Thanks Blizz........... Thanks for the blindside. You upped the pixelshader requirement of WoW from most likely 1- 1.4 to probably 1.6- 2.0. We're not quite sure exactly what version of Pixelshader WoW requires now because you havn't told anyone.

For hours upon hours probably 10,000 plus WoW players labored to figure out why the heck their videocard's kept crashing after patch 2.4 installed, no, not just the game crashing, but everyone's videocard that couldn't support a greater version of Pixelshader then 1.4 is STILL crashing out continually or they cannot even run the WoW client. That means they, including me, either got the blue screen of death or a complete windows shutdown/reboot every 15 mins or so of play. Everyone with ATI Radeon 9000- 9250 series cards is having this problem. There are many other videocards affected, such as Nividea's Geforce 3's. I know these cards are all 4-5 years old and you probably want to advance WoW's graphics, meaning some of our videocard's might be casualties.

BUT NO WARNING!!?? No heads up? No explanation as to what was occuring as some people had their computers crash and reboot maybe 20+ times? This isn't just affecting a few random people, were talking about 10's to 100's of thousands of paying Blizzard customers. Seeing how many players in Asia and Oceania are using low-end systems, the number of people suffering from this affliction must be in the 100's of THOUSANDS!.

Someone HAD to know this would happen, as Blizzard collected my own (non personal system data) twice in the week before the patch, and i'm sure everyone elses. As it was occuring, and thousands are now forlorn, posting on the forums, calling tech support, etc., I would think that at least an explanation would be offered. No, nothing, no one knew anything, not in game GM's, not forum moderators or blue posters. This isn't their fault, the Dev team didn't advise them this was comming.

Is it that you wanted everyone to have to upgrade their videocards to continue to play the game but you didn't want the storm of protest that would result maybe? Or maybe it's illegal for you to suddenly change the system requirements on millions of gamers who have already bought, and are playing the game, without the purchase of a new expansion pack with a warning? Hmmmm, maybe this is the reason for the "mistake" over pixelshader. Or, maybe it was an honest mistake, we just want to know.

As it stand now we came across a temporary fix that completely disables pixelshader in the WoW client. For anyone wanting to know how to do this so you can actually play the game, head over to the technical support forum, it's being explained there.

However, we need a permanant fix to this issue. And we'd very much like our version 1.4 pixelshader effects back, the game used to be quite beutiful for us, or are we the casualties to be discarded in the name of progress?

Finally, we know that this major content patch is a huge undertaking, and I appreciate the new content much. We also understand that your swamped with technical problems now, we just want this addressed in the near future. Thank you.

Epic QQ Item level 145 over.

It would be an odd thing that we will support no shaders (DirectX 7 based cards, Intel integrated) and high shaders, but not in between. We're currently investigating this issue. If you can tell us exactly what happens, where you were and what your in-game video settings are, we can check it out in greater detail.

I am not even going to attempt to moderate this thread. /locked

And personal attacks on the Tech Support forums will not be tolerated.