Remote Guild Chat Feedback and Bugs

As you might have seen ( http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2653949#blog ), we recently rolled out an update to our Android, iPhone and iPod touch apps that adds the ability to chat with your guild mates directly from your mobile device. We wanted to make sure we have a consolidated place where you can report bugs and offer us feedback on the features after trying Remote Guild Chat during the free preview period.

If you have the app and have been able to try guild chat on the currently supported realms, let us know what you think: Have you run into any issues? Any bugs you’ve been able to reproduce? What about the feature itself -- how do you like it? Any thoughts on how we can make it better?

We ran into a bug with the Remote Guild Chat feature earlier today which resulted in a few people being demoted within their guild. We’ve already applied a temporary fix to prevent this issue from affecting anyone else, and we have a full hotfix scheduled to go in the game around mid-day tomorrow. In short, the bug affected players whose guild rank required an Authenticator. When logging into Remote Guild Chat, the game assumed the player had logged in without an Authenticator, so that player was mistakenly demoted due to the security mechanisms in place in the game.

Until the full hotfix is implemented tomorrow, anyone who is still of a guild rank that requires an Authenticator will not be able to use the Remote Guild Chat feature and will receive an error message in the Mobile Armory app if they try. If you were affected by the bug, in order to be re-promoted to “Authenticator Required” ranks, you must first log in to either the game or website for the game to recognize that you have an Authenticator attached (you can do this now – no need to wait for the hotfix). 72 hours later, you will be able to be re-promoted to a rank that requires an Authenticator. We will unfortunately not be able to re-promote those who lost rank as a result of this issue. However, leaders should be able to promote guild members appropriately after the 72-hour timer has expired.

While we managed to catch and address this before it affected too many people, we apologize for any inconvenience or interruption this issue caused you or your guild. One of the reasons we’re rolling out the guild-chat preview gradually is so that we can catch and address issues like this. We’ve worked hard to ensure that Remote Guild Chat is a solid and useful feature, and we want players looking to keep in touch with their guildies to have a great experience with it.

There is some good news! On the realm-support side, we've rolled out the feature to all of the realms in the Ruin Battlegroup today. We're happy with the stability of the service and the feedback we’ve seen so far, and if all goes well, we’re planning to introduce the service on all North America realms within a week’s time.

04/26/2011 06:30 PMPosted by Sertab

I'm having the same issue, can't login at all. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app and also restarted my phone but still getting the armory undergoing maintenance erorr.

Sertab, the "maintenance" error you are receiving right now is not a bug. You do not need to uninstall and reinstall your app. The Armory is, in fact, currently under maintenance. I unfortunately cannot provide any details beyond that at this time.

We are aware of the "character not in a guild" issue that some users are experiencing and are investigating. In the meantime, you should be able to correct the problem by logging into the game with the character experiencing the problem and logging back out. You should then be able to log into Remote Guild Chat. If this is not the case, please let us know.

Thanks!

04/27/2011 03:35 PMPosted by Ceridwen

Really pleased with it! I'd love to not get logged out when my phone idles and being able to continue receiving notifications of whispers/chat when my phone IS idle would be awesome. Otherwise love it, hardcore.

Ceridwen, while the app won't continue sending notifications of incoming chat while you're idle, the app actually does have message playback built in. Once you return to the app, you should receive any messages sent in guild or whispers to you while your character was in an "Away" status. There may be an issue right now with whisper-specific message playback during Away statuses that we are working on, but for the most part, what you're asking for is already in place! :)

As for disconnecting after idling for X amount of time, that is the same functionality that exists in-game, and it's also a good thing for your phone's battery life!

04/27/2011 03:53 PMPosted by Sixen

Though, shouldn't this thread be locked now that there is an entire forum dedicated to the Mobile stuff? ;)

Hi Sixen, and welcome to our forum! For now, we would like to allow this thread to continue for a variety of reasons, one of which includes the fact that the community post about Remote Guild Chat is pointing users to this location :)

another feedback: Im not sure of iphone development abilities, not something I have had the ability to work with, however, when you whisper someone, it puts their name "tell name" in the chat bar.. if its an odd name (and lets face it, 99.9% of namesare) it will put the nice red lines under it for misspelling... I would recommend not putting that in the chat box, or finding a way for it not to be checked.

Unfortunately this is a function of how the iPhone iOS auto-correct works. Our choice was to either disable the auto-correct within the Remote Guild Chat entirely, which would be mighty frustrating to those of us with...ahem...less than perfect phone keyboard typing skills, or we keep auto-correct enabled but have to live with the iOS constantly recognizing non-words (i.e. player names) as misspelled words and underlining them. One of our highest priorities is to provide as much convenience as possible for the user, so we chose the latter.

I cant see guild achs (or achs earned by guildes)...maybe add an option for timestamp?... Found a bug his time. You can chat in guild chat (from phone) while your in guild chat, [And I like this, please dont change] the bug comes in that,

in game: I can read the chat from my phone, and my chat
on Phone: I can read my chat, but NOT the chat from the game me.

Hi Fearinlight!

Thanks so much for the great feedback. Let me address a few of your concerns, which I quoted from your post, since I see that these points in particular are popping up in several posts from other posters as well. The issues I quoted are referenced in the sticky thread detailing "bugs that aren't actually bugs," located at http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2416208562

ok idk if this was mentioned yet

but when i talk to people on mobile armory and they respond back they tell me it says there being ignored by me but i dont have them on my ignore list . we can still see what each other sent but its saying that

This is a known issue that we're working on, and right now it looks like it only occurs for some characters, and only if you've logged into the remote app first, and then the in-game client with the same character after that. As soon as you log out of the in-game client, or log into your characters in a different order, your friends should not see this occurring.

iPhone multi-tasking support please.

i.e. don't make us logout when we switch to another application

Remote Guild Chat does have multitasking support. The phone sets you to an "Away" status for 30 minutes when you switch to another application. The app only disconnects you completely if you've been away longer than 30 minutes.

Kaldricus, when you say that the app logs you out, are you certain your character is being logged out of WoW? Or do you mean to say that you notice you're shown offline when you return to the app, only to be automatically reconnected soon after? If the latter is the case, then what you're seeing is intended functionality. The connection to the Remote Guild Chat is severed when you move out of the app, but your character in WoW is actually still there receiving messages in an "Away" status. Any messages sent to you while your character is in this away status will be played back to you when you return to the app and it auto-reconnects you. If you remain in the "Away" status for longer than 30 minutes, you will be disconnected from Remote Guild Chat completely (your character will appear offline in-game). This is consistent with in-game functionality, and it also ensures that phone batteries are not unnecessarily drained just because of a forgetful Remote Guild Chat chatterer.

If, however, you have verified that your character is actually being signed out entirely from Remote Guild Chat (i.e. nobody can message your character anymore because they're told it's offline), then that is an issue. You should not get logged out (for reals) unless you manually press the Online/Offline button within the app itself.

Nominus, pertaining to achievements, please see this thread: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2416208562

As for info on future development plans, I cannot comment on that.

I am still hesitant to stay connected too it for too long while on the 3G network due to concerns on how much data consumption it will use on my iPhone AT&T data plan. When on WiFi I don't have to worry about that part of it. Maybe I should increase my data plan from 250MB to a higher one just in case? Maybe I'll just keep messing with it and hope my cell phone bill doesn't shoot through the roof lol. Either way, very cool app, and I will continue to subscribe to it. I do hope future things will be added to it, such as having it display guild chat achievements, etc...

The data consumption is trivial, to put it lightly, and has been tested internally. You should not need to worry about how much time you spend in Remote Guild Chat.

on the wow remote, if u select a character that is on a banned account, and press guild chat, the app crashes.

such a simple bug shoulda been picked up by your testing team, which you pay. therefor i see that it is only fair that you pay me in kind, and unban my account!

im on a Samsung Galaxy S, running android, if it helps also.

We are not able to reproduce this issue internally. Do you have the OS version information handy? Any other apps running simultaneously? Anything else you're doing prior to clicking on the Guild Chat module? Do you have automatic sign-in enabled? You're gonna have to work for your "money" :D

Please read the following sticky thread on the Mobile Bug Report forum regarding the "Character not in a guild" issue:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2456725648

04/29/2011 03:56 PMPosted by Muletia

I also had a case today where I could not see the text from another Paladin in the Remote Guild Chat while I could see another persons who was on a Death Knight.

I'm not sure what could be the cause here. The app does not have any filters in place that are dependent on what class the player is. The only thing that should prevent you from seeing another person's chat is if they're on your ignore list. On top of that, in the current live version of Remote Guild Chat, even if they were on your in-game ignore list, you would still see their chat in the mobile client. We've also never seen any issues with being unable to see chat from any particular character before.

Was this person chatting in-game or via Remote Guild Chat as well?

Thanks Sixen, and thanks everyone for the continued feedback.

We are looking into any possible connection problems on our end related to some users reporting problems connecting to chat.