The zombie apocalypse has come, and it’s pissing me off.
After a hard day of work, I made my way to a major capital city to wrap up some business, do a little bit of shopping, and of course get some well-earned rest before my evening plans.
Then the zombie infestation happened, and all my plans are dashed to hell.
The major cities are now littered with corpses. I walk through the trade district and I tread heavily over the ragged skeletons of strangers, comrades, and enemies alike. Worse, they’re not even lootable. All the NPCs appear to be dead, too. Frakking zombies! I can’t get anything done when the whole town is dead! Did no one at Blizzard anticipate these nuisances?
Among the festering corpses (thank goodness you can’t smell through the internet) are my reagent vendor, the blacksmith, and that guy who always says “HAMMERTIME!!111!!”. Maybe the Naaru really have blessed us! I poke around hoping that the respawn timer will pop out the NPCs and set this right again, but no one appears. Hello? Where is everyone? I feel like I’ve got RobertNeville floating above my head, and wish I had Wolpertinger with me for comfort.
I canvas the city, searching for survivors—for some sign that life endures in this dark time. I search for friends. I search for hope. And for portal runes, dammit, because I’m all out and I don’t want to swim to Kalimdor.
I check the inn, hoping for some holdouts. Surely not everyone is dead? Surely someone, somewhere, escaped?
I was right! Not everyone is dead! Some are undead. A group of Plague Zombies. Wait, what?
They’ve spotted me. Oh shit oh shit! Where the hell did they come from? I mean, aside from beyond the grave? I’ll run to the Cathedral—healers!—I’ll be safe there. I saw it in a movie once. Yes, this is a great plan. I ascend the steps of the great cathedral. Sanctuary. Nothing bad ever happens in a church, right? I’m safe! But what’s this on the wall? The end is extremely what now?
Now I remember! There were zombies in that church! Argh!
I’ve got 43 seconds. Is that enough time to recount my bittersweet life on this planet, cut terribly short? To go over the mistakes I’ve made (like going into that damn cathedral)? I remember fondly those early days in Elwynn Forest, picking flowers, at peace with the neutral mobs… It seems so long ago…
MWAHAHAHAHA! BRAAAAAINS!
Ooooh new abilities! Lessee here…
Mangle! Retch! I could get used to that! Yes…that’s it…must join the others…
I and my new zombie friends ravage the city. We infect players and NPCs indescriminately. We obliterate trade routes, supply lines, and safe havens. We stalk you. We hide behind things that look sort of like zombies so that we can surprise you—with zombies! We have just one purpose, just one motive, and just one desire. Your sweet, sweet brains.
But even within that mindless need I wonder: has it really come to this? I mean, really? The food here isn’t much to sniff at but… brains? What about my comrades? The living ones? What about being on time for my raid?
I know what I must do.
*Note: the incredible destruction wrought by this hilarious Halloween prank generated so much outrage and grief among players that Blizzard discontinued it yesterday. It was a damn nuisance, but how can you not love spontaneous hordes of zombies?
Cooler than cool, but then again I’m not all WoWed up. Wonder what’s going to happen Mischief Night?
Utterly fantastic idea. I’m not a player, but love the conceit- I think I remember a similiar sort of ‘infection’ event occurring in WoW, or another fantasy-themed MMORPG? Thanks to the huge amount of players, ‘some researchers’ saw it as an opportunity to study human behaviour in hypothetical infection scenarios- which I thought was pretty cool.
It’s an excellent idea, but it was very poorly implemented. On non-PVP servers, at least, there really should have been an opt-in requirement (if you do these quests, you are at risk) or a very easy opt-out. It really killed the game for a week or so, and in particular ruined the escape value of the game for a lot of people whose lives are already sufficiently loaded with inescapable sabotage of hopes and plans.
Nah, the optin would have been silly. Having level 1 alts standing there auctioning while dozens of zombies ravage the city just because you didn’t flag? sigh…
And this wasn’t PvP Bruce… That’s a fallacy that has popped up so many times, but come on, it’s not like your hunter was suddenly a zombie hunter. For a few days, we had a fictional world come to life and remind us of the backstory to the game – that the world of Azeroth is beset by demons and undead and is a scary, dangerous place. It was immersive in a way that WoW rarely is and, while it was rigged so that we couldn’t really win, it was fun for a few days.
We now return you to your calm, tame world where nothing happens before you’re fully repaired, buffed and ready – and the level 70s are all bored because there hasn’t been anything new in the game for months.
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Wasn’t PvP? Really? You mean all those player characters running around who can engage in combat with you and kill you? What is PvP then?
I agree it was a cool idea, but it was poorly executed and woefully unbalanced. Too many zombies. They totally overran just about everything, killing quest givers, vendors, and players. I know I couldn’t log in for five minutes without being chased by groups of zombies and infected within minutes. It was fun for the first day, and then it got incredibly irritating.
When the zombie apocalypse comes, I won’t be able to get anything done.
Torie,
Well, since standard WoW PvP has classes fully able to use their skills and gear against other players, this wasn’t PvP in the standard sense. A Mage who became a zombie didn’t retain their Mage spells, hunters couldn’t summon their pets, etc. There was really no difference between an NPC zombie and a player zombie aside from hitpoints and the intelligence guiding it. So, yes, technically PvP, but nothing like world PvP or what takes place in the BGs. And, really, it would have been silly for level 1 bank alts to be calmly going about their business while mobs of zombies destroy everything around them.
And I agree that it wasn’t perfectly done (far from it) and it WAS rigged… the event would have been more interesting if we’d been able to call our friends, get them to log in and win the fight ourselves. Many of my feelings are echoed in this post:
[url]http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11829509144&sid=1[/url]
which is oddly civil for an official forums post. Also, while I play on a high pop PvE server, I could log in and move around OK for the most part… but then I only played my 70s and mostly my priest, who could cure herself.
But I did like that it shook the world up and made it more immersive for a few days. I’d like to see more (though far less disruptive) things like this… things that connect us to the story and make the world seem more alive and less under our control. But then, the fictional techniques used in games fascinates me… the choices and compromises that the medium requires are much of what I like about the game.
Wow. That is great, what a wonderful idea to change the overall feel. I do wonder if there was a cure available. It would be funny to go back and forth from zombie to alive… Would the zombie players run from the cure…? Would hordes of players group together to rid everyone of the zombie menace.. good times.
Thanks for sharing. =)
This was part of the world events leading up to the release of the next WoW expansion, and “just happened” to occur the weekend before Halloween. It was easy to avoid if you stayed out of major cities, but if you were trying to do something and zombies got in your way, it was extremely annoying, especially as the incubation period went from 10 minutes on the first day to 5, to 2, and finally to 1 minute on the final day.
Overall, while it did get old, it wasn’t too bad if you go into it (as Torie did), or didn’t get stuck in the middle of it. It wasn’t exactly PvP, but it was PvP-ish, with zombies on one side and the living on the other. Zombies could event talk to each other, irrespective of their faction in life, which NEVER occurs in WoW in other circumstances.
The zombies would also come in waves, and after the wave passed and all the zombies died (because they continually lost health, and the live players were helping), things would be back to normal until the next wave hit.
I think Blizzard did a nice job of this, and did an excellent job in keeping it under wraps. It’s going to be a great source of inspiration in the future, when you and 24 of your best friends track down whoever sent those zombies in the first place and beat the stuffing out of him!
(Kerk@Baelgun-A, Armath@Anvilmar-H)
Malebolge@2: Yes, I read about that; it was called Corrupted Blood. From the Wikipedia article linked there, you can find articles about the epidemiological studies done.
rickg:
I think you are missing the very definition of player vs. player. Look at those last three words. Regardless if you didn’t retain your original spells or abilities, you were still fighting against another human and not an NPC.
Some of us chose to get out of town while a zombie, die and rez in a more appropriate place as not to infect others, however for everyone, it most certainly was a game forced player vs. player scenario.
As far as the entire zombie event goes, I am really mixed about the outcome. What I felt was completely unfair was that Blizzard implemented a sanctioned method of griefing. I have a level 70 Warlock, but I am also trying to level up a priest who happens to be hovering around level 24.
Trying to complete quests in Auberdine was insane and it didn’t help that bored 12 year olds with level 70’s would spawn camp as a zombie and try to reinfect you as you rezzed.
Annoying for newbie chars, absolutely. Fun for griefers, you betcha. Cool for about five minutes for the rest of us, eh. Mostly.
In the end, I decided to start abolishing disease as best I could (it took multiple times in some cases and wasn’t always successful) gleeful at the whining it caused from all those immature spawn campers.
Now, that was what I called fun. :)
As far as where they could have done better? I think an opt out button would have been pointless, considering the whole nature of the event.
However, they could have had a quest for a immunity idol that would last enough time to get some stuff done in major cities.
They also could have only had you turn into a zombie once. Once you blew yourself to pieces, you were done. I think in that case, it would have made people think about how they wanted to utilize their new undead status. Being able to come back multiple times, get reinfected and die while infecting others was probably the biggest issue.
I object — one of those is clearly a screenshot by a certain priest likely to be accompanying you (one who also EPIC FAILED with his Abolish Disease, I see).