, and of course if you log out in a vehicle you log in to find yourself no longer inside. For example, people used to log out on their flying carpets in the air, when these acted as vehicles and not mounts before the patch, and log in to find themselves on the ground dead.

It's also not impossible that this means that there is room for error when landing the vehicle either due to lag or just a glitch - the vehicle might be programmed to land at point X and if you dismount at X but the ship continues moving slightly, you could miss the landing point, and maybe the edge, altogether. After all, with either a taxi or a vehicle you have to physically leave it, and there's always a slight moment of lag.

That might all have been waffle, but I know what I mean :D

Darth Solo said...

Thanks guys for confirming I'm not the only one who went though this traumatic experience :P

I suspected that the plane doesn't use the same system used by the regular "taxis" but for all practical purposes the end result is very similar. It's supposed to take you safely from one point to another.

I guess Blizzard just go "meh, another fool" every time someone reports this. It's probably something very low on their priority list.

Anonymous said...

Logging out or getting disconnected while on a taxi doesn't bring you back to where you started from. When you log in next, you're exactly where you logged out, but you stop at the first link in the 'chain' of flight paths you might've been going to.

Darth Solo said...

@Anon, thanks for the explanation. I wasn't very sure of the mechanics but this makes sense.

Pai said...

The direct flight to the Icecrown zepplins is definitely not a normal taxi. When I use it on my hunter, my pet does not disappear like it does on the normal taxi. If you d/c while on it, you will login mountless in midair and fall to your death. That has happened to me, as well as the 'go afk in flight and come back to see my char dead' scenario.

Darth Solo said...

@Pai indeed it is not like the regular taxi. My pet always gets unsummoned when I land.