Nethris

Originally Posted by Darian_TruBlade 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.

 

Jagiya

The entire event served as a great eye-opener. It certainly put alot of people in their place. No matter how many times you've killed Kil'Jaeden or Illidan, there was something really brilliant about feeling unsafe anywhere in the world.

Some thoughts that come to mind:
- Finishing the bonus boss in Karazhan before running back to Duskwood to discover that the Flight Master and every other NPC in town had been slaughtered and replaced by swarms of Zombies.
- Having to be particularly careful about which routes you take when making your way around town. I found it so amusing when I looked over at my girlfriends screen and saw her taking the "traditional" route from the Mage District of Stormwind to the Flight Master, only to encounter a blockade of Zombies in the Trade District.
- Doing my usual bank-alt auction run on Monday morning before work, only to be killed instantly and turned into a zombie. At first I was annoyed because I knew it wouldn't be possible to use my bank alt for the duration of the event, but I thought it was a nice "shake up" to the usual routine.
- Everytime my housemate went AFK, whether it was to take a shower or make a phone call, he would always come back to his computer as a zombie. I found it hilarious that no matter where in Azeroth he was, someone would find him and infect him.
- Running around a corner and getting ambushed by a Zombie, before frantically trying to rush your way to the nearest Argent Healer... only to discover a legion of zombies waiting for you on his corpse. That feeling of impending inevitibility was amazingly successful.
- For the first time in almost 2 years, I really got to know Exodar. I never even knew where the battlemasters were until now. These were the only Alliance Battlemasters in the world which I could trust not to get infected.

Sure, there's inconveniences here and there, but in the summary post by Tigole, I really think they hit the nail on the head.
For 3 days, the game became a twisted struggle for survival. It's over now. For those who didn't enjoy it, you can get back to your 362 day routine. I personally didn't contribute to any of the plague spreading or Zombie chaos, and I sure as hell fell victim to it many times. But I don't harbour any negativity towards the event. I'm excited to see what sort of chaos is thrown at us in the final week prior to WotLK release.

As for the arrival of Putress, it would be tragically hilarious if he took advantage of the dire situation to gain the Hordes' trust. Having been instrumental in the "ending" of the plague, it would certainly explain why he was able to conduct the upcoming events without suspicion.

 

Lazare

I've got to agree with Jagiya. I thought Bliz nailed the zombie event fairly well. It started off mild ("eh, this is pretty lame"), but quickly built up. There could be zombies anywhere, but it wasn't hard to avoid it; occasionally some out-of-the-way quest NPC would be dead when you wanted to talk to them, but nothing really exciting.

Then, right at the end...zomg! Shat was a deathtrap; Stormwind was almot completely overun. It was - clearly by design - like some sort of survival horror thing. You'd come around a corner, do a double take, and run the other way. Then, just when it was about to get tiresome...it was over. Or was it... (Not only do real plagues work this way, but so do horror movies. There's a reason.) I don't see how it could have been done much better to be honest.

(Also, am I the only one who remembers how much flak Bliz caught for the first scourge invasion event because you could just ignore it? They were especially criticized because even the city attacks were clearly designed to spare "important" NPCs and to ignore lowbies so as to minimize the impact. There was an outcry about how Bliz chickened out and didn't want to inconvenience anyone. Apparently, Bliz listened. Even if no more events occur before launch, I'd call this their best world event yet. I admit, that's a low bar!)

 

Ja7us

This is untrue. I logged off multiple times with the infection during the event, and logged back in with the timer exactly where I left it - the only exception being when I had more left on the timer than the new max duration.

 

Jagiya

I think he was trying to suggest that it would be a simple way of dealing with the whole, "logout with the plague for 6 months and revive it" issue; as an alternative means to their method of simply "stopping it."

 

Bregonn

I disagree. What would you want the zombies to do? Give them a quest to infect a faction leader? Shut down an economic centre? A transportation hub? Infect some remote corner of the world? All of it has happened and more. They hinted at a zombie quest, but they've hinted at other stuff in the past which didn't exist to get people involved. It's a plague, it should be random and serve no other purpose than cause disruption.

I agree that a more of an ending would have been nice. But even a 5 min immunity buff gained at an Argent Healer after doing a quest would have pretty much stopped the event dead in it's tracks within half an hour of it becoming available. It would be the balance of power of day 1, except that's it's not new and funny anymore and the zombies would feel badly nerfed. Might as well stop it immediately and save us from another day of flamewars on /2. They certainly didn't stop it because of the whining, because one more day wouldn't have costed the world, especially with the end in sight.

All in all I find the event brilliant. We know how lame the first undead invasion and the pre-TBC events were. By putting it in the hands of the players they managed to create a level of disruption and involvement far greater than anything they could have come up with any reasonable investment of resources.

Also, for an event on this scale which so heavily relied on player involvement and which basically had no large scale testing whatsoever it was very well tuned. It went from a minor annoyance all the way to something you simply could not ignore, then stopped before it became not fun anymore for too many people.

 

Camaris

Agreed with the above. Although I am eagerly awaiting the next step in the Horde/Alliance questlines now, and somewhat surprised there are no "Phase 6" newsreports yet, as on previous days.

 

mhr_78

I can just agree, even if the ending was sort of abrupt and there were no scripted events in every player questhub with pest doctors cleaning the plague (which would be wasted development time imho) - one can conclude for themselves what happened. And even if it would just 'stop by itself' it very much feels like a calm before the storm now.

 

Malleus

I never felt unsafe anywhere. I was infected a few times, but only zombified once - I bubbled before being infected, only to discover that infection bypasses Divine Shield.

Apart from that, the whole event was nothing but a needlessly irritating mess. I'm not on a PVP server. When some intellectual cripple takes his troll Hunter (it's always a troll Hunter, I don't know why) into Auberdine and starts killing the NPCs, he's griefing. Going into the lowbie zones to turn in Qs and finding that someone's ganked the Q-givers doesn't suddenly become brilliant fun when it's being done by members of your own faction.

 

Entropie

I disagree on the needlessly. They had to convey a sense of danger, the danger that is the scourge. It is world of warcraft. They try to create a living, breathing and dynamic world. They usually fail with that, but with this event they succeeded. The previous scourge invasion was no threat, the Burning Crusade was lackluster. Why are we going through that portal again? Because we can? For the shiny loot? I don't see many possibilities to make people 'care' about the invasion except indeed, taking safeties, taking things they think are granted.

Even though you might not care about lore, or the world at all, you cannot disagree that it serves a purpose. It might not do everything it was supposed to do, but it was 'irritating'. It should be 'dangerous' and create a sense of fear, but that's hard to convey with a screen in between. I think irritating is the closest we can get to 'care' about the invasion. I understand that not everyone plays for the same reasons, but I think that being a part of a community is one that 90% share.

Apart from providing incentive through these 'literary' devices (destruction of your home, The Shire anyone?), it was all the more effective because it were the players who did it. Fight the enemy from within, create confusion and divide them. Some servers even had pockets of resistance fighting the zombies in the main cities, declaring 'safe zones'.

Disclaimer: I might be exaggerating here, but everyone has to do that to some extent in a game like this, to prevent we see it as a purely abstract game. Which is fun, but only half the fun.

/edit to respond to the post below:

Mideci, it is not necessarily to make you excited for WotLK. It is to let you know that it is there, and not just a 'ooh, I woke up this morning and suddenly there's a boat to Northrend. How nice.' It depends on the player whether you'd find such an event exciting, but it is certainly memorable and it is a tangible buildup tochange in the world.

 

Mideci

The utter lack of flavor text throughout this event made it merely a nuisance and griefer fest as far as I'm concerned. The endless loss of critical NPC (flight masters in particular) got old real quick. I had to stop leveling toons in the process of leveling. I can only imagine what someone who didn't have a flying mount was doing.

This could have been interesting. It basically wasn't. And I just didn't hear any comments in the player base on Stormage (US) that were positive. It was a lot of complaints and annoyance. If that's what Blizzard intended, they absolutely hit the bullseye dead on. If they were trying to use this to get people excited for Wrath, however, I'd say they were far wide of the mark.

 

Eucharion

I felt the zombie phase(s) of the event were pretty much perfect - ramping up in intensity with just the right tempo, and with the maximum disruption over relatively quickly, whilst being memorable for all that. Moonglade EU saw most of the player behaviour mentioned above, from the griefing, to the factions of defenders struggling in vain to keep somewhere, anywhere safe from infection. I'm really looking forward to how they deal with it going forward, especially in the final week before Wrath hits.

Oh, and as an aside, my best experience with the plague. Topper McNabb, brains are tastier than hamburgers. For that alone, the entire event was worth any inconvenience.

 

Tel

Thats because the people who were enjoying the even were logged in rather than whinging about a minor inconveniance on the forums.

In my guild we had at least 10 re-activations pre-wotlk to see the event, all of whom loved it. We stormed IF as a zombie horde, we overran a lowbie zone and turned 50% of the mobs in it into zombies (some of whom were still self sustaining almost a day later), we generally had a laugh, and most of the people involved enjoyed it.

Battle lines were drawn up outside the mage tower in stormwind, and the zombie charge to the trade distrcit was halted by the holy legion of paladins (nerf ret) that turned up to stop us. Overall the event had an impact on the world, which is what was obviously the intent - whether it was good or not is pretty much besides the point.

 

Tyrian

I am amazed at how polarizing this event is for player opinions and reaction. Personally I think it was a brilliant idea in both execution and fun-factor. What an exciting innovative event for WoW to have. I have been questing on alts and trying to use the AH those few days too - had my play time severely interrupted at times. But it was worth every second, yet others couldn't disagree more.

We all agreed the Naxx original event was unexciting and uninspiring, at best. Now something comes along and really shook WoW up for a few days and we have some people praising it as the best event in ANY mmorpg to date, with others claiming its the worst. Why is this?

 

Duodecimal

A good way to end it would have been putting in immune AD healers who handed out stacks of the cure. Apply cure to yourself and anyone you can target -- turning the tables on the ... uh, "zombie enthusiasts" by making them immune when they rush to retch clouds to get re-infected. Zombie targets would instantly die.

 

Exemplar

I found the latter stages highly disruptive for raiding purposes. That said, I believe the event was highly successful and well staged. My issues are minor and not regarding the disruption provided.

First, I think Shattrath being Sanctuary screwed up a lot of things. Being unable to fight back against player Zombies in Shatt made it a zombie safe haven. Mobs are 70 and kill henchmen zombies quickly, but a large organized group could have converted most of the city at one time.

Second, I think they ended 24 hrs too soon. The quest givers showed up mid-late Sunday evening and by the time I logged on yesterday, everything was like the plague had never existed. Cities were completely restored to normal before I could even turn in my quest item. Staging the cure would have worked better, as multiple people have suggested. They also could have supressed respawn timers on non-essential mobs (half the guards, some wandering vendors, etc). This would have left cities feeling underpopulated, especially if they'd gone to the trouble to throw in some plague carts piled high in corners, or new undertaker mobs patrolling back and forth with push carts.

If you were unable to log in (out of town, etc) for a week, you'd have absolutely no idea this happened. There's no aftermath, no repercussions. If you hadn't seen things, would you really believe someone QQing about this? "Oh, come on, just avoid them, it couldn't have been that bad."

 

Douglas

No, we did not. From my perspective it was close to perfect. I never really felt a reason to contradict the people who complained about it in public, but that shouldn't be taken as agreement.

 

Pheus

It is a shame that these kind of events will only happen once - I missed most of it because I've been studying

 

boomix

The way I've handled the event was to try and avoid infection whenever possible, but when I got infected goal became to spread the disease as far as possible. Funny how it made me switch roles perfectly. First I was trying to stay alive, then I was trying to kill. Isn't that just like zombies in movies?

As far as critical NPCs are concerned, so what if I had to wait 5 minutes for it to pop back up.

Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell

 

Kirion

It's not realistic though. In real worls it's almost never about the cure, but about making immune the rest of population. So i kinda like Blizzard's approach.

42.

 

Nathanyel

I just remembered "Dial 'Z' for Zombies"

 

Malleus

I think Tel's post just before yours sums it up perfectly. The people who enjoyed this event are the people who enjoyed being turned into a zombie, running around yelling "BRAINS!" and making big zombie raids on IF. The people who didn't are the people who wanted to play the game without being forced into world PVP or stopped from buying, banking, questing and levelling because the relevant NPCs were being ganked on every respawn.

It's nice to have something new to do, like the snowball fights at Winter Veil and the necropolis battles in this event, but if you don't want to participate in those things you don't have to. The plague gave us something new to do, too, and the players who wanted to take part enjoyed themselves, but everyone who didn't want to was in essence being punished for not participating. And that's why the zombie plague was bad.

 

Slaughtered

You're right. The argument about whether or not blizzard's approach is actually realistic is right at home in a thread about a zombie invasion.

 

Xunwael

I say, I liked the event, but things could've been better - such as it ended too soon (or abruptly, if you will), and all the NPCs everywhere seemed to be totally oblivious to the zombie plague tearing their homes apart.

You go see thrall to be safe while afking, and as zombies invade hsi chamber he just sits there talking about... whatevre it is he talks about. Questgivers wander in circles, the SSO trainees in shattrath were sparring against the empty spots of their dead fellows...

If the NPCs were fighting back or fleeing or giving any kind of note that they realized something was going on it'd have been cooler.

Also, I didn't really enjoy being a zombie, but it was fun to watch something happening in capital cities other than people just standing around. If the NPCs were awake to the event it might've felt like a breathing world for a short moment. Sadly, it didn't.

"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
- Clark's Law

 

Camaris

I also enjoyed not being a zombie, and fighting to keep the SW Trade District clear for a couple of minutes, or clearing out low-level quest hubs from infestations. However, as I'm a paladin, fighting the Scourge is one of the main defining attributes of the class, and Cleanse certainly makes it more feasable to kill zombies.

The biggest let-down is the current state of the event. I expected at the very least for the quests to continue, but it seems there's now at least one whole day of nothing happening. It seems inevitable the next maintenance phase will bring news.