WoW Forever: Booty Bay's gun loses its knockback

The beta's most talked-about toy this week was a gun. Booty Bay Bruiser's Buckshot is sold once a character reaches honoured standing with Booty Bay, and the appeal was never its damage: it is item level 35, needs level 30 to hold, hits for 35 to 66 at a speed of 2.80, and carries 3 stamina and 9 attack power. The draw was the button on it, a 10-minute shot that sends whatever it hits flying.

That worked on other players as well as on creatures, and the beta spent a few days watching people get launched off piers, cliffs and bridges. Clips of it travelled well beyond the small group of testers who had actually got the reputation for it.

It does not do that any more. A hotfix has removed the knockback, according to one report, leaving the gun as an ordinary reward for the faction. Part of why it arrived with a bang is timing: the gun wants level 30, and the beta's ceiling was only raised to 30 last week, so almost nobody could reach it until a few days ago.

Blizzard has not listed the change anywhere, said why it was made or said whether the effect comes back in a different form. The item's own description still reads as it did, telling the player it will knock the target away, so the text and what the gun actually does no longer agree. This is one report, not confirmed by Blizzard. The beta runs until 21 October, and WoW Forever opens at 23:00 UK time on 4 November, which is midnight on 5 November in Central Europe.