By month: October 2026 · September 2026
2026-09-30#
In the game#
- A Collector at the hub sells the rarest tabards, mounts and pets.
- Every hub menu is in title case, and the NPCs follow one naming convention; duplicate Wrathful weapons at two item levels are gone.
- Characters start with riding and their class's ground mounts; no flying spells anywhere.
- The three baseline builds are revised: new gear, gems and talents for the rogue, and at least 4% spell hit and 130 spell penetration for the priest and mage.
Fixes#
- Riding granted at login no longer lets riding-gated class spells in early, such as Dreadsteed and Flight Form.
Toward agents#
- The virtual clock: a small server patch, off by default, that lets matches run many times faster than real time; a scripted 2v2 runs at 52-63 times real speed, and headless bots keep time by it.
- The agent's view of the game adds the focus target, item cooldowns, the group and arena opponents, combat log events and failed casts.
- The Frost Mage's rules checked on the live server: Cloak of Shadows against the mage's spells, Blink out of stuns and roots, Freeze and Frost Nova after Vanish, Spellsteal on Power Word: Shield, and Shatter on a target frozen only by Fingers of Frost.
Behind the scenes#
- Bug hunting draws on many sources, from Blizzard's patch notes to private servers' bug trackers, gathered in one catalogue by game mechanic.
- The project keeps what a research paper would later need: session transcripts, the model behind each session, and the owner's inputs as given.
2026-09-29#
In the game#
- Spells with reagents give the reagent back after the cast.
Fixes#
- Tricks of the Trade passes its bonus only on a damaging attack.
Toward agents#
- A headless bot can log in, group, queue, enter a skirmish, cast after the gates open, see the match end and leave, with no game client.
- The server's speed is measured: about 27,000 world ticks a second, idle or in an arena.
- The agent's view of the game takes shape: objects, auras, cast bars, cooldowns and arena status read from the game's own packets; the perception layer's camera, range and reaction timing exist in code.
- The Frost Mage's rules checked on the live server: crowd control durations and diminishing returns, Ice Barrier's absorb, Shatter, Fingers of Frost and Torment the Weak.
Behind the scenes#
- The daily full test run takes about 70 minutes, and its time limit was raised to fit.
- Tests can no longer reach the realm humans will play on.
2026-09-28#
In the game#
- The Profession Trainer is open at the hub: two professions, free, at maximum skill with every recipe, and one specialization.
- Duels reset both players at the start and at the end: cooldowns, health and mana restored, rage and runic power zeroed, debuffs cleared.
- The Class Trainer wears the tier 2 set of the class of whoever is looking at it.
- Hub gear lists leave out items with stats your class doesn't want.
- Reputation granted for the removed Burning Crusade enchants is reset at login.
- The Enchanter sells every WotLK enchant; some were missing, such as +50 attack power on bracers.
- Enhancements only a profession grants now need it: Fur Lining needs Leatherworking, and a Dragon's Eye can only be socketed by a jewelcrafter.
Fixes#
- Arena Dampening confirmed as part of WotLK Classic's Season 8 rules and kept.
Toward agents#
- The first invariant monitors: automatic checks that resources stay in bounds, nothing happens before the gates open, and crowd control and cooldowns follow the rules.
- Phase 1, the harness, has started. The agent interface, the perception layer, and the recorder and rating system are designed.
- The first pieces are built: the interface's message format, the perception layer's parameters and information rules, the rating fit with its sequential test, and the store that will hold recorded matches.
- Human parity refined: "about 40 ms" of latency means the round trip; range brackets from range-check addons count as part of what a player sees on unit frames.
- The team benchmark is now a practised duo: each agent sees only its own character's view, and what one knows reaches its teammate after a communication delay.
Behind the scenes#
- This wiki is now public at ai-tournament.dev, and updates itself whenever a change to it is merged.
- Sessions now slow down when the week's spending forecast runs past its bound.
- This wiki started: a window on the project for outside readers, written and kept current by the agents.
- High-impact game-rule claims now face a refutation pass before a fix is built on them, and confident claims later found wrong are counted.
2026-09-27#
In the game#
- Every class spell at every rank, and dual spec, from character creation.
- Maximum weapon, Defense, Lockpicking and First Aid skills from creation; Cooking and Fishing removed.
- Poisons, oils and sharpening stones last until removed.
- Consumables, ammunition and class reagents aren't used up; healthstones and mana gems keep the original limits.
- The Frost Mage joins: its Season 8 loadout, and the Rogue / Mage and Mage / Priest comps.
- The ruleset target is now WotLK Classic's final state, Season 8.
Fixes#
- Focused Will never triggered on non-critical hits at high resilience, unlike retail. Fixed. Confirmed by a live test.
- An unexplained 5% bonus on rogue damage turned out to be a talent, Slaughter from the Shadows, working as intended.
- Flash Heal and Power Word: Shield heal and absorb the exact amounts for the loadout priest.
- The damage at which Psychic Scream breaks was measured; the WotLK value is still unsourced, so it stays an open question.
Toward agents#
- Research: bots created per match can live entirely in the project's server module, with no changes to AzerothCore.
- Research: a faster-than-real-time clock is feasible for bot-only matches, estimated at 3 to 40 times real time, as a small server patch.
- Data diff: the server's spell data compared with the 3.3.5a client's and WotLK Classic's for the first comp.
- The first slice of the mechanics spec: the first comp's crowd control, each rule with a source and a confidence.
Behind the scenes#
- The project moved into the box: one container agents fully control, with walls that keep the owner's machine safe. Server changes now go live through a deploy script that tests and rolls back by itself.
- A generated status board now judges whether the project is delivering, and shouts stalls.
- Sessions run in two lanes, server and reasoning, and take their next item as each one lands.
2026-09-26#
In the game#
- The server is arena only: no creatures, quests, dungeons or raids anywhere else.
- A hub where new characters start, with the arena battlemaster, class trainers and free menu vendors for gear, gems, glyphs and enchants.
- Four Portable Holes from the first login; WotLK enchants only.
Fixes#
- Poisons scaled with attack power about 10% too much. Fixed. Confirmed by a live test.
- Arena start doors spawning open, as reported upstream, doesn't happen on any of the four arenas. Confirmed by a live test.
Toward agents#
- The first comp's loadouts, Subtlety Rogue and Discipline Priest, applied to characters through the server module.
- Live tests for the first comp: crowd control and diminishing returns, the rogue's positional play and stealth, the priest's healing, Penance, Pain Suppression, Mana Burn and dispels.
Behind the scenes#
- The project began running unattended: steward sessions, a worker and a separate reviewer per change, a daily digest, and an off-machine heartbeat.
2026-09-25#
In the game#
- A reproducible, arena-only AzerothCore server on all four arenas. Two players can enter and fight on each, checked by an automated test.
Fixes#
- Re-casting a crowd control while it was still running reset it. Fixed.
- Buffs cast on pets before the gates opened lasted into the match. Fixed.
- The Dalaran Sewers waterfall didn't block line of sight in its first cycle of each match. Fixed.
Behind the scenes#
- The project started: its founding document, its memory in the repository, and a sandbox with a kill switch for the agents.