New patch means more focused sound system glitch hunt

With new patches come new bugs, and the folks over at Blizzard aren’t taking any chances, specifically with the new sound system of their legendary MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, even with round-the-clock testing, there’s still quite a bit of ground to cover, so it’s up to the players – yes, you guys – to lend a hand.

So how does one go about reporting glitches in the sound system? Thankfully, Blizzard Poster Drysc has the answer, outlining the entire process neatly and cleanly for public consumption via a thread in the WoW Forums. Let’s go through it ourselves, see what we have to do to contribute. Here we go!

To make a bug report about the sound system, first of all, we have to check if the bug we’re experiencing has already been reported. This cuts down on the Blizzard team going through oodles of posts talking about the same bug, and gives them more time to deal with different ones. When we’ve established that our bug is yet to be reported, we open a new thread and provide the following in the reports:

1. A very thorough description of what was happening when the sound error occured.
2. The contents of the SESOUND.LOG file in the WoW/logs directory.
3. Dxdiag info (for Windows users).

Number 1 is easy enough, but what about 2 and 3? Here’s how…

The complete guide after the jump!

With new patches come new bugs, and the folks over at Blizzard aren’t taking any chances, specifically with the new sound system of their legendary MMORPG, World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, even with round-the-clock testing, there’s still quite a bit of ground to cover, so it’s up to the players – yes, you guys – to lend a hand.

So how does one go about reporting glitches in the sound system? Thankfully, Blizzard Poster Drysc has the answer, outlining the entire process neatly and cleanly for public consumption via a thread in the WoW Forums. Let’s go through it ourselves, see what we have to do to contribute. Here we go!

To make a bug report about the sound system, first of all, we have to check if the bug we’re experiencing has already been reported. This cuts down on the Blizzard team going through oodles of posts talking about the same bug, and gives them more time to deal with different ones. When we’ve established that our bug is yet to be reported, we open a new thread and provide the following in the reports:

1. A very thorough description of what was happening when the sound error occured.
2. The contents of the SESOUND.LOG file in the WoW/logs directory.
3. Dxdiag info (for Windows users).

Number 1 is easy enough, but what about 2 and 3? Here’s how.

For the SESOUND.LOG file:

1. Immediately after the issue has been encountered log out of WoW.
2. Open your wow directory (example: c:/Program Files/World of Warcraft )
3. Open the Logs folder.
4. Open SESOUND.LOG file.
5. Copy the contents of the log file into your report.

Do note that the SESOUND.LOG file is recreated every time you start up World of Warcraft, so it’s wise not to do so until you’ve made a copy of the contents of the file itself. Doing so would overwrite the original log file with a new, blank one.

For the DxDiag info:

1. Click on Start.
2. Click on Run.
3. Type in DXDIAG and press Enter or click OK, this will open the DirectX diagnostic tool. Run the DirectDraw, Direct3D and DirectSound tests found under the Display and Sound tabs before creating the dxdiag.txt file.
4. Click on the Save All Information Button (save this file to your windows desktop and name it dxdiag).

Before you perform the DxDiag text file, it’s usually better to do so after rebooting your system. This allows the created dxdiag file to display the best possible results.

See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Not only is it easy, but it’s a direct contribution to the betterment of the game. So get to finding those bugs and sending in those reports!