Blizzard, the software company that runs the game, deliberately introduced the virulent disease into its virtual world last week.
The "undead plague" was designed to be highly contagious and, if left untreated, would turn players into flesh-eating zombies.
The game's creators faced a torrent of criticism as the disease spread quickly through the game's lands of Azeroth, with some fans arguing that the plague might turn off beginners who would not be able to find a cure.
That sounds like an awesome event, and Blizzard caved to the complainers.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
The general feeling is that if they wanna force changes on the populous, then at least make it the populous that's almost capped their levels & they can have fun fucking w\ whatever they want.
Then there's the legions of others trying to grind their way to the top who were thoroughly unamused. & I'm sure they didn't pay their $15/month to let Blizzard throw down some in-game event to promote their new expansion.
I remember when UO did this shyte. Calandryll was on Lum's boards talking about when Juo'nar the Lich hit Trinsic. Still remember fighting in that thing.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Malcolm wrote:I remember when UO did this shyte. Calandryll was on Lum's boards talking about when Juo'nar the Lich hit Trinsic. Still remember fighting in that thing.
I think I still have screenshots of it somewhere.
It was a massacre.
It changed the game for everyone in the vicinity, accounting for hundreds of deaths in the era before blessed items.
And it was awesome.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Malcolm wrote:I remember when UO did this shyte. Calandryll was on Lum's boards talking about when Juo'nar the Lich hit Trinsic. Still remember fighting in that thing.
I think I still have screenshots of it somewhere.
It was a massacre.
It changed the game for everyone in the vicinity, accounting for hundreds of deaths in the era before blessed items.
And it was awesome.
Would've been more awesome'd the outcome not've been predetermined.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
It was a great idea, but done poorly. In WOW the level of a player or creature is a big deal. A level 70 can slaughter a level 60.
Well, in this event you basically had a game world in which all the NPCs and players were either fighting zombies and killing them, or becoming zombies and fighting and killing non-zombies. Fun, in theory, except that imagine you are, say, level 20 or so. Then for you you spawn, you get immediately attacked by a horde of level 50+ zombie NPCs and/or players and die almost instantly. Then you raise as a zombie, and you get immediately attacked by a horde of level 50+ non-zombie NPCs and/or players and die almost instantly. Repeat ad nauseous.
It was great for level 70s. Some players level 60+ could sort of hang with it, too. Anyone below that, though, and it was essentially a non-stop spawn-camping gank-fest event.
EDIT: Oh, and they didn't change the mechanics of the city areas of the game to match the event, either. So if a zombie attacked you in a city, and you defended yourself, the guards whacked you. If you didn't, the zombie whacked you. Take your pick.
Edited By TPRJones on 1225302976
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
I remember a moment during our UO days that is one of my best gaming experiences. It was a weekend afternoon and I was south of TKV headquarters at the orc fort doing some hunting. Normally, a spawn there consists of two normal orcs and an orc mage, occasionally an ettin might spawn.
I was alone for a bit, but after about 20 minutes a few other peeps had shown up. We were all solo hunters aside from two guys who were guildmates. There were maybe 6 of us total.
Suddenly, an entire army of orcs spawned all at once outside the gates of the fort. There were at least a dozen orcs, a handful of orc mages, a few ettins, a troll or two, and possibly more, but I cannot remember everything I saw. Within seconds most of the people at the fort were dead. A few of us were doing ok on the inside, and I remember thinking the swarm must have been bigger than what I could see because people that weren't around previously were being chased onto my screen by monsters.
Eventually I did die, but I never forgot how much fun that moment was and I remember trying to find out exactly what happened. As it turned out, sometimes certain development team members would surf the servers and occasionally drop in things like that for players. It was very rare, but it did happen. I always thought stuff like that should've happened more often.
A MMO should have a team member who drops a massive random spawn like that once every hour at a random spot on each server.
None of these monsters were "uber" or anything more than normal, but you never saw them in numbers like that so it made the event very cool and memorable.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
Shit, every now & then, I'd hear players swear devs were using their god client to play as NPC monsters.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
I've seen ubered up monsters/NPCs, but they always fell in battle. Of course, they'd take out 50 players with them, but in the end the players would swarm in from every corner of the server once word spread and they'd go down.
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
There was an accidental version of this a few years back. It was a curse that appeared in one of the instances, if I'm not mistaken and would transmit from character to character, including pets. They screwed the pooch on the code and while everyone leaving the instance was cleaned, pets that were "put away" weren't. So the curse ended up getting out of the instance and into the open population. Similar deal where low level toons were dropping almost immediately, but higher level toons became "carriers". Had scientists working with Blizzard to study how it spread in the game with social interaction. Was kind of a neat story.
I may be fuzzy on some of the details, so don't take this as gospel.
"... and then I was forced to walk the Trail of Tears." - Elizabeth Warren
GORDON wrote:I do have faint memories of that, too.
But still... a big complaint people had with UO was the fact there was no ongoing storyline. When one was added, people complained.
I guess all of the crybabies moved on to WOW and also spawned a new generation of crybabies.
Well shit. Storyline went out the window when you found out that the dudes who were supposed to be Lords British & Blackthorne never played anymore. & everyone wants a storyline, so far as it doesn't interfere w\ their own progression of the game. Storyline? Good. Storyline interrupting the regular trip to the liche lord room? Bad.
Timing is everything.
Edited By Malcolm on 1225331531
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Goodness, WOW might have lost 14 subscribers out of their 14 million. Now the rest of those 14 million don't get to be part of something in their little world.
People cry no matter what. Unfortunate reality of... being a human being on this planet.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I was there. It was a cute event, but it was poorly coded and did little that wasn't facilitating griefers.
How poorly coded? Well, in the sanctuary city shared by the two warring PC factions, PvP combat is disabled. The zombies were unattackable by living players. However, they were free to infect those players through use of their area-of-effect disease cloud, and to zombify level 70 guards who are code-flagged so they can't be healed or have their infections cleared by players. And even where the zombie players are killable, they can refill their health endlessly by swapping their weapon in and out of its inventory slot.
Blizzard seems paradoxically to both realize and not realize that their playerbase contains a lot of teenagers who want to take out their frustrations by ruining things for others without fear of reprisal.
