WoW: Dragonflight 'strafe keys' reportedly still not working for a section of players (workaround inside)

Blizzard Entertainment recently released the ninth expansion pack for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft.

WoW: Dragonflight was released in November and can be played on both Windows and macOS. While gamers have been eagerly waiting, they were disappointed to find that the update comes with a lot of bugs and issues.

WoW: Dragonflight ‘strafe keys’ not working

According to reports (1,2,3,4,5), WoW: Dragonflight players are unable to use the strafe keys ever since the recent update.

What is Up with this Strafe Bug! (can’t strafe)
Source

Dear Blizzard, Strafe stops working, ususally a relog will fix, but not always. game is unplayable without strafe, please fix
Source

For those who don’t know, strafing can be used by binding either the ‘Q’ and ‘E’ or ‘A’ and ‘D’ keys together. It allows you to move away at full speed while technically still facing your target.

As strafing is an important game mechanic, its broken functionality has left players really disappointed.

However, the problems do not end here. The broken strafe key issue has allegedly made certain other features of the game dysfunctional.

One player reported that not only are they facing trouble in strafing but are also experiencing glitches with the user interface of the game.

Every once in a while, my UI glitches and I lose the ability to strafe left or right. have to completely shut down the game and restart to clear this. FYI! Thanks for all the hard work you do.
Source

Another one stated that the game randomly disconnects and glitches out during quests, auction houses, and others.

It appears that the bugs are repercussions of the ‘Dragonriding’ feature introduced in this expansion.

Official acknowledgment

The developers are aware of the problem and are currently investigating it. However, it’s been over two weeks since it was first acknowledged, and players are yet to receive a fix.

They claim that the issue was caused by certain issues related to server instability.

Potential workaround

Even though the ‘strafe key’ issue makes the game unplayable for some, we have come across some potential workarounds.

According to the developers, mounting and dismounting a dragon mount, or re-logging into the game can resolve the issue. Make sure that you are not mounted when accepting your dungeon queue.

Additionally, clearing the cache is also advised as it helped a player mitigate the problem.

Clearing the cache has resolved this since I posted that as a resolution.
There’s other options like logging into other characters, but that will only work until the next time you enter an instance. Clearing the cache seems to keep it fixed (unless you replicate the bug again).
Source

Hoping that the developers are able to share a solution as soon as possible. We will be keeping tabs on this story and update it with noteworthy developments.

PiunikaWeb started as purely an investigative tech journalism website with main focus on ‘breaking’ or ‘exclusive’ news. In no time, our stories got picked up by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and many others. Want to know more about us? Head here.