No this bug is so easy to find, I find in the first few minutes of playing Pet battle.
Pet battle is the Pokemon mini game in World of Warcraft. I just started playing the game again now, awaiting the new expansion I first leveled me DK 85-90 in one day...(my best friend told me it would take at least 1 week, either hes an idiot or just a bad player (Yes to both I believe)
After that I of course tested the Pet battle as I am huge fan/expert/researcher etc on Japanese RPG games. So of course I had to test this also a huge thing I argue for in my research is the importance of alternative gameplay experience in 1 game and especially mini games. Bla bla and so on.
Anyway I played the Pet battle took me like the first few minutes to see this bug....
And that makes me sad. Because If I worked on that project I would imagine one person does this minigame all day long for like 1-2 days at least once a week (or at least once per build),
Given that this could be a new bug introduced by the latest patch as it was a huge patch, this should still be something they should find right away.
Ok so what is it?
Its about leveling your pets in the game.
I saw it right away when my clockwork Gnome got level 2. And I could easily reproduce it by trying to level something else, like my fossilized hatchling (yes I am really into archeology in WoW so I got all those pets)
I cant really explain it but its my eyesight got some really weird function to see stuff like this right away. I think it some kind of mixture with my really good spatial awareness (which i get from years of martial arts, paranoid and just being a ninja) with my somewhat I guess great chaotic mind. Its like my mind never focus on one thing but I am all over the place all the time. It really helps with observing things. Or maybe I am just processing data on a screen really, really quickly.
There is a book by Nicholas Carr. The shallows, which is about Google is making us stupid etc. But maybe it is making us really good with Data flow. I am n to gonna write my full view of his book here but basically, google is making us stupid and I agree for the most part, but the information flow looking at data, in what is called hypertext is likely then a lot better, with the cost of being stupid in other parts of life.
Anyway, because I saw this instantly when the first time I leveled my pet by swapping them. For me it was the same as when I find the Black Widow bug in Marvel Avengers alliance its just there for a split second but its like my eyes is all over the screen constantly so I realty snap those things up.
(I just want to write something about a book like the Shallows because while there is definitely something that changes the human brain (read the about the plastic brain for that) I have a hard time seeing it would only be negative, I think a lot of those "changes" is often for the cost of something but its also a gain. "In order to gain something, you must present something of equal value")
So what is this bug then?
What happens is that when you swap pets, a typical Pokemon move to level up a weaker Pokemon. That will make the pets share exp or the pet doing the last attack gets the experience points (honestly this is something I have yet to determine mainly because there is this other bug with my undead fossil what makes his whole battle exp go to another pet, there is some weird stuff with the exp gain)
If you swap out and so on, the ability unlock and level up will be bugged.
So in the first time I saw it but I didn't have time to get a screen shot, I would say in my defense because I was not 100% sure on how the whole pet thing works at all, if I worked on it every day...
However, the good thing with that is that I had to reproduce it, of course I reproduce all my bugs I write about before I write about them so I know they are not just a 1 time glitch. But I want to note on that because I think its a lot of players that wants to help the companies but sometimes they just write something right away, its not really an effective way to do it.
One of the games I worked on this year had a lot of that on the forums were users would write about bugs and I would try to reproduce them and I rarely could.
1 reason is because of lack of steps. But the major reason is because its a bug that people just saw once, so they aren't actually 100% sure its a bug but they think its or its a really bug but the occurrence rate of its not 100% etc.
Short and consistent with good numbers thats important (not like this report as I am babbling on about stuff but I think people can figure out that I am right now traveling and playing...World of Warcraft
Well the step for this bug is easy, just take a pet and start the battle with.
Get the enemies hp down so it can easily be finished of.
Swap in a pet that will level by wining the battle, recommended a level 1 pet.
Observe the issue.
-Confirmed it happens with several different pets.
This bug also happens if you first fight with the level 1 pet then swap in a strong pet to finish the battle.
On this image clearly my pet core hound gains experience and my blue jouster.
My Jouster was level 1 so by beating a much higher leveled enemy it quickly jumped form 1 to 2. (Which as I mentioned earlier is a typical Pokemon strategy letting 1 low leveled pet gain experience from beating much higher leveled enemies by using another main pet).
And the in game effect of this is that the Corehound is stated to become level 2. Not only that but as can be read down in the General Text Window he also gained an ability. As seen the General Text shows the correct state of the game, while the graphics and UI pop ups shows incorrectly what happened.
So after this images it also then shows the corehound ability unlocked while it should show the blue jouster ability.
I done this with several pets ;) So I can for example get the corehound pop up over and over again.
There is also another version of this bug, which is not seen in this images because there is no pop up.
I tried to repro it at much higher level right now and there is no pop up and the General Text is also incorrect.
The issue here is likely from that my Mr.Chilly jumped from 1-4. This caused it to unlock 2 abilities, but it only shows in the General Text and no pop up at all happened (I also did the swap thing so both of those thing together causes no effect in the game)
So there is a bunch of issues with this thing.
There is also an overall issues with using Undead pets and wining with them if they die..for the exp etc. I have also managed to not get any effects when leveling an Undead but it died on the same time as it leveled. But those ones are harder to get again and it does not seem to be each time. Especially using a low level pet, swapping in an Undead dieing with the Undead but beating all the enemies gives all the exp to the low level pet but then its also no animations nor pop ups. The whole reviving with Undead just seems glitchy, they also say they should live for 1 turn but mine lives for 2 turns sometimes.
