We have added validation limits for most ToT bosses on Normal and LFR difficulty. Since detection hasn't yet been added, Heroic fights are also classified as Normal. This causes them to be marked invalid. Heroic detection will be added soon and existing reports will be updated accordingly. We're just trying to keep the normal rankings clean for now.

<< Important information for combat log uploaders >>

It has come to our attention that the WOL client often gets stuck while uploading a report after the 5.2 patch. After looking into the issue, it turns out that the 5.2 combat log changes cause the client to use much more memory than before. This can result in it running out of memory and getting "stuck" while uploading.

We are working on updating the client to more efficiently handle the new combat log format. This requires us to change the way the combat log is parsed and compressed for uploading. In turn, this requires changes to how our servers read the uploaded data. Due to the complexity of these changes, this is taking a little longer than we'd like. We hope to have a patch ready for you by tonight.

We are working on updating WOL with the changes required for the new 5.2 patch. This morning, the servers have been updated to be able to process the new combat log format. Throne of Thunder was added with all bosses present except Ra-den, who is heroic-only and will not be available until next week. Detection and validation have not yet been put into place, which means that the difficulty reported by WOL (10 vs 25) might sometimes be wrong. HP limits will be put in place by the end of the week.

As you may know, Asian realms have had higher item levels than US & EU realms for a while now. Since this impacts the difficulty of the game in a major way, we have decided to separate the rankings by region. Instead of a single global ranking ladder, we now keep one for US & EU and another for Asian realms. To accommodate this change, we have changed the global 200 regular + 100 subscriber ranking spots to 150 regular and 75 subscriber per region. This means an increase of 50%, from 300 total per boss, difficulty & spec to 2x 225 for each such combo.

The ranking pages now all have a dropdown at the top that allows you to select the region you wish to view the rankings for.

In order to provide more value for our subscribers, we have added 100 subscriber-only ranking spots. This means that we're now saving 300 rankings for every combination of boss encounter, difficulty and class specialization. The lowest 100 spots are available to subscribers only! We will update the templates for the ranking pages to include a message that indicates this when looking at the subscriber-only ranking spots (#201-300) on short term.

<< Important information for OS X users! >>

It has come to our attention that the recent Java 7 update 9 on OS X is causing Java Web Start applications, such as the WOL Client, to fail to launch. This issue is caused by this recent Java update from Oracle and looks to be fixed in the next Java update. In the mean time, you can find a workaround in the forum topic on this issue: http://forums.worldoflogs.com/viewtopic.php?p=14029#p14029.

<< Rankings frozen on August 28th >>

until Mists of Pandaria release

Intro

With the impending release of the Mists of Pandaria expansion, we have decided to implement an oft-requested change: the rankings will be retro-actively frozen from August 28th onward. Reports with MoP spells as well as those starting or uploaded after the 5.0 patch day (specifically August 28th, 0:00 GMT) will be removed from the rankings. Following that, the rankings for existing instances no longer be updated. Rankings will be re-enabled for instances introduced in the expansion.

Why?

There are several reasons for this decision. Firstly, the new talents, skills, items and level cap will render the current rankings worthless as encounters will become much easier. By freezing the current rankings, we keep a "hall of fame" for top scores. The second reason is much more practical: with patch 5.0 it has become much harder to differentiate between difficulties.

Difficulty

As you may or may not know, WOL tries to discern between difficulties by looking at the spells cast. The presence of a "heroic version" of a boss ability in a certain fight serves as an indicator that that fight was indeed Heroic difficulty. With patch 5.0, Blizzard seems to have changed most heroic (and possible other) spell IDs used, which renders WOL's detection routines ineffective. This would require major reengineering of these routines, an effort we find hard to justify with the incoming expansion and subsequent ranking inflation.

Patch 5.0 has made detecting difficulty even harder with the 35% nerf of Dragon Soul. The LFR and Normal difficulties share most spell IDs. Some abilities are usually disabled for LFR, making the encounter easier. We have found that this is not a reliable way to detect LFR vs Normal, however. Another major difficulty indicator (in LFR vs Normal) is the boss's health. This cannot be read from the combat log directly, but can be indirectly inferred. WOL uses this boss health as part of the difficulty detection. With the 35% nerf (which is not applied to LFR), the LFR and Normal boss health values have come to differ so little that LFR is often mislabeled as Normal as a consequence.

Decisions

Because of the impending ranking inflation and the difficulty-related troubles, we have decided to retroactively freeze the rankings on August 28th, 0:00 GMT. These rankings will remain available for viewing; we may even prevent top reports (more than the usual 20) from expiring, keeping the previously mentioned "hall of fame" intact. When Mists of Pandaria is released, new ranking ladders will be created for the newly introduced instances.

That's all Folks!

For questions or more information, post on the forums or send me an e-mail at maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com.

A bunch of rankings have gone missing today.

While updating the validation thresholds for the new 20% nerf in Dragon Soul (up from 15%), some reports from the 15% nerf period were incorrectly validated against the 10% thresholds, causing their fights to be flagged invalid and their rankings to be removed.

The underlying issue has been resolved, but restoring the rankings requires a little more time. We are recrawling affected reports, which will take a few hours at most. By tonight (US) or tomorrow morning (EU), all rankings should be up again.

If you are wondering whether a specific report is affected, have a look at its Ranking Info page. The missing entries will have a > 100% of limit value and empty DPS(e) and Is this report? columns. Clicking the Re-export now button at the top of the page will resolve the issue for that report.

I'm seeing Miss type [Spell Name] not supported errors showing up for some reports. My guess is that this is caused by either an undocumented change or a bug in the client. If anyone that encounters this issue can send me a ZIP'ed copy of the textual combat log (maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com) that'd be very much helpful!

If it is indeed an combat log format change causing this issue, your reports should not need to be re-uploaded after a fix has been applied.

EDIT: The issue is caused by running an old client version. This should not normally happen. We'll implement measures to cause uploads from these outdated clients to fail and provide a sensible error message. In the mean time, please follow the instructions below to resolve the issue manually.

If you still have this issue, clear the Java application cache via these instructions and try again. If it still doesn't work, send me an email.

The WoL client has been updated to support 4.2-style combat logs.

If you experience any issues related to this update, like not being able to launch the client or failing to upload a log, please reply in the Client 4.2 update issues topic on the forums or send me an e-mail, maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com.