f13.net

Necropolis above the major cities, a new quest for Karazhan, mass zombie raids everywhere. Good times.

They turned that on today? Schweeet. So very not going to be going to bed at a reasonable time tonight.

I got an axe that lets me melt faces with the power of metal.

What, How, and Link.

The run down:

-There's a boss in kara above attumen.  Don't stand in the fire and don't hit him while the red beam is up.
-There is also the scourge invasion event, which is the worst thing since AIDS and I hope the people responsible catch it.

• Zones are invaded randomly.  At...one or two? locations throughout the zone, there are crystals.  As you destroy the mobs around the crystals, you get (BOP, one possible per mob) tokens that you can turn in for shinies.  This brings us to the first problem: To get tokens, you have to play the 'Who can tag mobs fastest?' game with everyone on your faction, assuming the opposite faction hasn't overrun the stone.  Isn't that fun?
• If you finally get a stone down to 1%, the opposite faction will roll in and destryo you because...
• The next step is spend 8 of your tokens to summon an elite.  There are four possible at the stone.  If you don't tag it fast, someone will steal your elite and its loots and YOUR 8 TOKENS.  This means no more than 4 groups per server can complete the quest per zone and that's assuming an optimal distribution.  It's more likely that one group will monopolize all of the elites and take all of the 30 tokens each elite drops for themselves.

This is why instancing was invented.  The mere existence of Captain Catass means YOU can't play the game.  Have fun.

I hate this fucking event.

HAY LETZ MAEK AN EVENT TO KILL OFF QUEST AND BATTLEMASTER AND VENDOR AND FLIGHT NPCS IM SURE NOBODY WILL MIND LOLOLOL!!1!

Your tears, they sustain me.

here you are. http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?topic=23097.0

It's an odd "event", if you want to call something that's going to run quite a while an event. I prefer: condition. It's a condition.

I have mixed feelings about it. Basically, it's a pain in the ass, but it does have its moments. Major cities (SW is particularly bad on Whisperwind) have truly nasty lag due to the bazillion people standing around with either their thumbs in or playing hide the zombie. On the other hand, I've had some pretty good times zombie bashing and (what bashing often leads to) PC infecting. Quel'danis is the wild west, and here you can have some fun. Most memorable last night was picking off a few zombies, then managing to get myself infected (this stuff is hard to cure) and deciding to run rampant. Best time was attacking two orc warriors, infecting one, then watching him promptly turn on his pal, who tried to hot-foot it, but didn't make it far. No wonder the scourge controls Lorderaon. Of course, it's nearly impossible to get the dailys done if too many undead are out and about, but there it is. Dry-gulching low level zombies looking to explode in crowded areas can also provide some short term amusement. Disease cleansing totems are win here.

The new boss in KZ can drop a variety of things. We did him on a KZ run tonight to help a few new 70s and recruits get started on their treadmill to...more treadmills. Anyway, like was said, don't stand near orbs and the tanks need to keep the boss moving. Not sure about the red beam thing. We saw it, but just kept on beating the bejezus out of the boss. He died, we took his shit. We did have two rather stout pally tanks, but it was a fun fight, and not particularly difficult. We didn't get the electric axe, but did get a very nice glowie arcanite reaper clone with bitchin' hunter stats. Our hunter was pleased. Also, everyone gets bat pets. Needless to say, there were flappy miniture bats everywhere soon as we looted. Also, the quest turn in gets you a monster hunting kit trinket. Not sure what it does (promptly banked it), but kinda sounds like the six demon bag, or whatever that thing was called.

Supposedlly, this goes on until Nov 13. A few dev hints suggest it might get a good deal more intense as time goes along.

That arcanite reaper IS the electric guitar, it has a hidden on-use effect.

The hunting kit trinket randomly shoots one of the weapons that belmonts use in castlevania knife/cross/axe/holy water for a decent amount of damage.

So it is the guitar. Cool. I'll have to have our new hunter demonstrate when I see her again.

The bag...eh, I hate to give up my DST or panther, but might be worth testing on some zombies. Not like they're hard to find or anything.  :awesome_for_real:

I think the event is really funny. They picked a great time because if you're actually still trying to "accomplish" anything in WoW at this point, you're doing it wrong. Most people are just fucking around doing acheivements and having fun. This plays right into the fun concept. I spent this evening taking over the entire village of Thelsamar with a buddy of mine, only to be steamrolled later by a cadre of players. I then laughed at them and hearthed since they had no flightmaster.

Or you could be trying to level alts from 60-70 since they nerfed the xp needed and you would rather have them 70 before WotLK.

This. Thankfully I'm only going for the tabard, so 8 runes shouldn't be too hard to get.

Also, what Calantus said.

18 runes for the tabard.  You are required to do the quest to turn in 10 of them in order to unlock the quartermaster that sells the tabard.

Most any class with an instant tag spell can get enough to get the tabard, most likely.

Hopefully the rate of Necropoli spawning will increase, they're all dead at the moment on my server and get killed down before I can get to any of them.

Awwwww  :heartbreak:

Who cares. You only had, what, 20 months to pull that off? Even on rested xp alone that was plenty of time without the xp nerf. Kick back and enjoy zombies eating your face.

I'm pretty stoked on this, since i missed out on it the first time around.

This is pure fucking retardation.  I just want to bank and hit the auction house, but I've got to deal with this nonsense.  Cute for a while, but it gets real fucking old real quick.

Some of us haven't bothered catassing our ways to 70, and this shit makes actually playing the game a wee bit difficult.

Corp Por

Have you tried the least populated city?  Might be easier there.

It's one weekend out of 2 years.   A world event.  Will be over soon.

I just realized every death is a dura-death.  OUCH on the repair bill after playing zombies for awhile.

The zombie invasion has led me to spend more time in Silvermoon and as a result I'm finding more things there I never noticed before.

I'm particularly fond of the leper gnome sweatshop underneath the tailoring store.

No, Being killed by other players is considered a PvP death. Either way, just take off any durability items while shambling about, Zombies don't gain benefit from items either way.

Or make sure you corpse explode.  No durability hit that way either.  :drill:

Well, I have a 22g repair bill that says otherwise.  I fully repaired last night before going to bed and had done nothing but zombie myself this morning in Stormwind.

Considering your avatar I found this message to be aesthetically appropriate. Kudos  :star:

Standing around waiting for an NPC to respawn so I can turn in a PVE quest is not PVP. If they had just made non-guard NPCs immune it'd have been a slightly annoying event, its the killing of essential NPCs that makes it retarded.

Only problem is that we have another two weeks of this. Like the guy said, it's fun for a while, but now it is just fucking tiresome. The people I feel sorry for are the lowbies, I was trying to get a couple of low-level things done and kept getting corpse-exploded into a zombie by a couple of tards in Auberdine. Got a paladin buddy to come kill them and we camped them for a bit, and cured them when they got the disease. They got pissed, and I wasn't exactly having tons of fun. The whole thing is arseways retarded.

This.


This as well, Kinda. I'm trying to do the Halloween achievements, and it's annoying as hell when you're trying to do the candy buckets. As someone with limited time to play, it's kind of cool but would be nice if they could just get the fuck out of my way when I'm trying to do something else.

Fun in small doses, and if you couuld opt-in or out but the LOL NOOBS JUST ENJOHEY IT SINCE I R ENJOGYNG IT IF YOU STILL HAVE STUFF 2 DO IN WOW TIHS FAR IN U R RTARDED ITZ FUN FER ME 2 KILL THE FLIHT MASTER AND INFEKT BOM YOU WHEN U ARRIVE OFF A BERD mentality can fuck right off.

I could deal with Zombies in the wild, zombies at the gates even. It's the zombies spawning in the fucking AH and Bank that need to fuck right off. Or even if it was only one or two cities that got infected, whatever.

One of my UO friends started a human on my WoW server today, so I decided to take my 70 and babysit her a bit. We had to stay out of the Goldshire inn for a while because the zombies were using it as a bunker, and thus delay her level 6 training until level 8, but that was about it. Oh, and the SW auctioneers were dead, so I had to go to Ironforge. Not a big deal.

Dammit, someone spilled their multiplayer into my RPG!

Freakin' whiners. The game is always going to be there. They're probably already 70 on another character. And we're getting a brand new tasty expansion with the first post-launch class ever in a few weeks. But noooo, some darned immersive condition is in the way of them playing a solo game.

I get it that people are pissed. And I get that WoW is today because of what UO was before Renaissance. But jeezus some people need to lighten up, or start being part of the solution. I took my turn for an hour last night, continually clearing IF AH and bank area then suiciding on guards. Too bad I missed a few more Achievement unlocks. Waa the fuck waa.

You've had 4 fucking years to play the game. Take a month off you spoiled child.

I forgot that frustration and cockblocking is what leisure activities are all about. Silly me, thinking that I should be able to have fun in a game without people pissing on my face. I'm sorry if my fun was getting in the way of your griefing, or my whining touched the part of your conscience that realises that you're getting your fun at other people's expense. :oh_i_see:

I'm enjoying the shit out it. It's a nice break from the usual perfectly-ordered theme park gameplay.

Cal does have a point.  Right now, I'm sure there are many people coming back to gear up for the expansion.  It's silly to turn off those that are trying to take a second (or third or fourth) look at the game.

That's exactly why I don't like it WUP, it's not what I play WoW for nor what I expect from it. When I log into WoW to quest I expect an on-rails leisurely tour through various zones where I collect bear asses and kill boars for people with yellow !s on their heads.

God forbid you don't do the same tedious levelling-cockblock bullshit for a couple of weeks.  I mean, it sure isn't there the other 40+ weeks out of the year.

Right?  Anybody?  Bueller?

Seriously, if you don't like it it's not that hard to circumnavigate.  Kill the zombies, they are quite squishy without any coordination on their part, or go to a lesser populated region.  I mean jesus fucking christ, this is a Massively Multiplayer Online game, and this kind of event is kind of a primary lure towards these types of games.  I seem to remember being excited about invading enemy territories and exploring dangerous regions back when I first heard about these crazy things called MMORPGs.

Or you can continue crying your bitter tears, my daggers are losing a little of their luster and could use some shinin' up.

I've had a pretty good time of things so far.  Got enough runes off the invading undead to buy some stuff from the Argent Dawn, fought the new boss and killed him for his free bat pet, been regularly fighting the Headless Horseman, had a guild party in Darkshire.  It's been a fun event.

People are still douches, of course.  There's lots of less than friendly competition for the undead spawns.  Some people go out of their way to grief with the zombies.  But despite their worst efforts, I haven't been terribly inconvenienced.

Yeah, I can't say I really get where the anti-event people are coming from (except for the Invasion Spawn Points where it's a LAWL I TAGGED FIRST WHEE clusterfuck, although I suspect that they'll clear out a bit in a few days). The game has been there for years and years, it's OK to shake it up for a few weeks before a big ol' expansion. And I don't buy the "but people are coming back to gear up for the expansion!!!!!" thing, because a) they've had like two years and b) if they've been in WoW before they know it's not normally like this AND they know they don't actually have to gear up for the expansion at all.

Maybe my server (doomhammer) is just that less shitty than yours, but there are plenty of people combating the zombie hordes (including myself) and it really is not hard at all to function. Hell, I've been able to use the AH in freaking IF, zombie central, every time I've wanted to.

People get in a certain mode. If you're used to soloing, it's easier to avoid the hassle of other people. If you're used to following the instructions of a raid walkthrough, it's easier to wait two months for the best one to emerge. If you're used to logging in, checking your tasks, going about doing them and turn ins and then logging out, while chatting with your buddies and watching some sports thing, yea, this sort random crap is going to annoy you.

But screw it if they can't take a joke. I mean seriously, we've all taken turns bitching about how samey rails these games have gotten and now some of those same people are complaining about a pretty good temporary interruption of that? Take the freakin' next three weeks off or something. Jeezus.

On the event itself, overall still loving it. Two hours just spent bouncing between IF and Shatt helping to keep it clean. Better than chasing that goddamned zerg fest inspiring Necropoli around. I'll wait for next month to worry about gear and shit again. But details-wise, for the Invasion, I would not have:

- Made it so easy to kill the Argent Healers, or I'd have added a few dozen more per city.
- Allowed plagued rats to infect you even if you're at range. Seriously, wtf is with that? I took out 22 zombies AOE kitting in Shatt just now and never got touched. One goddamned rat 60yds away and I'm looking for the second healer? Really?
- Allowed zombies to use the Shatt portals. THAT is dumb in a way I wonder if it was an oversight.

Zombie plague is supposed to end in a day or two from what I hear, with the Necropolis stuff going on until WOTLK.

Until the 3.0 patch I had not done a level grind for a couple months, and when I did it was with the recruit a friend promotion. Before then I hadn't leveled up for many months. If I was constantly grinding characters I wouldn't have any characters left that needed grinding. I specifically am grinding now because it is a unique set of circumstances where the xp has been nerfed and WotLK has not yet hit. So I figured I would level my last few alts from 60 to 70 while my main has nothing better to do and I don't have anything else better to do outside of WoW either. Telling me to skip leveling for a couple weeks when I specifically, and only am interested in leveling during this specific couple weeks is not helpful. And don't say "kill ghouls" when my complaint is "the quest giver is dead and now I have to wait 10 minutes for his ass to respawn". Killing the ghouls aint gonna do shit to bring him back.

Also, you guys are funny. I never would have thought a comment that is essentially "camping an NPC's spawn location waiting for him to repop so I can progress really sucks" would be met with "OMG U LAZY BITCH JUS DEAL WIF IT OR DONT PLAY LOL U NOOB" on this site. How soon we forget lessons from EQ.

And I never thought people on a site that bitches about how uninspired and repetative MMOGs can be would have a complaint about a random world event. It comes off as OMG BLIZZ YOU'RE FUCKING WITH MY VALUABLE TIME!!1 If there's nothing better to do, and the one option isn't fun to you right now, you just don't play for a bit. I didn't play 3 weeks before the last expansion because it was boring as shit then. We all knew what we were doing was pointless, so most of my guild just logged off. They are doing the same now, since only 3 of them are on a night.

You either join in the fun, or you don't.

BTW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjMiDZIY1bM

I'd also like to add that I play on a PVP server.  I can handle the paranoia of travelling through contested territory.  What I can't handle, though, as a 2 week old 30ish toon, is getting ass raped by a gang of level 70 zombies when I'm just trying to bank.  It would be different if I could do fuck all as a zombie, but since I'm only level 31 I'll be instantly killed by a guard, costing me money and a corpse run for something that isn't fucking fun and that I never had a chance in to begin with.

I can only imagine how pissed off lowbies on blue servers feel.  They didn't sign up for PVP at all, let alone this nonsense.

Today we've had pretty regular zombie camping of banks and mailboxes in all capitals on my server.  For extra fun, they stand on the backside of the portals from Shatt to Zombify everyone as they teleport from Shattrath to the respective capital city.

One can't bank.
One can't check mail.
One's quest givers are likely to dissappear while you are talking to them and be replaced with a zombie out to get you.

It stops being fun when your play is frustrated by other players without your consent - certainly so when there is nothing the player can do to avoid their temporary zombie fate (camping the player teleport spawn points and mailboxes/Auctioneers where the UI blocks your ability to see the world around you, player zombies who cannot be targeted in sanctuaries but can infect regular players).  I don't really care how fun it could be, I care about how absolutely disruptive to my ability to use my time it is.  I don't pay a subscription fee such that any idiot can jerk me around, I've got standards.  It is the same reason telemarketers calling a cell phone is against the law.

They've provided unopposable consequence free griefing.  There is no upside.  The mechanic is supposed to cause us to hate the undead, but it just incites hate towards the developers who thought this would be a great thing to push out before the weekend.

And a GM told my guild leader to just not play until the event is over if he doesn't like the event.  Since he's playing a paladin and not too happy already, that's a particularly dangerous piece of customer support to provide.

It works both ways, so this quote is not out of context.

I've actually been logging on more specifically because I wanted to experience this event. My back injury means that playing is something I've been avoiding as much as possible because sitting aggravates it, but this has brought me back to the game and enduring the pain.

If everyone hated this event then there wouldn't be 100's of people playing as zombies. The mass zombie horde (small h) that attacked Stormwind lastnight on my server wouldn't have happened. There are easily as many people enjoying this as not enjoying it, and it's only going on for a short time. Avoiding this is easy as has been already pointed out, and one-time events are, IMO, vital to keep MMO's feeling interesting and making the world feel more alive than the rigid persistence usually permits.

I had a interesting Zombie fight in Shat tonight. A few Zombies were infecting all those Shattered Sun NPCs training on the terrace of light, and because of the sanctuary rules, we couldn't kill the player Zombies, but we COULD kill the NPC zombies.

It was this endless stream of Zombie Zergs slowly shambling towards us, as we laid down coordinated AE's and CC. (Typhoon  :heart: ) This went on for like 20 minutes straight, just mowing down zombies, frantically trying to cleanse the infected and containing the infestation.


Was a welcome change of pace  :grin:

I think we should complain how MMOs never have any purely and solely player driven events which change the world. Then when a MMO actually does it on a huge scale we should bitch about how inconvenient it is.

Well, I could counter that with saying that experience needed to level from 60 to 70 is supposedly being reduced after wrath hits, sort of similar to what happened to 20-60 post-BC, and what you are really doing is making more work for yourself by trying to swim against the tide right now.  It's especially sad when you consider that just three or four level 70s can restore a town to normalcy very quickly if they play smart.  If I run into some group of white-cap-wearing chucklefucks being loud and obnoxious at the store, I don't go all emotional and tell the manager how fucked up it is that he lets them shop here, I just try to avoid them or go take my money elsewhere.

Also, that NPC you are waiting for is only one of many different ways to progress.  Have you maybe thought of actually socializing in this socially-oriented game and gone somewhere else to grind your fucking xp bar?

I don't mean to single out your comment alone, cal, but it smacks of so much that I feel is wrong with MMO's today.  You want it your fucking way, right the fuck now, and if you don't have it exactly as such then your reaction is to complain to GMs, to the devs, on message boards(yes, I am aware of the irony here), or wherever else you can prop your little soapbox and make much ado about nothing.  A lot of the mentality that goes behind the "zombies?  this is really fun!!!!" thought process is the type that seems more open to compromise, and is willing to shrug of some inconvenience in exchange for a more dynamic experience.  At least, that is my hypothesis that so far seems to hold water.

They put the experience nerf in the 3.0 patch that hit a few days ago. I can't imagine them doing it again when wrath hits.

A store is very different from a service I play a subscription for, and people who happen to be in a shop are different from an event that the game developer specifically put in. But hey, I'll work with it. If the shop owner demanded you pay a subscription to enter the store and then had an "event" where their emplyees would randomly make you wait at the counter for minutes at a time before responding to you I imagine you'd be a little more pissed.

Lastly, let me make it perfectly clear that NPC ghouls killing off NPCs I need is not, in any way, a social event. A level 70 ghoul 1-shotting a lowbie is also not a social event (not that I have ran into it, this being Big Gulp's beef). Assuming I'm a drooling, anti-social retard because I don't like zombies killing off important NPCs in a game is just fucking stupid. I've done the whole ninja-tapping undead at invasion points so the group can buy tabards, running kara for the axe-guitar, and more HH summons than I care to remember (although that's just halloween). I just have a problem with the part of the event that is a pain in the ass and I cannot seemingly opt out of unless I opt out of playing entirely.

To be honest, I've got real complaints about this event too. I took my lowbie level 10 priest to back Deathknell the other day. I was infected and decided that the only area where I could actually benefit from this was in the starter area where both NPCs and PCs and those Scarlet Crusade fuckers were going to not beat the unliving shit of a zombiefied me was going to be there. A minute left on the timer and the fucking bastard Argent Dawn Healer by the gates to Death Knell cured me.  

I immediately raise a ticket and complained to a GM because my fun was being cockblocked by an NPC and had to go and get reinfected all over again. I logged in disgust.*

Seriously though - maybe I'm on an underpopulated server or something (although I doubt it) because I'm not having any problems.  I'm an RP-PVP** server (EU-TVC) and levelling my first 60-70 in Zangarmarsh with no trouble, a 50-60 in Tanaris with the only trouble being serially ganked by Ally scum so no change there and a 10-20 in The Barrens with the only trouble being hanging around in the Crossroads while PvP flagged and a bunch of lvl 70 allies sitting around. Him I might not log in again so soon. Then again, he wasn't going to make it to 70 in the next two weeks.  My bank alt is in TB and hasn't had any problems there either - especially as the mailbox, the bank and the AH are all extremely close and there's a couple of AD healers right by them (although haven't logged him in since last night so don't know if they've removed many yet). Not that anyone goes to TB.

I fucking love this event (although I won't be trying any of the necropolis tag-matches anytime soon). I'm hoping they might reintroduce some of the Invasion bossess in some of the lower level dungeons too though like they allegedly did for the Naxx Invasion and not just the Kara boss.


*This paragraph is not actually true.

**I've seen more impromptu RP because of this event over the last few days than I have done in a long time.  It's been very amusing and entertaining even if it's still something I won't actively do.

Balzaphon is back in Strat according to a guildy.

He is, found him while grinding AD rep yesterday. Scorn is also back in SM graveyard, too.

If you have a pally, you're easily able to solo the Elites that spawn at the invasion points after you break the summoning crystal.  They cost 8 runes to disrupt the riitual from the Scourge Humans, but drop 30 runes each and a chance at one of the purple armor bits.  I got 120 Necrotic runes yesterday during one invasion cycle, and now have ALL the stuff off the AD vendor.  I  :heart: my bubble-hearthing pocket pally

Thesis: The main difference between MMOs and smaller scale online games is the persistence of the world at large. This would ideally include "real world" situations where control is not always left to the individual.

Reality: MMOs are almost uniformly static and unchanging. Players may kill a boss mob bad guy but nothing changes. They may open the AQ gates but ultimately it is a company driven event.

I understand why it can be a pain in the ass for some but this is *precisely* the sort of thing people have been saying they want for ten years now. Blizzard didn't even announce what was happening. They put the boxes in Booty Bay and left it solely up to the players. It's a thing of beauty how it's played out and it's two and a half weeks out of your precious Ironforge standing around time or your level my fifth 70 time.

It's not even two and a half weeks - I get the impression as WUA said that the zombie thing isn't going to be around much longer and that the Kara boss isn't going to be around for more than a week. The "invasion" is progressing at such a rate that I believe they've introduced more quests that lead to a "cure" and new NPCs being added in Shattrath (Grand Apocethary Putress?), missives to take to the faction leaders and other such stuff.  It is very much like events are happening in almost real time in the game that are progressing a new story along and I even now feel like I'm missing something because I happen to be at work.

The event has been fun, but I'm starting to see what can only be described as grief behavior--camping bank and mailboxes and that kind of thing. If it stops in the next day or so, it will have been a good event. If it stays running until Halloween or WOTLK it will be an enormous irritant.

LOL.


Zombies always go where there is a high concentration of brains and live bodies.

Given that the new quest involves mention of a "cure" I figure that completing it may vaccinate your character from the plague or something.

What if I don't want to be cured?  I've had the plague once and became Forsaken. Well, I'll tell you something - that bitch queen Sylvanas Windwhiner is not as hot as she thinks she is and quite frankly, working for old Arthur the poor little Lich boy seems to be quite an appealing prospect.  Anyway, the living are so boring.

Third faction? Bring it on! How do I sign up permanently for the Scourge?

Seriously, the amount of crying about this in unreal. "But it's messing with my goals!" "But, but, the newbies are suffering!"

There were several people in my guild complaining about this kind of crap Saturday night. I ruffled some feathers, insinuating that they were whiny bitches that have gotten so wrapped up in their individual agendas that they have forgotten they were playing an MMO.

Not to mention that if you don't want to partake there are plenty of places and ways to hide while still advancing whatever your agenda is. 

I'm going to refrain from spoiling things for you...

the zombie infection ends tomorrow for all you whiney no fun loving old people... hope you had fun not enjoying a one time only world event complaining about checking mail and the ah.

Who needs to gear up for a WoW expansion? They deliberately underpower the entry zones and give you greens that replace your blues right off the bat - and anyone who is in gear higher than blues really shouldn't be having any problems with this kind of event.

Lord Blackwood or whatever is in Scholo, too. (BTW, apparently trash mobs in there give AD rep even at revered now - that is probably an old change, but I didn't know about it.)

You mean offline, don't you? 

I watched a fire-brigade of players pass an infection across a zone to wipe out a flying access only area.  Great, unexpectedly cool player behavior.  Horrible that players cannot heal or cleanse the NPCs they need to interact with, and therefore cannot participate except as a zombie (or a victim).  Non-zombies are hard coded losers, grats for jumping to the 'winning' faction zombie lovers :grin: 

There is nothing player driven or world changing in this event.  The design is one sided and closed.  The infection will magically appear, spread, and abate regardless of player action.  All we have left in our hands is the magnitude of player on player annoyance.  As such, this event was poorly implemented.  Players should be growing upset about the scourge/Lich King/whatever in game, instead many are upset at the man behind the curtain.  Not everyone knows the event is temporary, or ending on Tuesday.  Why would someone keep playing when at any time their play experience can be interrupted, progress halted, and character destroyed willy nilly; and could continue to be so for the forseeable future?  One can't even find the appropriate NPCs to get the background story if one wanted to, as those NPCs are always the first ones dead.  If you play a melee, or don't have a cleanse, you are just meat.  Even if you do, you'd better not show up on the ground in a well known location with several seconds of standing around before you regain control of your character. 

PvP isn't fun when the result is decided before your opponent gets to react to a threat.  This is griefing, by design.

What are you talking about? This is completely player driven. There was no announcement preceding it. Just boxes in Booty Bay. What the players did with it was up to them.

Whatever, it's over. Go do dailies.

What I meant by "gear up" was that people were coming back to level to 70 so that they could enjoy the expansion content.  

Some people like the event, some don't.  Why is this such a big deal?  I was merely pointing out that Cal made a solid point.  If you look at the event through the eyes of someone that wants to play the game in a manner which they paid to play it, that the event can be a bit distracting.  I personally like events like this.  Some don't.  Oh well.  

Ah, ok, misunderstood the gear thing. I'm fine with people not liking the event, it just seems like there's a lot of irrational overreaction to it. On both sides of the argument, really.

Did players move the crates to other cities?
Did players add the infected roaches?

Can players destroy the crates?
Can players eradicate the roaches?

Did any action of the players in game have any impact on the timeline, scope, or evolution of the event?

Someone is pulling the strings, obviously so.  That someone is not "the players."  This event is an annoying internet advertisement with audio.  It isn't why I logged in, but now I can't get away from it.  You put something in it for me to do, other than play a griefer or a victim, and I'm down with it.  You play me like a puppet and I'm not so keen to continue.

You are what's wrong with online games. All of them.

See the exclamation point over that guy's head? He'll give you a quest, and you will do what he says for the reward. Repeat x5000. Be a good puppet.

 I'm one of the recently resubbed people who are annoyed by this...the fail of warhammer had me taking a second look at wotlk and it looks good. I haven't played in something like 8 months, and not so much since TBC was released either.
 I gave this zombie thing a try...it was fun for about 5 minutes. If this is your definition of a fun world event then i don't know what to tell you. Its clear there isn't anything players can do to stop it from infecting them or cities, so it becomes an irritation.
 No, I'm not going to go do daily's, i want to play the fucking game without having to do multiple corpse runs every time i go to a city, i want to be able to bank or use battlemasters. Instead of pointing at the frustrated players and telling them to just wait until WotLK is released to play, I'd turn that around and say if your so bored playing WoW that this zombie crap is the height of entertainment, maybe you need to take a break.
 
 

i think this is where i meant to say... "want some cheese?"

I agree that it can be annoying when trying to bank and stuff, but overall I like the event. Like you I haven't been in the game for a while, but it does add a little "something" to the world.

After my 3rd corpse run while trying to organize my bank, I quickly started to realize that I should be ready to run to one of the Argent Dawn Healers really quickly.

No, online.  I've gotten plenty done in the last week, and the 1min-to-zombie cooldown means nobody's flying the disease out to Hinterlands, South Shore, TM or any of the other areas anymore.  Avoid the damn cities and you're good.  Who the fuck needs to hit the bank on a regular basis anyway?  I'm a fucking packrat and at most I hit it once a week.

I've been zombied all of 2 or 3 times and have been questing constantly, too, it is more a question of 'go to Desolace instead of Duskwood' than it is 'there is no place I can go and not get griefed' at least on our server.

This is also what bank alts are for; Silvermoon City is pretty much untouched by zombies for a wide variety of reasons, including that it's a pain in the ass to get to anywhere in the city and half of the guards are immune to the disease.  I just kept my bank alt there and was never in any way inconvenienced in my auctioneering/banking by the event.

/em eats the cheese

/em whines for more

/em is slaughtered by the ravening scourge invasion

/em eats your braaaaains

/em rezzes and goes to pay his repair bill

Yes.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11829528491&sid=1

Edit: fixt.

You fail at quoting, that wasn't me.

But at no point do I have to take that quest.  I get to decide how to spend my time. 

Anyone who did file a petition for any reason saw: "Due to the unusual volume of open petitions..." this weekend.  Those of you who are Exalted With Zombies might actually be in the minority.  I don't see how player interaction had any impact but to accelerate turning off an unpopular (and CS costly) event.  Certainly providing no obvious warning or method of informing their customers WTF was going on with their service wasn't a smart idea.  Doubly so with the recent server/instance, CTD, lag instability patch 3.x has introduced to the live servers. 


On the player interaction front, the wowforum thread linked by Lorekeep contains this gem:


This certainly suggests that they don't want the impression that it mattered if the players were there or not. 
So really, Lorekeep just failed both at quoting and at showing a counterexample.  A Rep posting "Please stop freaking out, it will be over soon" isn't the same player interaction having some impact on the game.  Shit, even the crappy "opening the gates" grind had direct impact from the players on the objective.  Where was the Flawless Zombie Victory condition for this invasion?  You win with everyone stops logging in?  Haven't we already played that game?

For the people complaining about the zombies.... reroll druid -> flight form  :drill:

Also, moonkin druid + retri pala = wipe out entire camps of undead invaders in seconds. There's something about seeing the damage numbers from AoEing that many mobs repeatedly that just tickles my "hey, this is fun in a morbid kind of way"-bone.

It's called good P.R. Even Lum could see through the smoke screen.

Last night I had a jolly ol' time fighting zombies in Stormwind. I even had an OH GOD ZOMBIES CHASING ME moment when five of them came at me at once, and I knew I couldn't kill them all before turning, so I had to flee to some other people. It was fun.

I used the bank and AH pretty much without disruption in IF and SW so uh. Apparently Doomhammer is rad!

Apparently a bunch of posters in this thread would be nothing but zombie food in the end  :grin:


Only one person has really been all QQ Zombies in our guild, but he is also the dude who can't figure out Bread+Meat+Bread = Sandwich half the time... Literally, at one point his complaint was "I can't even remove the stupid debuff!".

He's a shaman.  :awesome_for_real:

To be fair, it did get a wee bit tough to purge, there at the end.  Not that I am in the boat with the :cry2:

This has been the case ever since the patch.  I've filed several petitions for various reasons since 3.0.2, and all of them have popped up with that message and taken well over 10-12 hours to even leave my screen.  It has nothing (or at least, little) to do with the plague, but with the bugs the unfinished patch introduced.

As for the event running its course, I believe it.  How much worse could it have gotten?  It was getting worse each day right from the start, complaints or no.  The last day it was down to 1 minute infection time, and on the last day the disruption to the cities was actually somewhat noticeable (though still not at all serious if you use a modicum of intelligence in how you go about things, like going to the least populated city to do your auction/banking and so on) since guards and most players were no longer able to kill zombies without being instantly transformed.  The only way it could have gotten worse is if the plague became a one-hit zombie transform, and that possibility seemed unlikely from the start.

The fail of WAR got me to resub, and I've been having a blast with this event. If i wasn't so poorly geared after being out for 18 months I think I'd be having even more fun.

Stuff like this is fucking great. Add in the Headless Horseman stuff and the Necropolis thingies, and it's  :drill: Sadly everyone I knew on Thrall seems to be gone, any servers with a bunch of f13s on it anymore?

Flying Zombies.

Stealth zombies.

Murloc invasion.

I would re-sub for an invasion of Murlocs.

Eh, I had fun.  It was neat to see how WoW would handle old-school pre-Trammel UO.  Basically nothing has changed in the 10 years since UO came out, those who are ahead and can gank will, those who feel powerless for some reason or another complain and a silent majority just accepts it and rolls with it.  All of the zombie invasion except for Sunday had been fine.  Occasionally a zombie group would wander in and smack down Org, but for the most part you could avoid it if you didn't want to deal with it.  Sunday was just bad, it seemed like if you weren't in Desolace or some other godforsaken place no one ever goes, there were legions of zombies camping mailboxes, banks, and flight path masters or just about any NPC anywhere, and then if they spotted a non-infected you had to deal with 10 of them trying to get you.  Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Ratchet, Crossroads, Camp Taurajo, Grom'gol\Booty Bay were all crawling with zombies and had bodies upon bodies everywhere and no NPCs.

It does show how long we'll last when the zombie apocalypse occurs ;-)

yeah, this event felt like a nod to the old school world events of mmo's from yester year. Remmber the actual wandering plague that triggered sever resets?

I liked it. True, it did screw with my usual daily grind, but it needed some screwing with. Of course, I'm a shaman and the shambling undead didn't bother me particularly. Totems are win. Hellish dps, too.

I griefed from both sides. From running down hapless orcs trying trying to do dailys to targeting low level infected PCs looking for somewhere to self-immolate (particularly amusing when they'd /shout angry expletives on /trade about how they just wanted to be a zombie, dammit! Sucks to be you...), I had it all My Way.

On the other hand, it was somewhat disruptive, especially Sunday. There weren't too many undead shennanigans on the Aldor Rise (none we couldn't handle anyway), so I spent a fair amount of time there between KZ and HH runs. Also spent a lot of time in Rainbow Six 2, but, hey, amusement is where you find it. It amused me a bit. We move on.

Looking forward to the Next Big Thing.

The pure thought of this made me  :thumbs_up:

Murloc  :mob:

Flying stealthed zombie murlocs?

Next expansion: Rise of the Glarghlahlglarglglelalrghlgle!

I miss it. I didn't realize it was shutting down until I logged into Shattrah in the rafters to see business as usual.

As mentioned, I do get why this annoyed people. Two hours a day for four years and all of a sudden how you're conditioned to play doesn't apply. At least back when UO had their invasions people weren't so conditioned to programmed linear acquisition (and this isn't a dig, because I get into that mode myself a lot).

And yet players will just go back to bitching about the competitive zerg fest that is the Necropoli camping. That I feel is a much more nichified activity I'm largely ignoring. But that's also the standard WoW experience, one that was offset well by something so many genre newbs have probably never seen before.


And so does yours' actually, so now we're in a vortex of redundant recursion! AHHH!  :grin:

Ahem, Priest. And my complaint was the zombie camping of flight points and the disease being 60% resist to dispel. One of the two is fine, both at once? Bullshit design. At the very least put the freaking healers somewhere useful. As is, a number of people were being infected and turned while spamming dispels on themselves, because well, 60% chance to resist dispel really wasn't needed on the ability at all.

I could understand people being upset if this was a 2 week long event, but it was what, 3 days?  The first two were a little  inconvenient, only the third impossible to conduct business and only in SW and IF, for me at any rate.

Newbies can avoid capital cities.  Non-newbies can go to the non-affected cities to get their business done.

How ironic for people to complain about an event that has occurred... never... and won't again.  One time thing! 

I don't know, maybe I'm weird, but when I'm not having fun playing, I log out and find something else to do.

With my hunter last night, I was able to snag as many of the non-elite necropolis undead as I needed. I just wanted enough of the runes to buy the tabard (Achievement!) and the banner trinket. In other words, two of the cheapest rewards.

But yeah. Anyone going for the full set of armor, or whatever else might be dropping off the elites, is going to have to get lucky.

I got a big pile of runes, all the cloth armor (for dr00d healing), and all the leather armor (for dr00d face-eating) except the chest, which I'm working for tonight.  My magical secret?

Be in a group.

Ta-dah!

All those people running around solo trying to tag monsters are doing it wrong.  Grab three or four friends, or even random people willing to not be retarded, and proceed to dominate the whole spawn area.  Profit.  I've gained a few thousand AD rep easily through scourgestones and killing shadows.  [PROTIP: Blow the dust off of your Argent Dawn trinket and equip it so you can get free scourgestones off the bodies.]

Also, shadows auto-aggro on the person who summoned them.  Short of using semi-exploits and having really good timing, you can't ninja the shadows.  A lot of people don't know that you have to talk to the NPC and hand him 8 runes to make a shadow appear, and are all pissed when 'their' shadow runs off to fight someone else.  Well, that someone else is the person who paid to summon it.  Don't waste time trying to be the first person to hit the shadow, instead work on being the first person to talk to the NPC.  It is possible for some classes to use a bug to ninja the shadows if they're a douche, so don't be lax about hitting it after it spawns to be sure you've claimed it, but you don't have to be super-paranoid about it, either.

Yeah if I were going for the armor, grouped would be the way to go.  Since I just wanted the fun vendor stuff soloing the elites worked well.  It also helped that I did it Sunday, when everyone was busy standing in the cities bitching about the zombies so I was able to dominate 2 whole invasion points on my own.

I did the same, got to solo 4 of the Shadows, 3 dropped Plate chests.

The first was a pain to solo, then someone asked what my pet talents were.
"Umm, what?"
Then a short explanation, and it became MUCH easier. After being gone for ages, I are a Huntard apparently.  :uhrr:

Ha ha ha ha, not you.

then 2 people, I was all QQ zombies for about 10 minutes when I couldn't get to the raid on time due to JESUS CHRIST STOP CAMPING THE FLIGHT POINT zombies

You're special in your own way, but you have to log in more then once a month to count  :oh_i_see:

Eh, that didnt really do much  good against a bunch of coordinated zombies.  I actually watched a group of zombies gather out of LOS of one of the priests, pop lurch, and run in and zombify the Argent healer.  Most Awesome thing ever.

You mean the event that arrived unannounced and could have gone for any length of time, since it was unannounced and only seemed to be intensifying? Seriously, fuck off with your revisionist hindsight bullshit. There was no way to know it'd stop after three days. If I had known I would have been far less bothered, but all signs pointed to it going on indefinately until WOTLK releases.

It started as "hey, kinda cool" and just became fuck-off annoying, especially as PLAYER CHARACTER ZOMBIES COULD NOT BE ATTACKED (first)IN SHATTRATH BUT COULD ATTACK AND INFECT YOU. That one aspect, if changed would have made the event a little more fun and I would have likely been more into it. Yeah, after being ganked I'd stay up in the rafters and pyroblast those fuckers down. But hey, they decided not to allow that level of immersion into their world event. Sorry, can only be a half-assed zombie hunter. Can't go for the ones doing the infecting. Fun.



Yes, "World event griefing disrupting your play sessions and pissing you off? Just log off and don't play for an indeterminate length of time." Great advice.  :roll:

Yea, if only they had put in a large gathering of important NPC's from both the Horde and Alliance in a central hub of player activity, actively working towards a cure, with quests all around the world informing players of those NPC's!

 :oh_i_see:

Didn't see it. Didn't notice it.

In my playtime I was busy avoiding cities, trying to do the Hallows End quests and staying off the ground when in Shatt and getting the fuck out of any and all cities as quickly as possible. You know, much like you people keep suggesting we should do if we're not into zombie-grief.

The only new NPCs I noticed were the argent healers.

Sorry  I wasn't looking for new quests while trying to avoid getting ganked in wherever-the-fuck these important NPCs were. And as it seems the plague ended arbitrarily on blizzard's command across all servers, it appears that these quests and such meant fuckall anyway. Lasti time I was online before it ended suddenly it'd just taken an extra spike with plague rats pouring out of the stockades, etc.

 :cry2:

The zombie event really demonstrated that a lot of WoW players are far too tightly wound, and it's a shame that people are going so far overboard on a video game.  Sure, when wading through the seething field of bodies in Stormwind, I did utter the phrase, 'God dammit, some ass ate the bankers.'  But this was not a day-ruining catastrophe for me; I simply huddled in a corner for about thirty seconds and *poof* back came the bankers.  Problem solved.  Then I got infected, turned into a zombie, and kamikazed myself against a bunch of zombie-killing players.  It was fun, I did some unique quests, had a good time on both sides of the zombie fence.

When the olympics were out and there were rewards for going out on battlegrounds, people complained at all of the carebears infesting the PvP, or complained about having to PvP for prizes.  I went and played a bunch of PvP, had a really good time with it, died some, killed some, got a sweet pet, walked away happy.

Now that the scourge are invading, people complained at other people having the temerity to also want to kill the same undead things and competing for the same limited resource.  I grabbed random guildies and set out over two nights to put a sizable dent in the scourge population, did more unique quests, got a bunch of fun and useful loot, walked away happy, having gotten complete armor sets for three guildies and two armor sets for my hybrid ass.

In every case, some adaptation and receptiveness to trying new things carried me through the dark times with nary a scratch.

While shadows auto-agro, it's hitting them that claims them, and anyone can steal them even if they're hitting you, if you haven't hit them back.  Since hitting them back requires you to be spamming right-click or an instant-cast on them, you basically have the same chance as everyone else to tag them, basically.  Some servers seem a lot worse about the shadows than others - I just got on my Blood Knight and did some in Eastern Plaguelands, and I got like 10 shadows with my little group of two others I picked up while there.  We had one shard all to ourselves the entire time, with nothing more than the occasional lone person wandering by and picking up a couple mobs (unfortunately including one rare, which I bet dropped my plate legs!).  But on my alliance server, except for the first couple hours of the first day the invasion was active, I haven't seen a single time when there's less than a swarm of people trying to grab shadows.

That didn't mesh with my experience thus far in which shadows would come for me, right through other peoples' AoE attacks, and still count as my party's kill.  Admittedly, I wasn't letting the shadow just sit around for ten seconds, I'd smack it once it spawned to be on the safe side, but in the twenty-ish shadows I wound up fighting, not one was stolen from me, despite several occasions of heavy AoE fire blanketing the summoning circle.

For people who care, here are the cloth and leather sets.

Cloth:

(http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1720/clothwu0.jpg)

Leather:

(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/7045/leatherji6.jpg)

The art department was clearly not overworked, kinda blatantly using identical textures for the legs and chest, but I like the look of the sets.  Note the lack of Volkswagen buses on the shoulders, a rather sizable improvement over most of the absurd shoulderpads out there.

Set textures/models don't match properly, especially the shoulders and gloves, and particularly for non-plate.  As you may or may not have recognized, that's the Judgement texture, but the gloves are wrong on all sets, and the shoulders are only matching on the plate.

I find your experience curious - several times me and friends have had a shadow stolen, to the point where we pretty much gave up on using our own runes to summon them and just started grabbing them when other people spawned them (which has worked with about a 35% success rate).

The ninja method I've seen most frequently is hunters putting down traps where the shadows spawn. Once they become hittable, trap goes off, they're tagged.

Ya. I went off and played my paladin in Nagrand which I'd been putting off for months getting to 70. With the temporary overpowered ret tree he was able to breeze through the last half of the 60's way quicker and less boringly than the first half that saw him abandoned for months at 66.

With today's hotfix nerf it turns out the timing couldn't have been better.

My server has a 500 person queue. Do TRY to imagine what kind of havok that many people could cause during that event. You got infected once? You only had to wait for NPCs once? Yeah, you have no fucking idea. I had to wait for the battlemasters to respawn 4 times. IN DARNASSUS. That was after I gave up on the Shattrath and IF battlemasters. Every time I went to HH I had to wait for NPCs to respawn. Every. Single. Time. 2 of my 3 leveling alts and my warlock were infected about a dozen times each, the third survived that fate by being a shaman but still got turned twice and my main about 4 times (priest). I had to wait for bankers, flight paths, quest NPCs, BG NPCs, and vendors constantly. All told I would have spent 2-3 hours semi-AFK waiting for things to respawn (but not completely AFK because I had to dodge zombies). It was a massive pain in the ass.

The ninja'fest at the crystals was also pretty stupid but it didn't anger me because hey, I chose to be there. Nobody said "Hey Calantus, would you mind getting fucked by ghouls whenever you enter a town? Alright, lets do it!" before making me choose between 'participating' or not playing at all.

Also, I was less angry before this thread. Some of the replies here are just ridiculous. I just came in here to rant for 2 sentences to get it off my chest until the stupidity just rolled forth in reply.

I think you should be mad. The internet, both here and in WoW, is SERIOUS FUCKING BUSINESS

Then quit, you fucking pussy. Oh wait, you won't. Addict. Now shut the fuck up.

Agree with C. on experiences. Ended up deciding to stay off my alts (who I was trying to get gold to from dailies on my main) because doing something simple like "getting gold from mailbox, buying new slots at the bank, getting extra bags from guild bank and installing to new bankslots " was literally taking an hour. And look! I even got to pay for death repairs! Fun!! (Clue: make zombie deaths pvp-like with no repair cost.)

Don't bother looking for the AD Healers - they're dead first! (Clue: they're far enough away to make getting to them a challenge - just make them unkillable.)

Don't worry that lvl 30's don't have a chance against a lvl 70 zombies so are basically just fodder (Clue: make all zombies one or 2 shottable lvl 5's to give more players some chance against them - my desire to not play fodder at 30 trumps your God Mode "needs" at 70.)

And the invasion? Ya, be sure to drop armor type specific gear (thank all that's holy they clued in to >>not<< doing class spec drops) rarely so soloists who can ninja will farm them over and over until they get "their" gear. (Clue: drop tokens instead and have them drop every time for everyone in the group to help push people (a) to group and (b) thru the content and moving on.) With the solo ninjas and raid groups monopolizing the spawns (not to mention the zig bugging out on our server last weekend) I just gave up attempting it. Maybe I'll try later when all the DIKU mouthbreathers have become bored >>and<< geared all their alts >>and<< got tired of running around ninja-griefing. One can hope.

And why make this a one time thing? Nothing is going to change in the world, you might as well make this an annual event for all those who're coming later and won't get to see it?

I'm angry because it's not serious business. When it comes to serious business you just have to deal with it because it's... serious business. This ghoul business isn't half as frustrating as some shit work has put me through but hey, it's my job. Sometimes you just have to deal with shit if you want to get paid. I have a much lower boiling point in gaming because I shouldn't have to deal with shit on my rec time, and I rant much easier because don't have to be professional or serious or avoid looking like a dick/crazy person. If I was red-faced-in-real-life angry I'd be too angry to go post about it on the internet.

When they spawn they're targetable but not attackable.

What I did for mine was stand there after summoning and SPAM SW:Death until it went off. Then McMac's pet tried to tank it.

I may have had decent luck due to healing other people taking their shadows, so maybe they were being nice about not jacking mine <3

Geez....you guys bitch and bitch and bitch some more.   I can't believe I actually agree with WUA in his short but sweet last post.

Yeah....this was a major PITA.  Major.  But it was a FUCKING INVASION last I checked.  What did you expect?  A couple of level 5 zombies that y'all could 1 shot and flex?

I had the same pains as you.  My bank alt was dead before Org even rendered on login.  What did I do?  Spend an hour like the one person noted trying to get from the mailbox to the bank with about 400 (mostly level 70) zombies in the way?  

No.  Time to think outside the box.

For mailbox and bank access....fly to Gadgetzan or Ratchet where there is no zombies.  For the AH, fly your bitch ass to Silvermoon or Exodar....not nearly the zombie population there.

When something doesn't work, try something different.  Work it out.  But make sure you login to f13 and bitch about it.    :uhrr:

This.  I'm always amazed that everyone here believes in evolution, when (judging by the inability to do the above that some here have exhibited) it would be so very very unkind to them.  I saw posts exactly like we are seeing here 9 years ago, that began with "I tried to get through x-roads and I was ganked.  Then I tried to get through x-roads SIXTEEN MORE TIMES IN A ROW AND WAS GANKED EACH TIME."

....sigh. 

"HEY THIS DOOR IS LOCKED SO I BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST IT FOR 3 HOURS AND NOW MY HEAD HURTS!"

"Why didn't you go in through the window?"

"...FUCK YOU!"

For once being on a low-pop server worked in my favor. Solo'd three entire necropolis crystal thingies, two right next to Gadgetzan and another spitting distance from the chapel in East Plaguelands.  12 shadows, 5 rare spawns.  3 plate legs, no goddamn chests :P

Didn't even bother to loot half of the mobs on the last go-round, and I still have a few hundred runes after buying all the vendor shit.  Probably throw them away on those overpriced potions.

I got the tabard on my warrior, which is all I really wanted, to get one step closer to the sweet tabard of the achiever.

Since that tabard is so awesome, I have to decide whether I want to spend my UDE points on the trinket that turns you into an ogre, or go for a few of the tabards to make that achievement easier.

DECISIONS.

Why didn't you try Exodar?  It's always the least populated capital on my server.

500 person queue for your server?  I'd transfer if I were you.

I just don't understand the moaning and complaining, even after you explained it.  You could have turned off your previously planned agenda, and played with being a zombie.  You could have been a zombie killer.  But don't you think that it's just a little ... rigid? perhaps, to insist upon things being the same during a world event?

Stormrage is very much a high-traffic server, being one of the original launch servers.  I got infected dozens of times and had to wait for NPC respawns on several occasions, the example I mentioned was simply that: an example of one zombie encounter of many.  And yet, my day was not ruined.  It was not ruined because I'd gone through and found out the locations of all of the healers, and so would simply haul ass over to the closest one as soon as I was infected.  Even in the final stages of the event, there were still a couple of healers per city in the high-traffic areas, so being infected only wound up turning me into a zombie perhaps one time of ten.

I don't get why anyone would be trying to do normal stuff during the Zombie invasion. Being a Zombie and causing trouble was a lot of fun while it lasted. What kind of person can't set aside their routine for a couple days to run around as a crazy Zombie? I just don't get some people.

Because I hate grinding in MMOs. I bitch about lame, cookie cutter design all the time. WAIT, WHY ARE YOU BREAKING MY ROUTINE FOR THREE DAYS!?!? FUUUUCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK NERDRAGE!

I was fine with the event even though I didn't really participate much.  I did play the anti-zombie guy on my Paladin for a bit, but got bored and moved on after about 15 minutes.

The invasion slowed me down on most everything I did.  I just did other stuff.  Overall my feeling is that it was a great idea just not done in the best way.  I couldn't help but be amazed at the dynamic this created though.

I have to admit that I certainly got pulled into the immersion of it when there were piles of bones everywhere, very few players or NPCs to be seen, and me looking around every corner trying to find the zombie mob and avoid it.  The atmosphere in towns now that it is gone can be felt quite well now.  It now feels like there is *something* missing.

My experience wasn't the same as most here it seems though.  My high population server had an invasion going on in most every town at all times to one degree or another.  Yes, Exodar was mostly empty, but there would still be a zombie here and there.

No, we didn't have healers because our "zombies" were smart enough to make that their first target on an all out attack.  I'm amazed to hear people could actually get healed by them.  Ours were always gone.

I expected the event to not last long just due to the amount of NPC killing that was going on.  People predicted weeks while I figured days, so I looked at it differently than most.  It would have been nice to at least have some idea on how long it would be just to keep the noise down.  Yeah yeah that's immersion breaking and all...

It was fine.  I'd like to see them investigate doing something similar on a long term basis, but just figure out how to make it a bit more voluntary (at least on Normal servers.)  Make important NPCs "cured".  Allow people to choose whether they are "cured" or not.  NPC zombies can only be as high of lvl as the zone they are in at the time, etc.

In fact, I was thinking they would go that route once the "cure" was found.  Still have the plague and zombies around, but have more tools to work with to fight them.  Oh well.

Ours too. Plus the bands of zombies waiting in port in areas like the Stormwind mage tower to convert people before they even loaded the city was kind of lame.


I think the "planned" length of 3 days is a bit of revisionism as I notice the server motd still says the zombie invasion is going on.

Well the necropoli count as the invasion too. It's kind of funny when you compare the two events, one a very static typical mmo encounter that the only complaint is camping spawns where the other was an event that actually made you sweat as you looked around corners for a safe place to bank.  Side to side they don't even compare as for as immersion is concerned.

Also I admit I ported to org and camped the portal entry for a good hour and killed a couple dozen players but none actually sent me an angry tell (this was on the last day of zombie madness) so I don't feel like 'too' much of a douche.

There's a purple skull icon over Eastern Plaguelands. Whenever I go there I see lots of people coming and going and turning shit in and getting tabards, then I go out into the zone and ride all over hell and I don't see jack shit.

Try Azshara or Blasted Lands. Found a shard spawn in EPL last night and it was heaving. Went to Blasted Lands and was the only one there for five minutes. Even when a couple of Lvl 70s turned up and aggroed everything, I still had enough for my level 68 arse to deal with and get a few runes. Probably will only aim to get the tabard - although I suppose any anti-undead gear will be useful in parts of Northrend

This is the guide I wrote for my guild on how to pwn the scourge:

The Scourge Invasion's only supposed to last 'a few days' as of Monday, so anyone who hasn't checked them out yet but wants to should hustle. Here's what I've learned so far:

Step 1: Go to Light's Hope Chapel in EPL.
Step 2: Get the quests from the Argent guys in front of the tent there.
Step 3: Check your map. Find a zone with a purple skull on it.
Step 4: Go to that zone. Look around for a greenish-purple crystal sticking out of the ground with a glowy purple circle around it. And lots of undead.
Step 5: Kill the undead until you get 10 Necrotic Runes.
Step 6: Go back to EPL. Turn in the quest. This unlocks the ability to get more runes and to spend them at the quartermaster.

Once the groundwork is laid, it's time to kill in earnest. Find yourself another circle of undead and lay waste. These are what you're looking for:

Normal undead: Level 69 and 70 non-elites, they drop money, the occasional scourgestone (don't forget to equip your AD token to collect scourgestones!), and the occasional Necrotic Rune.

Rare undead: 70 elites, they stand out from their peers. There's the Bone Witch, the Soul of the Damned, and the, um, I forget his name, one of the big fat undead. If you see these guys, be quick to get them and kill them. They drop epic leg armor and two or three Necrotic Runes.

Shadows: When enough of the normal undead have been killed by players, the health of the crystal will drop down to 0. Keep an eye on the crystal's health, because once it gets to 0, four cultist-looking NPCs will spawn around it and start repairing it. Talk to a cultist and you'll have the option to turn in 8 runes to spawn a Shadow. Shadows drop 30 runes, a Corruptor Scourgestone (again, remember your AD trinket!), money, and occasionally epic chest armor. They're 71 elites, and are best handled by at least two players per Shadow. They auto-aggro on the person who summoned them, but lots of players are out there trying to steal the kill for themselves, so be quick to whack them to make sure that you have a solid claim on the monster.

Shoulder and hand armor is sold by the Argent Dawn Quartermasters in exchange for 15 Necrotic Runes each. Legs only drop from the rare undead, chests only drop from Shadows. The Argent Dawn tabard costs 8 Runes, and a horn trinket that summons a paladin to hang out with you for about a minute before bubble-hearthing costs 40 Runes.

Tips:

If you can't find a circle in a zone, look up. The ziggurats hovering in the sky will occasionally shoot out a green or purple beam. If you follow that beam, it will lead you to a circle.

Even when a zone isn't under attack, the location that will spawn an undead circle is still visible as a small pink ring floating just over the ground. If you want to sit and wait in the hopes that it'll respawn, just look for those rings.

Grouping is good. The fights are easier, and you are much more likely to survive if you summon a Shadow. Trying to pick off single spawns of undead solo will net you far less rewards than blanketing the whole area with a full group of people.

The best thing to do is to NOT go to the first zone under attack.



If The Blasted Lands are attacked, I go to Winterspring. If EPL is under attack I go to Tanaris. Once one zone is under attack, the others will follow suit sooner or later and very few people will travel across the entire world to get to the next one. At least not in time  :grin:

Ah, love the potential of humans to find ways to grief.

Last night someone on Alleria was pissed that a group came in to kill mobs at "HIS" crystal spawn.   He spawned all of the shades at once and that effectively stopped anyone from killing any shades that spawn cycle.  It would seem that they link and leash on a very short range.   The area was a slaughterhouse as people showed up in 1s and 2s to do the event and were wtfpwnd in 2-3 seconds by 5 shades.

People wipe to shades?  :ye_gods:

I know this was sarcastic, but I'm OCD for Scourgestones. I scoop them up in droves. I just hit Revered with Argent Dawn for no good reason at all. Anyway, thanks for the guide.

If there's 5+ of them hitting you, yeah.  It was amusing to watch well-geared 70s just melt.

If you're having trouble finding the invasion points, check out this helpful map ( http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/wowwiki/images/2/26/ScourgeInvasion.jpg ) from Wow Wiki.

This is fun.  I was in a raid group last night and we were dropping mobs in Azshara left and right.  I missed the roll on the purple pants by 4 =P  I have like 30 scourgestones and 7 corrupters stones too, plus 3 of the "this item begins a quest" drops.

Apparently all those 'this starts a quest' quests are the exact same ones as last time, they won't drop for me. Which makes sense, but I was hoping for more easy completes on my path to 3000 quests.  :awesome_for_real:

I've enjoyed it as a short-term change of pace. I would quickly unsub if events llike this became regular.  The whole event was anti-WoW, and it reminded me why WoW obliterated its predecessors.

Zombie plague = UO.  Player freedom leads to some excitement, occasional creativity, and lots and lots and lots of griefing jackholery.  Fun for a visit, but wouldn't want to live there.

Scourge invasion = EQ.  Content that is limited, desirable and outdoor leads to a kill-stealing, hate-thy-neighbor shitfest? Shock and awe! The first couple races to invasion points were fun, but I'll appreciate my instanced content that much more from now on.

I got the Argent Dawn tabard (sexy!) and that blue trinket horn that summons a knight. I get the horn, I run a little ways out from town until I find a level 56 undead wandering around, and I blow the horn. This level 60 paladin NPC rides up on a charger, hops off, and starts attacking the undead.

Neat, I guess. At level 60 and with a 10 minute cooldown, not terribly useful, but whatever. Then before the undead even hits half health, the paladin NPC bubblehearths away. Bah. I mean I guess it's a nice novelty, but if it can't even kill one underleveled mob...

Those kind of trinkets aren't meant to be anything but toys. Like the Barons Peasant caller or the Voodoo Gnomes.

It's also a Slap in the Face to Paladins  :heartbreak:

Hey they're at least as good as druid trees.  :oh_i_see:

Come on!  It bubblehearths!  It doesn't get any better than that!  Maybe if she "lol'd" on the way out.

It's really not that bad on my server.  I spent 45 minutes killing stuff and secured enough shards to get my epic shoulders and gloves.  The pants dropped 3 times for me, but was everything but the cloth I actually need, so whatever.  If I can get some people to go in on a shadow kill, I'll be done.  It's not like the stuff they offer is extremely rare or desireable compared to T6 or anything, it's a bit better than the questing blues you get at 70.

On my server, as long as you avoid the first zone assault, you'll have more then enough mobs to deal with.

But that first zone that gets attacked? Holy Cluster Fucks Batman  :why_so_serious:

Orgrimmar is under attack by Frost Wyrms. Everybody log into Horde and crash their respective server.  :why_so_serious:

...and towering horrors.

First time I've ever seen a queue, looks like a lot of people are coming to gawk.

Edit: Hmm, I don't see anything on my server, guess I was too late.

It comes and goes, but it sucks anyway.

Hopefully it's just revving up for the big event, rather than that little show being the big event.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/ has details/spoilers for those who can't log in. It's pretty rad so far, but it'll get old quick enough. Good thing the actual mobs don't seem to hurt (I was being hit for 80-90 on my druid  :oh_i_see:) and the attacks happen in out of the way places. It's not like its lagging up the AH or Banks.


Plus defending the harbor is just rad.

Oh wow, when did they finally make Sylvanas a blood elf?

Like a month ago!

I got 4 AD rep for first tag on a towering horror!

They hit soft enough that it couldn't break my shield. Some 71 elite.

Can you imagine the QQ if there'd been 71 elites in the capital city hitting hard as they should do and ganking any lowbie that went past?  There'd have been even more "GG Blizz! Fuck you - I quit!" posts than ever.

Would have been better if they had hit for the proper amount.

They didn't hold back during BC launch event with Highlord Kruul, after all.