There has been much in the way of complaints over the world event in WoW that is leading up to the release of Wrath of the Lich King, from being a miserable lowbie experience to forcing PvE players into PvP.
Blue’s has a story on this with a quote from a Blizzard person:
We do appreciate the feedback; if threads are being deleted, it’s because the moderators are trying to keep things consolidated and constructive, not because they seek to stifle dissenters.
As I have stated, if this was planned to last any longer than it is, we would have been a great deal more leery of the wide-reaching effects of the plague. This has been anticipated; I respect the concept that some people dislike it and we’ll certainly take that into account, but this was an event meant to impact players in all walks of life and routines. I am in no way stating it was perfect, and should we do something like this again the feedback both for and against will be taken into account when changes are made, particularly pertaining to lower level players. This event absolutely was meant to shake up the status quo of the average WoW day, and in that it’s been successful.
It will still continue as planned, but for those of you less than fond of the plague, you don’t have much longer to wait.
I liked the idea behind the event but felt the execution (ho ho) was off. I’m curious what others thought of the event. Is this a good example of a world event or a bad one and why?
I thought the concept was awesome. A pain in the ass to be sure, but a huge departure from the controlled world that WoW always is.
I personally didn’t partake and the invasion barely bothered me. I knew it wouldn’t last. I was able to quest, farm, etc with little interference. I just went where the zombies weren’t.
Kudos for Blizz for opening up the sandbox and letting the players throw sand in each others faces for a few days.
On my 70 rogue, I was able to completely ignore it for the most part. The only times it negatively affected me was when someone killed all the bankers/auctioneers or when I was trying to turn in a quest but the NPC was dead. Unlike some of my guildmates who really seemed to enjoy turning into a zombie and infecting towns, I simply didn’t care about it one way or the other.
OTOH, my wife, who currently has a level 12 druid, was really annoyed by it last night. She just wanted to quest in peace for an hour or so, but she was constantly being turned into a zombie and quest NPCs and class and profession trainers were always being killed. After a while she logged off in disgust because it was so hard for her to get anything done.
I had lots of fun fighting off the zombies as long as possible, then seeking out delicious brains when I finally succumbed. But, there sure were a lot of people so focused on turning in those 10 boar livers that they couldn’t goof off a few days. I hope they realize they missed out on some unique game content that may never be repeated. I’ve been mentioning in chat that the cure for the plague turned out to be “incessant whining.”
It was/is fun until you try to run a lowbie alt thru a major city (even just to shift gear around/bank/ah stuff) or popular town like crossroads or westfall. It loses its charm when I’m trying to leave shattrath to get to an instance only to be infected, then killed then the same two who infected me nab me again as they camp the graveyard, saying “pwned” and “noob” etc… Yeah well I might as well fight back after I’ve been infected as I’m running out of the city but that also left me pvp flagged, oops. I’m still waiting to see if those jackasses actually did report me for cussing at them. Their antics cost me almost 10 minutes of time. I don’t know for sure but I think depending on how you die from infection it can cause a durability loss. Then there is the time I had to wait for npc’s to respawn. The only alt I’d bother playing right now is my horde shammy who is out in the boonies of feralas.
God help you if you wanted to visit the AH in IF or SW yesterday. I don’t have a problem with the event in general, its a neat idea to push forward the story for lich king and lead up to the supposed burning of Org and SW but its just not fun after awhile.
Most ironic thing I’ve heard about the whole thing was a bunch of folks turned zombies calling a guildmate a “jerk” and playing “unfair” because he was casting roots and killing them from ranged while hiding in corners etc. as a boomkin.
I thought it was awesome, the plague ramping up, to the massive influx of zombies, the feeling of fear and desolation in Stormwind. A lot of winers cried out en mass on the official forums about it interupting their precious leveling.
My personal thoughts on the matter were this.
You people need to realise this is a Zombie invasion, of course theyare killing quest givers, vendors, and other NPC’s. If a real Zombie epidemic happened, do you think they would skip over your boss, or the cashier at 7-11, NO, they kill without thinking, mindless slaughter.
Of course this was burried in piles of “WHAAAA, THIS IS RUINING MY IMMERSION!!!” and suchlike. ;)
I thought it was awesome, even when I was annoyed at having my AH alt murdered, I was also laughing.
I think that story wise, there needed to be a good reason to go to Northrend to find Arthas, and this is definitely the start of it. I have a feeling things are actually going to be more interesting, based on some of the starter quests in Northrend, and events they refer to.
IMO, this has been a great thing to break up the “business as usual” in the game.
I thought it was great. Annoying at times on my lowbie Warrior that I’ve been playing (ding 40, MS hooooo!) to be sure, but the sense last night that Orgrimmar was a deserted wasteland filled with naught but corpses and the hungry undead, with scattered groups of players just trying to get to the damn flightmaster/gates to get out, was awesome.
I really enjoyed the event, but my wife had a similar experience (and reaction) to MarchHare’s wife. My wife is also level 12-ish.
I think the whole thing would have been fun for low level people if being a zombie took away a percentage of the player’s life rather than a hard-coded number of hit points.
If you’re a level 70, though… c’mon. Not being able to run your “usual” quests for a single weekend seems like a lame thing to complain about, IMO. And this is coming from someone who religiously avoids pvp in the normal game.
You too? I was desperately trying to put something up on the AH before the zombies got me, but alas… my Level 1 warrior was no match for the living dead.
That was Financier’s first death ever. It was a red letter day for him! Sort of.
For non-70’s who can’t really participate, it’s kind of crappy. I’m sure it’s pretty fun if you’re max level and able to take the good with the bad, but when you can’t actually play the event, getting turned into a zombie stops being fun after the first or second time, and rolling up to the auction house to discover that the auctioneers have been murdered isn’t even fun once.
It is/was also probably more PvP than should be happening on a PvE server. Getting ganked and having your corpse camped by twelve-year-old griefers is basically the whole reason people play on PvE servers in the first place.
For non-70’s who can’t really participate, it’s kind of crappy.
There were plenty of non-70s places where you could “participate”, so I’m not sure what you mean.
However, just like any event, this one could easily be ruined by jackasses who’d take aforementioned 70s and take them to a lowbie area, proceeding to camp lowbies.
I’d say, next time, buff all zombies (NPC and otherwise) to level cap. At least that way a zombie can be a threat to any potential griefer.
One thing I really like about what they’re trying to do here is that they’re really trying to push people out of their comfort zone and to provoke real, emotional responses to the game. Right now, when I play I usually feel relaxed (most of the time), frustrated, or a sense of accomplishment. For a world at war, things are essentially static. The game rarely makes me feel afraid, or nervous - and it often did during the zombie scourge (also, occasionally annoyed).
I would be huddled with survivors in the Stormwind Inn, not sure if I could make it to the flightpath, surrounded by piles of corpses. I had a genuine sense of uncertainty, like, “How long is it going to last? What if it’s going to be like this from now on? Is the entire world going to change?” It was almost nightmarish, and it’s a credit to the game that they were going for those emotional reactions.
I would say that developers mess with gamers’ expected emotional responses at their peril – if you go to a game expecting relaxation and instead get fear, you might just get annoyed and stop playing.
Still, I though the zombie plague was pretty cool, though inconveniencing.
