Blizzard: Vanish isn’t bugged

The Rogue, one of the more popular classes in the World of Warcraft universe, has an assortment of talents that give them their stealthy character. The most mentionable of their talents would be Vanish. And yes, we know – it isn’t mentioned just because it’s great.

The huge complaint about the Vanish skill is that it’s bugged. But Blizzard says it isn’t bugged. In fact, it’s working just fine. The real issue regarding the talent doesn’t have anything to do with bugs. It’s latency.

Latency, or best known as “lag”, is the main reason why every time you invoke Vanish to attempt a sneaky escape yet find that the enemy still happens to “see” you.

We could give our own example, but Vaneras, a Blizzard representative, says it better:

Here is an example of what can sometimes happen, which leads to the perception of Vanish being bugged: If an enemy rogue attacks you using Eviscerate, a command is sent to the realm telling it that Eviscerate is being used by that enemy Rogue. If you then use Vanish right after the enemy rogue uses Eviscerate, the realm is in the process of acknowledging his Eviscerate command while your Vanish command is still being sent to the realm. The acknowledgement of the enemy rogue’s Eviscerate command is then being sent to your computer, and at the same time the realm is registering that you used the Vanish command. The result of this is that your client can take you out of stealth because you were hit by damage, even though you used vanish, because there is latency somewhere between you, the realm and the enemy player.

And it even works the other way around. He explains further:

That is a variation of the same latency issue between the realm and the clients of different players. On one client (Rogue) Vanish has been used and registered by the realm, but on the other client (Hunter) it is still in the process of receiving the acknowledgement that Vanish has in fact been used, but since it has not been registered by the client yet, the pet is continuing its attack as commanded by the Hunter, which results in it following and attacking the rogue despite the fact that it shouldn’t because Vanish has been used.

Latency can be a pain, but even in the age of broadband Internet, it’s the same old little connection gremlin. Every connection will have lag. It’s a fact of data communications. Vaneras says the matter is being looked into, but it can’t be cured with a patch or hot fix.

The Rogue, one of the more popular classes in the World of Warcraft universe, has an assortment of talents that give them their stealthy character. The most mentionable of their talents would be Vanish. And yes, we know – it isn’t mentioned just because it’s great.

The huge complaint about the Vanish skill is that it’s bugged. But Blizzard says it isn’t bugged. In fact, it’s working just fine. The real issue regarding the talent doesn’t have anything to do with bugs. It’s latency.

Latency, or best known as “lag”, is the main reason why every time you invoke Vanish to attempt a sneaky escape yet find that the enemy still happens to “see” you.

We could give our own example, but Vaneras, a Blizzard representative, says it better:

Here is an example of what can sometimes happen, which leads to the perception of Vanish being bugged: If an enemy rogue attacks you using Eviscerate, a command is sent to the realm telling it that Eviscerate is being used by that enemy Rogue. If you then use Vanish right after the enemy rogue uses Eviscerate, the realm is in the process of acknowledging his Eviscerate command while your Vanish command is still being sent to the realm. The acknowledgement of the enemy rogue’s Eviscerate command is then being sent to your computer, and at the same time the realm is registering that you used the Vanish command. The result of this is that your client can take you out of stealth because you were hit by damage, even though you used vanish, because there is latency somewhere between you, the realm and the enemy player.

And it even works the other way around. He explains further:

That is a variation of the same latency issue between the realm and the clients of different players. On one client (Rogue) Vanish has been used and registered by the realm, but on the other client (Hunter) it is still in the process of receiving the acknowledgement that Vanish has in fact been used, but since it has not been registered by the client yet, the pet is continuing its attack as commanded by the Hunter, which results in it following and attacking the rogue despite the fact that it shouldn’t because Vanish has been used.

Latency can be a pain, but even in the age of broadband Internet, it’s the same old little connection gremlin. Every connection will have lag. It’s a fact of data communications. Vaneras says the matter is being looked into, but it can’t be cured with a patch or hot fix.