https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/ptr-patch-notes-wow-classic-version-1135/158170
In short: AQ content out. AV backdoors get fixed.
Apparently we're getting the WotLK version of Nexus Crystals (Abyss Crystals). Good to know that the people writing these know what they're talking about ;)
And of course Activision Blizztard wouldn't be itself without some form of p2w inserted into the game
In this patch, we’re activating an additional 4 bag slots for any player who has an authenticator attached to their WoW Classic account. In order to help preserve the new-player experience for players who are new to Classic, this won’t be advertised in-game until you’ve reached level 20.
The big question for me is, why do they want us to install authenticators? What kind of data is it giving them that they'll use or resell? It's apparently worth enough money to invest developer time to program this shit.
4 slots is actually a big deal for many people.
Yeah I worry about what kind of data they're collecting from their app. But the joke is on them, I don't carry a cell phone anymore anyway so they're not collecting shit. But it likely reduces account theft in enough qty to allow them to carry a smaller customer service staff. I can see it be worth it in that regard even if they weren't collecting and selling data on the backend, which they probably are.
Aside from the AQ content being added to the PTR, the big things that stand out to me are:
- The Hand of Justice is being deleted from Angerforge's loot table and moved to the emperor at the end of BRD. This is going to make getting your HoJ more difficult, so if you need one then you better get to farming it now.
- It looks like a threat API will be added to the game. There is currently no method for addons to communicate with the server and ask for threat values in Classic. Addons that currently determine threat are calculating it based on the combat log and applying known threat formulas to determine players threat values, and it ~~~mostly works. But it requires a lot of addon spam with everybody's addons talking to each other to share data around, and it can still be buggy. This API will let an addon just ask the server what people's exact threat is, and the server will just give the addon the current values. This will cut down on performance issues, and make threat meters more reliable.
The big question for me is, why do they want us to install authenticators? What kind of data is it giving them that they'll use or resell? It's apparently worth enough money to invest developer time to program this shit.
Yeah I worry about what kind of data they're collecting from their app. But the joke is on them, I don't carry a cell phone anymore anyway so they're not collecting shit. But it likely reduces account theft in enough qty to allow them to carry a smaller customer service staff. I can see it be worth it in that regard even if they weren't collecting and selling data on the backend, which they probably are.
I work for a large Internet company you've heard of (unrelated to gaming) and work on this exact problem (account takeover). I'm 100% certain the reason for this is to protect a gamer's account. Signing up for an Authenticator (two-factor authentication) is a pain, so users avoid doing it and forcing everyone to do it would cause a lot of complaints, but it's the best way to protect an account. It's so good that if we could have everyone do it, I'd need to go work on something else. There's zero nefarious intent for data harvesting here & you're not offering them additional data that they don't already have. Having your account broken into is a jarring experience. Gamers very much do not like getting their purples sharded by an intruder and their stuff messed with, and it reduces trust in the provider. The GMs likely need to spend time manually recovering the exact items and gold, it will take several days to verify the account holder's ID & restore access, and they might not be able to restore everything to be exactly the same. Preventing it entirely is a far better user experience, and this little bag item thing is a way to get people to opt-in to protect themselves.