Thursday, October 23, 2008

Azeroth. Population: Lots of Zombies

They're everywhere! Well, at least in the places I've been. It appears that some mysterious crates showed up in Booty Bay, leaking a strange substance that when touched turns you into a ghoul after 10 minutes or so. Looks like Arthas is sending a calling card. The Lich King is on the move.

Thankfully, the Argent Dawn has already responded to the threat and placed healers at vital points near Alliance towns. (And maybe Horde too, but I don't know what they're doing.) If you get infected, you just need to find a healer and they'll be able to cleanse. Paladins, Priests, and Restoration Shaman can also purify your diseases if they are so inclined.

We'll have to watch for the increasing threat from the Lich King. It seems the disease is already growing stronger against the ability to cure it. What will happen when we cannot cure the disease at all?

So what's really going on? Well, this new in game event is heralding the coming expansion. It's a lot of fun, but it's also causing a lot of grief. Especially, my guess is, on role play servers. If we play this straight, no one should want to be a zombie. And if you do get infected, you should be relieved when a friendly Paladin or Priest cures you. We should be trying to push back on this new Scourge and seek information on doing it in a more permanent way. Unfortunately, even on Moon Guard, and other realms, a lot of people want to be zombies, and throw fits when someone cures them.

Add to this that since NPCs can be affected, many quest givers seem to be zombies or dead. For some reason people that become zombies like to flock to the early zones. I know that Auberdine was totally infected last night, and I can only imagine what the scene looked like in Goldshire. These days are not going to be pretty for people doing early questing. It's also been found that you can go to Shattrath where no one can attack you because of the neutral flag of the city. So you can run around turning people into zombies without fear of repercussion. Even Khadgar becomes a zombie.

So the mechanics of this new world event have caused the griefers to rise to the surface, people purposefully becoming zombies so they can kill quest givers and turn unsuspecting people into zombies. Again, role play would dictate that you try and avoid being a zombie at all costs. But IF you do become a zombie, then you should act like a zombie. But even then, you can have some respect for the player base and not run to a lowbie zone on purpose to cause problems for people.

I'm wondering how long this even will last. I've heard that it will gradually change as we get closer to the Lich King, but I wonder if the potential for griefing will continue. It's going to make the current holiday events and leveling a little harder to accomplish if I have to avoid zombie attacks all the time. But that's actually pretty realistic. If a zombie break out actually did happen, it would probably interrupt a lot of day to day activities.

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