What would stop somebody from infecting an alt, and keeping them logged off for about 6 months, until they suddenly pop back up in the middle of Org? All it takes it 1 zombie to cause another server-wide outbreak, and I think they're pretty adamant about keeping away from that.

That's not really sustainable actually as infection can be cleansed.

It would take a lot of people popping up at the same time to create a catalyst that could spread across the server. Who really is going to organize that?

I would. I had 3 infected alts parked at Greengill Coast, so I could've created a new outbreak any time. Especially during WotLK, when people will have no reason to do dailies there.

Edit: And to be honest, I'm actually glad they changed it, otherwise I would've effectively "lost" at least one level 70 alt.

There are countless ways it could have been done so that it was a non-issue long term but phased out in an interesting manor. The way it just ended arbitrarily means they either thought the entire thing would just be a side issue and didn't matter, or that they pushed through an absolute conclusion early to stop the complaints. Either way, it doesn't speak well of the development process.

It's extremely clear to me that nothing was rushed. If that means they didn't anticipate how big and important it would be, so be it. But as soon as I saw the first drop from ten minute incubation to five minute incubation it was obvious it would have to be over by today. Especially when that was confirmed with a drop to two minutes exactly on schedule, etc. It was building up way too fast to be sustainable past today as anything other than "everyone is a zombie, permanently."

I don't think the plague ending was rushed. As others have said, the duration reduction meant it would end today. But I am sure the entire pre-WotLk event is not over.

And, knowing Blizzard and given what freedoms they allowed us with the plague, I'm sure that the actual attack on the cities will be something to behold. I can only hope we see legions of flesh giants and death knights and zombies crashing through the entry ways, smashing their way through the cities to really put the fear of the undead into players. Perhaps have the Lich King hovering around, mocking players for thinking the plague was the worst he would do to us.

If nothing else, I am really glad Blizzard put this event in to shake the world up just a bit. I think far too many players got complacent and in a rut, in regards to their time ingame. Its nice, once in a while, to have things thrown on their head to make you realize your place in the world, so to speak.

Aside from flipping the switch for infection immunity abruptly, you have to agree that it could have been done in a more interesting manner.

Though I'm coming to the conclusion as well that this probably wasn't just a response to all the QQ, but rather part of the natural cycle. I think the blue post was made more because of how a far larger majority of the player base reacted towards the event, in that they took part of it, then blizzard expected.

Blue posts say everything is going according to plan. (Mwuahahahahaha).

I suppose the rapidly reducing incubation times which really couldn't be reduced further and the quest leading toward a cure last night had nothing to do with a planned progression that didn't exist.

The problem is, there was a natural progression leading towards the conclusion, and then the conclusion is a complete non-event. The plague just stops spreading, and that's that. There's no real explanation, no nothing. It would have made sense if turning in the quest made you immune, or if the boxes went away and npcs became immune, or something. Instead, everything is exactly the same as it was last night, except it doesn't spread. Add to that the fact that the zombies never really did anything at all, served no purpose, and really just amounted to a few days of annoyance and griefing turns what looked like a brilliant and creative idea into something that seems ill considered and poorly designed. Realistically, I think the zombies were intended to be a minor factor that just started things off, but they got slightly out of hand. Either way, I see it mostly as a lost opportunity that we're not likely to see again due to the amount of outcry.

Bored guild gets 40 people to the place said alt is logged out, alt is logged in, explodes, and you have an entire 40 man raid infected, with a 1 minute timer since Blizzard would have had little reason to change the no longer active plague from the last stage, and one minute later you have 40 zombies attacking somewhere - even if the alt is someplace inconvenient, send 5 people there, infect them with explosion, summon them, let them turn, explode in raid, ???, profit/zombie zerg down a major city as half of the bored people you kill join you to wreck havoc, and with no argent healers to even make it difficult to sustain a large player zombie swarm :P

The event definitely looks very planned, and they said it was going to be a matter of days, not weeks, before the really short timers hit and people really got vocal about complaining. Also, even without the beta lore, it would seem reasonable to guess that Blizzard has been planning something of the sort ever since they decided to put in death knights, as having a sudden surge in the number of death knights in existence implies a major source for creating them, and this certainly has created plenty of recent deaths to use both as bodies and souls for the creation of death knights, with more violence quite likely in the near future.

Oh I don't think this is over, zombiefest 2008 may be over, but from the blues it sounds like they've got a few more things up their sleeves to last us until November 13th.

Well they've made it clear the event isn't over, just the zombie phase. They are also pointing towards the Putress/Paladin quest as the moment of cure, so I'm just going to mentally retcon it to believe that the cure wasn't just a switch flipped at 12 pst, and assume it was distributed over the populace over that time. Can't say I think the writing is very good, but that's the way it is. Hopefully something else substantial and interesting is coming, and at least we know it will tie in with quests we'll see in LK.

Generally, that's how ancient plagues went. They start small, begin to take hold, expand aggressively, wipe out huge swathes of population, and then they're gone. There was never a miraculous cure, the plague just ran its course. Granted, this generally took decades instead of days and the plague isn't really gone, everyone who's left simply developed immunity (see: wiping of out of Native Americans via diseases long ignored by most Europeans).

On my server that's exactly how the progression of things went. People played around with it at first, but there really wasn't a lot of infecting going on save in Shat'trath. Each day got progressively worse as awareness of the plague increased alongside effectiveness. Now, nothing.

Personally I think it was a brilliant event. It didn't serve a practical purpose within what are generally considered accomplishments in the game, but it definitely served other purposes. It's served as an effective opening shot in the tumultuous events prior to Wrath, as well as being entertaining and thought (if not argument) provoking. The implications of Blizzard being unable to predict the scope of their own plague are simply too unbelievable for me to think they couldn't foresee any of the issues people are complaining about. I'm more inclined to believe that they learned from the Hakkar glitch and the PvE vs PvP complaints and made the conscious decision to implement a disruptive event which most people would find entertaining. Many of the blue posts on the subject corroborate this viewpoint.

Either way it's over and we now have new surprises to look forward to.

I'm not sure about ending this discussion yet, perhaps we should discuss some of the other ways of designing such an event as not to hit the low level players that much harder than the high level ones. I'm sure blizzard employees are avid readers of these forums, as well as anonymous posters, so everything to make our game better.

I have thought of one way of making the zombies more deadly to higher level players, yet at the same time not giving the inane griefers such ways of camping lowbies. Seeing as a plague (in real life) would affect people based not only on their current stamina and endurance, but also based on their genetics and place of birth (etcetera), would it not make sense that higher level players were "equally" vulnerable to it? Perhaps instead of making the zombies' attack a set damage, make it a percentage based hit on players and designated non-elite-guard npcs. That way, you wouldn't be able to grieve level one bank alts to such an extent, but still be able to do some proper damage to high level characters in cities.

NPCs, barring certain guards and faction leaders died by the scores anyhow.

If this was the intention, I doubt it was from this particular phase. Not to be pedantic, but what I mean is that I doubt the Lich King is keen on trying to resurrect brainless zombies as their Death Knights. This was after all called "The Great Zombie Plague of '08" by the CM's, meaning, it's not the plague of undeath per se, even if the original plague resulted in similar-like creations (ghouls). They are after all fallen heroes raised in undeath, given the limitations (or lack thereof) of undeath they are still what they used to be, albeit in a bit decomposed state.

So what results in the actual 'surge' of death knights, dead heroes, is probably something that's upcoming.

I remember an article in Gamespot that the CDC contacted Blizzard after the Hakkar bug. They were trying to see if Blizzard came up with something that helps model potential pandemics. Maybe Blizzard got an idea for an event out of that and maybe even got a scientist or two to advise them. I was thinking of the bubonic plague while the zombie plague was going on.

The rather abrupt ending was slightly disappointing yes, though I can understand why. It could still have been improved upon without opening up loopholes though, basically, a few more steps to the plague:

- Day X: All "new" sources of the plague get removed. No more grain, no more roaches, no more vermin. Any zombies that are still there remain, and people can still be turned into zombies.
- Day X+1: Make all NPCs immune, and give people a quest that allows them to get themselves inoculated against the zombie plague.
- Day X+7: Now that it's been a week since the sources have been removed, completely disable the plague to prevent people from saving it on alts or similar things.

That way on Day X you can have a fun fight where zombies and non-infected people fight each other: The non-infected obviously have the advantage in that they don't have to kill people to keep on coming.

I think I agree with Chicken's suggestion as it fits better with the "fading" aspect of plagues rather than such an abrupt end. Even when compressing what's typically an ordeal of years into days, it takes time for plagues to disappear.

I also with Ja7us's suggestion of having all player zombies be level 70. That might be more complicated to code, but it would at least act as a minor consolation prize to being overrun by the undead. I'm sure that wouldn't be enough to satisfy everyone, but that's true of all things WoW.

If you log out while infected, the infection still counts down - and your character will die while he's offline.

You don't even have to look far back to see a plagued that worked its way through a population and disappeared relatively quickly. As far as I know, no one has a good explanation for why the Spanish flu disappeared after killing so many people. They have even been able to recover samples of it from frozen bodies so it could definitely start again.

An abrupt end could have been made to work, but it would have involved just a little more effort than someone serverside going *foop* - "plague's off."

Have the Argent Dawn roll up with Tirion Fordring's Really, Really Special Cough Syrup ("BEHOLD! IT CURES TICKLY, CHESTY AND BITEY COUGHS!"), or something of a similar vein. An Afternoon's work for someone to script it and plop in some models to tidy it all up.