SIS and Guide Problems Explained.. Hopefully.

[Kamchak]

Im not sure if anyone had posted this, but here is why SIS has been disabled....

SIS and the guides are driven off the ID numbers given by Blizzard for every quest listed. When they launched patch 3.3 they changed the quest numbers on a lot of quests, which messed up the guides for a while; those of us that have had the guides know about this mess.
This current problem is a disaster even compared to the 3.3 fiasco.
1) Blizzard changed a lot of quest IDs again.
2) Blizzard was supposed to put in some quests with 4.0.3a and did not.
3) Blizzard was not going to add quests to 4.0.3a but did.
4) Locations of NPC's were moved ahead of schedule for 4.0.3a and some NPC's were left where they were.

Do you see the common problem here? Blizzard made last second changes that sent this guide spiraling into trouble.

Why this effects SIS is the quest ID numbers it relies on are no longer valid, so SIS cannot 'see' them. Further adding to the problems the quests and locations of the quest givers is wrong. Add all this together and the algorithm being used by SIS in game is useless until every one of these problems is addressed.

This is why Zygor is not responding to the Mac loader issue, or any of the other issues being posted at the moment, and why us as Moderators are trying to quell the masses and get ppl to understand the magnitude of this problem. Nothing will work properly until these issues are addressed, one-by-one, line-by-line. It's huge folks.

To our new customers, this is unfortunate, as you have not had the opportunity to see the history and track record of updates and problem addresses you will come accustomed to in time.
To our old customers, you see the trust they have based on this track record by the posts they leave that is pretty much a /shrug "wow this stinks. Oh well, Ill roll a <enter toon here> until you get it working." That says a lot to me about the trust built and earned by Zygor Guides.

The only thing that the new customers need to know is this; our track record is posted by our customers in these forums. If you want to take the time, I encourage each of you to search out the issues posted and read the end results for yourselves. Nothing speaks to the quality and integrity of this product and the ppl involved here like your peers.

Hopefully this problem will be resolved very shortly and all will go back to normal. Then all we have to do is wait to see if Blizzard decides to drop another A-Bomb on us come Cata.

[Cerec]

So, theoretically, the outland and northrend guides should be pretty much as they were before, right? This is primarily a 1-60 issue?

I was just curious

[Kamchak]

The ID number change is across the board, old world to Northrend. Seems no part of the guide is safe at this point.

[chaos5061]

Nope. There are some quests that have been removed there too. One horde quest in the guide is telling you to go speak to Thrall in Orgrimarr. And the wrathgate quest line has to be changed because steps 177-183 isn't in the game anymore. ( Thanks cartman for the steps numbers.) So as you can see there is still stuff to be done. For right now you don't want to use the SIS function of the guide in Outlands anyway because the guide doesn't take into account the rep needed for some quests. Which Zygor will see what he can do about later.

[mzanker]

Thanks for the explanation, guys. This is pretty much what I thought the problem was.

As a customer for coming up to one year I can confirm that these issues are usually fairly short-lived and Zygor gets updates out pretty quickly. If it was a problem I wouldn't still be a customer

Anyway, it's doable without SIS - my troll (enh) shaman is level 33 after a few days of limited play time and I'm only 2 levels ahead of the guide at the moment.

As for Outland and Northrend, I always disable SIS anyway, so no loss there.

[maningrey]

If we all being honest to ourselves, you guys might as well wait 7 days for the cat update. Don't bother trying to fix the problems now as they will come to no prevail, wait it out and release with cat.

[Kamchak]

If we all being honest to ourselves, you guys might as well wait 7 days for the cat update. Don't bother trying to fix the problems now as they will come to no prevail, wait it out and release with cat.

That would be the easy thing to do, but it isnt taking care of our customers. We all bought a guide, and it should be working as intended.

[am88]

I can imagine this being something of a labor intensive thing to figure out.

What is the approach? Reading through all of your known (and proven seqences), manually looking up the new Bliz data, then updating the guide and SiS code?

[chaos5061]

I can imagine this being something of a labor intensive thing to figure out.

What is the approach? Reading through all of your known (and proven seqences), manually looking up the new Bliz data, then updating the guide and SiS code?

That I wouldn't have the closest idea of how to go about fixing it. But I imange that they are working probably 14 hours a day to get it fixed. They were even fixing stuff during Thanksgiving holiday.

[voltec]

Im not sure if anyone had posted this, but here is why SIS has been disabled....

*** Snip ***

Holy cow (good name for a Tauren priest, but probably taken in most realms), I had no idea how far this rabbit hole went! I figured it was a few quest IDs or the way the game reported some info that needed to be tweaked. That explanation helps me (and many others) realize how bad this truly is. I have to admit, it does suck not to have the SIS implemented cause with the many new quest 1-60 quest chains, it's impossible to know which ones are important or how far to back up to 'get the insertion right'... so in the meantime we guess and hope we get it right.

All of that being as it may, I COMPLETELY understand and continue to have 100% FAITH in the Zygor Guides - both the leveling and the daily and events guides. It's not the actual guides that has given me that faith, it's the consistant focus on customer service and the obvious desire to 'over-deliver'. It's shown every day - from the updates to the information posted here.

Take the time it takes - even if that means that SIS doesn't work properly until Cataclysm. Would we like to see it earlier? Of course, but at the same time, the scope of what you're going through couldn't be anticipated due to their last minute changes. Just let us know how it's coming from time to time so we can set our mind frame to cope, ya know? lol

Hope all of you had a Happy Thanksgiving despite the set backs.

Matt

[ocyras]

thanks for the update. i've only been a customer for a few months, but have definitely seen fixes happen very quickly. patch day was a mess, but my zygor guides were one of the first ones to be updated.

thanks again and i can't wait for everything to be smooth once again!

[dkjr]

This may be a pattern though.

I've been a zygor user for several years (well i bought it for the wife but whatever) and yes in the past things have gone well and fast.

My concern is that blizzard has a new policy against game guides such as this now. (not sure the details you referenced this on your add.) Could it be that blizzard is doing this intentionally to mess up these guides with every major patch?

If so i'm concerned as the main reason i pre-order the cata guide was to have it while i level from 80 to 85... A process unlikely to take more than a week from launch. I'm not at all sure it's worth the money spent anymore since my wife only runs toon's to the mid 40's before starting over again lol. Is there a process to get a refund on the pre-order cata upgrade in light of this issue? Also can you elaborate on the "ban" on game guides and if this could be a cause of the renumbering issue?

[am88]

My concern is that blizzard has a new policy against game guides such as this now. (not sure the details you referenced this on your add.) Could it be that blizzard is doing this intentionally to mess up these guides with every major patch?

Your concern is best addressed by a reply Cabby (a moderator here) said in another thread and this post (note: I did edit the quote slightly to remove something not germane to your question/concern. Review the full thread and post if you desire.)

You do not pay for the Zygor addons that are loaded by WoW. The addons are completely free for anyone to download with the trial version and you don't have to pay a dime to use the addons.

What you pay for are the guide .lua files that the addon uses. The guide .lua files are not addons and as such are not in violation of any current Blizzard policies.

Technically you could download the addon for free with the trial version and create your own guides to use with the addon and it would be just like having gotten a guide viewer addon thru Curse, but you would have to create your own guide .lua files and spend your own personal time with trial and error to find which quests to do and which not to do, then put them into an .lua file.

Basically you're only paying Zygor for the time to find the paths and create the file that the guide viewer addon is reading and displaying.

[cabby]

What he quoted there is in regards to your concerns over the Blizzard policy that was mentioned. Basically the Blizzard policy says that addon authors are not allowed to charge for the addons. Notice how Carbonite is now a free addon?

Zygor devised a method that allows him to comply to the Blizzard policy so there's really no fear of that causing you any grief.

I highly doubt that Blizzard did this to try to get rid of guides, because they simply can't get rid of guides. If they really wanted to, all they have to do is add a few lines of code that would prevent any known guide addons from loading and they wouldn't have to re-do their entire quest and npc database.

After Cata is released I don't think that Blizzard will make any more major changes like this until maybe the next major expansion in a couple years.

[dkjr]

That's pure sophistry and would not stand any serious legal challenge, there are more holes in the answer above that the swiss have in their whole country. What zygor really did is reword his ULA a bit and rely on the fact that blizzard knows such guide are mostly good for the game to prevent any legal action.

That said mostly my concern is that the guide will not be out till well after i'm done leveling which makes the preorder now pointless. I note there is no answer on that question. Is there any way they can release this guide on the cata launch day. . . Yeah i know i'm a programmer too i understand the SIS issue. Still day 1 to day 7 are the only reason to buy those .lua files as i have the other stuff with my previous level of guide.