WoW prop hunt x-ray bug
- Blizzard launched a new prop hunt mode but forgot to turn off x-ray vision, making matches unfair and visible. (pcgamer.com) - Players immediately reported exploitable visibility, prompting ridicule and questions about the patch testing process. (pcgamer.com, kotaku.com) - Coverage frames the incident as part of a larger “buggy mess” narrative that has players worried Blizzard is struggling to keep up. (kotaku.com)
World of Warcraft’s new prop-hunt mode launched this week with a basic flaw: seekers could use humanoid tracking to spot hidden players through the map. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com) Blizzard added the mode, called Decor Duel, in Patch 12.0.5 on April 21, 2026, as part of the Midnight expansion update. In the mode, one side disguises itself as furniture and other objects while the other side hunts them down. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com) By April 22, Blizzard had posted a hotfix saying “Humanoid tracking abilities no longer reveal players in Decor Duel.” The same hotfix also fixed a separate reward bug that had incorrectly marked some players as away from keyboard and denied them base Illusionary Coin payouts. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com) Prop hunt works only if the hiding side is hard to detect, and early reports said Decor Duel broke that rule in multiple ways. Kotaku reported that Hunter players, or players using a food item that granted Track Humanoids, could light up hiders on the map instead of searching for suspicious props by sight. (kotaku.com) The x-ray-style bug landed inside a patch that was already drawing complaints across the game. Blizzard’s April 22 hotfix list spans class bugs, item bugs, quest bugs, and multiple Decor Duel fixes, while the official bug-report forum showed fresh threads on April 22 for issues ranging from delves loot to crafting orders and movement problems. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com, us.forums.blizzard.com) That broader context shaped the reaction to Decor Duel. Kotaku described Patch 12.0.5 as “full of wacky bugs,” and GameSpot said players were “fed up” as reports piled up around Midnight’s new features. (kotaku.com, gamespot.com) Blizzard has not, in the hotfix note itself, explained how the tracking ability was left active in the mode. The company’s public response so far is the fix: as of the April 22 hotfixes, tracking no longer exposes hiders in Decor Duel. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com) For now, the episode leaves Decor Duel as a feature that arrived on April 21 and needed a fairness patch a day later. In a mode built around hiding in plain sight, Blizzard had to first make players invisible again. (worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com, worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com)
