October News/Discussion

[Bolty]

This was a once in a lifetime lore event! Your anger shouldn't be aimed at Blizzard, it should be aimed at Arthas!:)

That was Blizzard's line as well. The whole point of the event was to make the players want to go to Northrend and kick some ass, because the whole world was threatened.

The whole event has been hashed to death on sites all over the Internet, and it can be summed up with:

Pros:

• If you're a lore geek, the worldwide threat and destruction/plaguing of major cities was the Bomb. Especially on RP servers, there were common descriptions of players forming "safe zones" and defending them for hours, while those who were zombified attacked them. I heard of one server putting up a tight defense in Stormwind's Cathedral district for literally days straight as those players who were zombified assaulted it non-stop. All in good fun.<>
  
• Fun with game mechanics: as a zombie, undead NPCs would be friendly to you. People explored the world trying to see if there were any undeads who would now talk to you if you were a zombie, such as the lich in Andorhal. Fun fact: Brutallus in Sunwell was neutral to you if you were a zombie. Go fig.<>
  
• For a brief few days, you could play a "bad guy" in the game. A refreshing change of pace.<>
  [st]
  Cons
  • Shattrath was a mistake. Obviously, the Sanctuary rules applied there enabled zombie players to grief NPCs while non-zombie players could do nothing to stop it.<>
    
  • Lower level characters were basically screwed and could not quest for long periods of time. If you are a level 20-something questing in Ashenvale as Alliance, good luck doing anything once the Astranaar guards, level 40ish, were turned into zombies and would wreck you when you'd come within a mile of the place.<>
    
  • Casual or limited-playtime players who are heavily affected by not being able to use an NPC for 5-10 minutes faced extreme annoyance.<>
    [st]
    Personally, I enjoyed the event. Previous "invasion" events had Blizzard avoiding the Cons above because they were worried about the backlash, and as a result they had many complaints about how pointless such invasions were. The last Scourge invasion, years ago, was routinely made fun of by players because it gave no feeling whatsoever that the world was under siege, which was the impression Blizzard wanted to give. You could completely ignore it and go on your merry way.
    
    Not so here. Players were forced to deal with it, like it or not. If major NPCs could not be affected by it, then it wouldn't matter, and that would break what Blizzard was trying to accomplish. Arthas launched a plague upon the world, and it reminded all players that this isn't a static world. It can live and breathe, and there are actual consequences. For a while.
    
    That said, I understand how other players hated it. I don't think there can be a happy medium. If Blizzard wants a one-time event that heralds in a new grave threat to the world, prompting players to combat that threat, it's going to have to come at a price of inconveniencing some of the populace. Otherwise they just won't care. I kinda wish the events leading up to the AQ40 gate opening were sort of like that too - "omg, the Silithid are taking over the world, do something!"
    
    For me, I had logged out in Darkshire on Saturday night after reading the last book needed for the Well Read achievement in the inn there. On Sunday, I had read online that the plague had advanced to insane levels, basically leveling almost all cities, and rushed to log in to see it. I was not disappointed. The inn was empty, and I heard sounds of zombies fighting outside. I ran out to take a look and...
    
    ...the whole town was under attack. Zombies were everywhere. We're talking Night of the Living Dead stuff. One of the zombies saw me and came for me, bringing 6 friends in tow. I ran back inside, and started fighting them, constantly retreating. Up the stairs I went, pulling back, pulling back. I fell back to a bedroom, and knew I had no chance. There were simply too many of them...as I was overwhelmed and zombified, I thought, "wow, that was just like a horror movie."
    
    I shuffled outside and murdered 3 of the Night Watchmen, forcing them to join my undead comrades, then let myself die out. Res, hearth, back in Shattrath. I enjoyed it completely and didn't find it disruptive at all. If I didn't want to participate, I could have just hearthed out the moment I logged in.
    
    I also think that a year from now, many players will look back at the whole thing and say "you know, it was annoying, but it was kinda cool too," once they become bored at the static, unchanging world once again. But that's just me.
    
    And again, I think the greater your hatred for all things PvP, the more you hated the event. It was PvP in nature, since in order to make the invasion REALLY effective, it had to come from the players. There's no way it could get that invasive with scripted, NPC-driven content. You're not going to have 15 zombies waiting in the Mage Tower for fresh victims to port through unless it's players doing it. And it wouldn't nearly be as much fun to assemble a posse to assault the tower and clear them out unless it's player-vs-player content.
    
    Oh well. In the end it comes down to this: it generated some publicity (Fox News picked it up as a story), and got other people interested. I heard of quite a few players reactivating their accounts to log in and see it because they found it exciting. If the number of people joining WoW based on this event > the number of people leaving WoW (like Pete) because of this event, Blizzard wins.
    
    -Bolty