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All You Zombies: Everything I Needed To Know About Event Design I Learned From F13
So, at first blush, turning every World of Warcraft server into a zombie movie? AWESOME!
Turning every server into a PvP server? Eh, not so much.
Blizzard has a history of telling whiners to STFU about such things, and this is no exception. As CM Nethaera says, if having an event where other players randomly cause all your quest turn-in and flight NPCs and you yourself to explode upsets you… maybe it’s just you.
While we don’t mind constructive feedback, this event will continue and has an end. It’s not forever, though some would like it to be.
If this event is causing you undue pain or stress, then, it might be a good idea to take a little time off until it is over. Again, it won’t last much longer and has an end. It’s important that you take care of yourself first and foremost above anything else.
Remember kids, it’s just a game! Certainly not a world or a social hub or anything like that that would preclude care being taken in randomly upsetting millions of people as an introduction to a new expansion.
The curiously named WoW blogger Lume the Mad has more commentary, including tales of his thwacking errant guildmates.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for having fun with people near the cap, considering they can immediately defend themselves. But thinking about the lowbies who have yet to build up connections on a server, I can’t help but wonder how frustrating this event must be for them. How many of them have quit over this fiasco? I’m willing to bet a rather sizable amount. The fact that safeguards weren’t put in place for low level areas is greatly disappointing.
What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to becoming a zombie other than to kill and infect other players and NPC’s. If there was actually a quest to perform as a zombie, and if lowbies could actually defend themselves, I’d be a whole lot more forgiving and inclined to view the event in a positive light. I definitely think it has its place as a fundamental concept. But the specifics are broken.
In retrospect, there are some takeaways here.
- Players really, really like world events that mix things up, especially ones that allow you to temporarily ‘play the bad guys’.
- Players absolutely cannot be trusted with ‘playing the bad guys’, especially on servers specifically set aside from world PvP (where you can assume players selected those servers for a reason). Given the ability to kill other players with impunity, unsurprisingly for those of us with MMO live team experience, a very high percentage will immediately rush to new player areas and make the lives of those who thanks to game mechanics can’t do anything about it a living hell. While laughing. And bitching at anyone who tries to stop them.
- No one at all is complaining about the temporary new dungeon/raiding content.
- Maybe keeping the brainsucking zombies segregated in a high level city (oh, I don’t know, maybe Shattrath, where you have to be level 60 to gain access unassisted) would be a nice compromise.
- Telling your players STFU and log out if you don’t like it? Not the best idea.
Anyway, it won’t last much longer, and if suffering random death and expensive durability hits upsets you for some reason, well, I’m told there are other games which would be glad to have you! Oh, wait.
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about 1 year ago
When you covered this originally I was all, “I love huge events like this!” Now I’m just glad I gave up on WoW awhile back.
about 1 year ago
Ahhh the EQ effect is settling in. As population grows the disconnect between the dev’s and the player base does too. Where would Lum be without some bone headed EQ development moves to write about though? I say WOW is just providing me with more good reading right now. Someone had to step in and fill the Sony/Verant void.
about 1 year ago
We gave in and infected ourselves last night, then tried to launch a major assault on the Stormwind Cathedral, where a roleplayed force of defenders was just waiting for any lonely zombie to walk by, so they’d have something to do. Of course, a couple of morons camped us, so while we were learning important facts (Stand in your barf to heal yourself!) they were killing us.
I think I died three times and didn’t take any durability hits, so maybe that was hotfixed.
The event was a pain in the ass until I got a sense of humor about it and realized that logging in lowbies was a bad idea, even just to trick or treat. After that, it was a blast. I think Blizzard did great on this one.
about 1 year ago
When I found myself with the misfortune of becoming a zombie, I decided to act like a zombie, walked into the Stormwind auction house. And I could have done a lot more damage then that if I had walked to the bank mailbox.
If even a tenth of the people in that auction house decided to actually fight back, I would not have stood a chance, let alone been able to walk through the city unopposed and unslowed by anyone other then a single NPC guard. But instead, everyone has their nose buried in their auction mods, or was AFK/alt-tabbed, or just plain didn’t give a shit because I was going where they were not.
I am all for letting a game be a game. But there is a thing as not paying attention and having that bite you in the ass. And I will gladly inconvenience someone _purely_ for immersion (unlike a griefer, who will go out of his way to inconvenience someone).
And furthermore, to all the whiners out there:
You KNOW there are people turning into zombies. You saw them dying in the street on the way into the bank. You’ve seen giant floating death-fortresses in the sky.
I know most of the people, had they been paying attention, might have noticed my 30-foot tall enraged devilsaur tearing zombies to pieces in the street with a sound resembling that of a freight train making love to an earthquake.
Shit is not normal: the dinosaur that is eating zombies outside is a CLUE. Maybe, MAYBE, you should be paying attention instead of assuming Big Daddy 70/NPC Guard will always protect you.
about 1 year ago
“And I will gladly inconvenience someone _purely_ for immersion (unlike a griefer, who will go out of his way to inconvenience someone).”
LMAO
Well, if you’re ROLEPLAYING an asshat that’s different…
about 1 year ago
This event brought to you by the Darnassus Board of Tourism.
about 1 year ago
Roleplaying an asshat is still being an asshat.
The only way any “roleplay” excuse applies is if all parties involved have entered the same roleplaying circle. There is no such thing as one-sided roleplaying.
When engaged in face-to-face roleplaying, do you kill off player’s characters if their player leaves to go to the washroom? Do they come back and be told “Oh, your character just stood there and let himself get killed, re-roll and pay more attention next time!”
WoW has been built and designed around the banks being “safe” zones. While Blizzard deserves some flak for violating this agreement, players who take advantage of it should also receive flak. Beating up AFK players is not roleplaying. But, I understand you need to keep the illusion that you are a “good” person, so will continue to believe that slaying the victims was justified by them “not responding fast enough”.
about 1 year ago
I can see how it is fun for high level players, but for others like me who are new, or started again only recently with an entire new character (mine is level 15), how the mechanics unfold is a tad too much to handle.
And it’s a pity because, personally, back in UO, for example, I was a total “quest w***e”, always hanging out in player communities hoping for a Seer to stop by, or being around when something was supposed to happen via town crier.
about 1 year ago
There’s a big difference between roleplaying an asshat and being one. Mostly it’s in that a real asshat will continualy grief a single target over a period of time, whereas roleplaying an asshat usually involves hitting each target only once.
about 1 year ago
I’m outright shocked by the WAR links at the bottom.
Mythic takes one of the worst concepts the horrible WoW community (I say this because while it “opened” the market it mainly “opened” it to the retards screaming in voicechat during XBLA games and people unfamiliar with the former self-imposed rules of MMO communities) came up with and forced upon themselves and make it DESIGN?! What happened to the lessons learned from DAoC pre- and post-ToA?
Crafted armor as best available armor with the need to get jewelry dropped was pretty neat, plus there was always the epic dungeon class set to wear for the amulet. That was really more a prestige thing that was still good enough to wear instead of crafted and spellcrafted gear without being better, but offsetting the disadvantage in stats with unique procs and the ability to wear the amulet from the full set.
So now they drop all this, possibly make crafting absolutely meaningless in the process, impose a ridiculous dropchance based grind (so you don’t even get steady progress) and pretty much encourage elitism in their DESIGN?
I’m glad I stuck to the 6 month rule regarding WAR.
about 1 year ago
The real point is – LEVELS ARE RETARDED.
They have no place in persistent world multiplayer games.
about 1 year ago
Forgive me for getting into the spirit of the event. Next time I promise to ask you courteously if I can eat your brains. I’m sure my own expense at being infected and killed is nothing, especially since I ‘died’ protecting the sorry asses of those AFK people who were sitting there being targets. But I’m not allowed to be bitter: after all, I inconvenienced you.
I feel sorry for people like Lucas, but the event is easy enough to avoid. Zombies are slow enough to outrun on foot, and as long as you avoid any major cities, you’ll usually never see one, let alone fight one.
about 1 year ago
The whole event is something of a ‘clusterfuck’ – while I am having a GREAT amount of fun defending areas from zombie attacks, I am NOT having fun being called a fag, being told ‘dont cure it is fun to rape’ (I have a screenshot of that, actually – thanks to the Fable guild on Kirin Tor)…
As an aside: I have lost so much respect for so many guilds in light of this event.
Relentless Dawn, I’m looking at you. Yesterday, I finally gave up on defending the Auctionhouse (nevermind the half dozen people who EXPECTED me to cleanse them after a zombie-bomb, the other half afk… …you know, instead of hitting the Argent Healer around the corner in the Inn)… when a group of Relentless Dawn started organizing multiple hits on the AH. It was a stellar plan and I applauded the first couple attempts. About the fifth time, I realized they were just being douches.
Infected person enters AH, I attempt to cleanse, but what’s this? They get ice blocked, or whatever that mage spell is. Poof, insta-zombie. A couple of their members started doing this. Many of them targetting me as they came in (I can see my target’s target)…
It was fun, even beyond all the insults, up until that point.
My point: There is nothing inherently wrong with the event itself.
Want to know what’s wrong? Gabe says it best: http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y266/meravyel/World%20of%20Warcraft/fuckwadtheory.jpg
about 1 year ago
That any of this behavior seems new and surprising to you leads me to believe that you never played UO.
about 1 year ago
I am so, SO glad I left WoW long ago. I almost feel for those who have been inconvenienced, because some of us went through nearly the same thing in UO, except they weren’t zombies and it was a feature for a long time. Also some of my stuff got looted.
about 1 year ago
I think a lot of people are overreacting, and didn’t think about common sense things like going to out of the way places to get your work done. It was there, it was gone, it was a great way to spice up the game. Sure, I got annoyed a little bit when my AH char was murdered, but so what? It really is just a game, and I learned a while ago that if a game pisses me off, it’s time to log out and do something else.
about 1 year ago
I personally really enjoy this event. Be it killing the zombie hordes as they come or being one. Once I am one I have one strat and one strat only. INFECT EVERYONE! And then blow myself up. I have to say that this event was a lot of fun. As someone who doesn’t play on a PVP server in WoW it reminded me of the server downtime wars in UO at brit graveyard. I think people take dieing WAY too personally.
about 1 year ago
The funny thing about your comment recommending Shattrath was that that was where the griefing was worst. If you got zombiefied in Shattrat you retained your neutrality immunity from player attack, so you could go around infecting every goddamn thing with impunity.
about 1 year ago
On the plus side, they never removed the Argent Healer from Shattrath, so unlike the other cities you weren’t totally boned if a zombie touched you.
about 1 year ago
I started a 14 day trial account to check things out. There was not one starting location that wasn’t ruined by this event, not one. Thank God I hadn’t paid money to get ganked like that.
about 1 year ago
You guys really need to lighten up a bit. I found the infection trivial to avoid – fly when in Shattrath, bank in out of the way cities, use the arena and battlemasters in Thunder Bluff – and only encountered minor disruptions.
I really liked the event in that it shook things up. It added a bit of excitement to the same old, same old. I mean TBC has been out for almost two years – catassing to level 70?!? Give me a break.
about 1 year ago
Are you guys retarded? This is a roleplaying game … where you assume the aspect of a character in the world/universe of the game. When a plague infects the real world, does it stop when it comes to children (real world equivalent of lowbies) and say to itself, “Oh man, thats a kid, I’d better not infect him because thats not fair….I’ll go look for someone who’s been around a while and ready to fight me off.”? No. It infects and kills without qualm or thought. It is a force of nature. Blizz did very well in recreating a zombie “plague”. It got worse and worse progressively and then when a “cure” was discovered, it was passed around quickly stopping the plague dead in its tracks.
This was a fun and relatively short event. If you were too low to survive normally then you should’ve had fun becoming a level 70 zombie and killing/infecting those who are a higher level then you. I was surprised there were no organized zombie raids into opposing cities on my server. That would’ve been real fun.
Oh and if you think I’m a bad person for enjoying this, you’re an idiot who takes the game too seriously. Get some sunlight.
about 1 year ago
“Oh and if you think I’m a bad person for enjoying this, you’re an idiot who takes the game too seriously. Get some sunlight.”
Since you were the one enjoying it so much maybe you’re the fuckhead that should be pulling the poopsock out of his asshole.
about 1 year ago
“Are you guys retarded? This is a roleplaying game”
No, it isn’t, though there are servers for role playing, if that’s what you’re interested in doing.
about 1 year ago
I think the biggest complaint is the “bait and switch” that took place with paying customers. They paid for one product, and got a different one. Yes, there’s that little “actual game play may change online” disclaimer, but there were aspects of this that ran contrary to established Blizzard policy, social inertia, and good game design. (Notably, the forcing of PvP on those who intentionally chose not to play on a PvP server.)
If the game were either free to play or had a history of frequent game-altering messes like this, it wouldn’t be such an issue. Rather, we have a subscription model where people can’t play the game they paid for, and Blizzard using the “it’s a living world” excuse when the vast majority of the game is and has been extraordinarily static by design. That doesn’t make this event special, it makes it an aberration. Change is good, but change too much and people will rightfully be annoyed.
about 1 year ago
“Catassing our way to 70″
I don’t know why, but I still find it funny that people think there’s a game BEFORE level cap.
about 1 year ago
game BEFORE level cap
The game after .. not so much. I’ve reached 70 and now I’m unsubscribing for a while.
about 1 year ago
The problem here is really that players all feel like they have a “right” that the game is enjoyable to them at all times and functions the way that they want it to at all times.
This isn’t true of everyone but: Casual players think that since they pay the same $15 a month as the hardcore players, they should be able to see all the content and collect all the stuff the hardcore players do. Hardcore players think that since they “work” harder than others in the game, they should be rewarded with better stuff. Role-players want people to respect their fantasy, even if they don’t partake in it. Druids think druids should be “balanced” with the rest of the classes (and by “balanced,” most people really mean “slightly better than everyone else”). Every other player of a particular class feels the same way about their own. Players want to be left alone when they intend to solo, but expect that a party is easy to find when they want to group. Etc, etc, etc…
No game can be all things to all people, all of the time. WoW gets pretty close for all the millions of people that play it, but no matter how talented the developers (believe me, I work in the industry and the guys at Blizzard (overall) are awesome), its just not possible. The result? Constant, never-ending complaining from hordes of ignorant players that want their own desires meet instantly, every time they log into the game. It’s like digital masturbation. They have to be satisfied right effing now!
As a game designer, I think Blizzard did a phenomenal job implementing a cool twist into the game world to give players something new, strengthen the fiction and upcoming content and make the world feel more alive than ever before. Yes, some people are going to make noise about it because they want to keep their daily, digital ego stroke going without interruption and they think that, even though there are millions of other people in the game, the game must satisfy their desires each time they log on. That cannot be avoided and I applaud Blizzard for having the guts to say “This is temporary, fun for a lot of people and overall, this is good for the game, so STFU.”
You do not have the right for the game to be exactly what you want it to be every time you log in. So when Blizzard makes a change you don’t like, either log off until its fixed, suck it up and deal with it, or find something else to play. Those are your rights.
about 1 year ago
> You do not have the right for the game to be exactly what you want it to be every time you log in.
Why not? You don’t know it’s possible unless you’ve studied it.
about 1 year ago
In hindsight, the event wasn’t too bad. During the event, though, as the plague would take you down quicker and quicker and became more difficult, sometimes impossible to cleanse/cure/abolish, it appeared that entire towns would be taken over by the chaos and leave no game to play.
I have several level 70s, and it was difficult at times to simply survive, get out of the heavily infected areas and try to have any semblance normality. When a 70 paladin cannot survive a handful of zombies, something is out of balance. I became a zombie several times, had no interest at all in contributing to the chaos and ended up paying a significant repair bill as if I’d just finished 4 hours of raiding. I was mostly peaved because I could not get or turn in daily quests because the quest givers were either dead or fighting. The constant “zombie bombs” in AHs and in banks grew tiresome immediately.
Good idea; poor implementation. There were too many “loopholes” for griefers to take advantage, and from what I saw being a zombie, the zombies were given great advantages and only needed numbers to quickly overrun an area. Even now the continuation quests are impossible to solo, but survivable with a group. I guess this was Blizzard’s attempt at forced team work.
I don’t mind surprise content and not knowing the outcome, but at least give me the ability to survive and fight back on my own.
about 1 year ago
.ONE THING.
The ONE thing that would have made this an acceptable event for all, a fun event, but still deadly and world changing…
Make zombie health go down by 20% per hit taken. By anything.
(Zombies do 5%etc damage per hit)
some additional things:
A lvl70 goes to a newbie area to gank as a zombie? goodluck against those lvl 1′s…
they will band together and kill it very quickly.
5 lvl1 zombies against ONE lvl70… potentially a tough fight, allowing zombies to ONLY overwhelm normal players by sheer force of numbers. 5 to 1 gives even odds.
Zombies can infect any npc, boar, spider, guard etc
Once turned into a zombie, your equipment doesn’t take damage.
Once turned into a zombie, you get a 30-minute immunity to the disease after you die and become a normal player again. You can log off, then on to get rid of the immunity.
Priests can make temporary holywater to hand out to other players, lasts 5min and a priest can make 1 per hour. It’s a ranged *1 hit kill* to a zombie.
Players get EXP from killing zombies, equal to killing something 3 levels below them.
There are no crates, no roaches…
Zombies come into Azeroth through NPC spawns.
Yes, they spawn in random areas, gather together and make raids on outlying towns etc
Eventually zombies only lose 5% of health per hit (and do 5% to anyone else).
Zombies gain a health buffer of 1 hit for every player they kill, max of 20 additional hits they can take.
Zombies gain 2x the experience they would have got from a npc 3 levels below them when they kill a player.
If you are killed while infected, killed by a zombie etc or your infection has turned you into a zombie…
YOU GET A CHOICE.
1. Actively play the zombie you’ve become
2. Come back as a normal player, no armor loss at your current location or to your hearth location.
If you choose number 2 then you’re immune to infection for 30min, and being killed by a zombie simply kills you. In your place, a NPC zombie is spawned, either way a zombie is created…but you choose if you want to play it or let it seek brains on its own.
Zombies can’t damage auctioneers,
flightmasters *or any npc* that can potentially give out a quest AS LONG AS there’s a non-zombie player within 100 yards. This means that as long as there’s resistance, the auctioneer will be safe…same goes for random npc mobs, can’t attack them (they won’t attack you) if there’s a non-zombie player nearby, you have to clear the area of players before you can start on the npc’s and turn them into zombies.
Zombies drop random humanoid loot based on the lvl of the one looting them.
So do players the zombie’s kill…they give ‘body parts’ that can be handed in to your zombie quest givers for items, temporary buffs and other fun stuff.
Zombies can last until they logoff, no health decline…there’s no point in having it.
Holy-Snowballs (frozen holywater) are given out, these last until the invasion ends…they’re 1 ‘limb’ each (loot of zombies). they only work on zombies, and have a 1min cooldown. Knock a zombie 3 times as far as a regular snowball would and affects any zombie within 5 yards of where it lands, throwing them in random directions.
Zombies can play dead, like a hunter.
oh ho ho! this one’s good…
In the Battle Grounds, WSG etc the opposing side appearance is that of zombies! superficial difference.
Their spells have different visuals etc and their flag is a tied up captive you have to rescue.
To them YOU APPEAR TO BE ZOMBIES, and they the good guys.
Undead players can choose to end being infected at any time,
because of their hatred for the burning legion and physical characteristics…through willpower.
Priests etc gain Reputation (depending on where they are) for every time they cure an infection.
Once per player per day, so can’t keep curing the same player, to avoid abuse.
Saying ‘fag’ etc in chat will make you have *a weak zombie every time* you’re turned into one, for the entire event. It take only 1 hit to kill you. “why you kill me you fag? I wanted to infect more people”
Zombies can walk right through a Paladins ‘bubble’.
Can’t use hearth while infected, and Can’t cure yourself.
Arrows etc only take off 5% of a zombie’s max health every hit, instead of the normal 20%.
You have to fill them with arrows before they start to fall apart.
-Turning a zombie into a sheep-
permanently changes it’s appearance to that of a zombie sheep.
It’s now like a normal zombie, but gains the ability ‘ram’ which takes off 5% of your health and is like being hit by a snowball. 10 sec cooldown for ‘ram’.
Zombie players can go to any graveyard and ‘loot’ a grave,
to create a weak (1 hit and it’s dead) zombie minion, 1 minion per grave and graves become available to loot once every 10 min. Every player can have 10 minions, each one gets their own action-bar icon and are controlled like hunter pets. Zombies can ‘loot’ any corpse in this manner.
#DETER Out of character zombie hate#
After being a zombie, IF YOU DIE AS A ZOMBIE YOU CAN’T SPEAK FOR 10 MINUTES.
No speaking in chat, or whispers, nothing.
This prevents ‘zombie hate’ “omg why you kill me you fag!!!$!”
You can of course become a zombie again to speak to other zombies.
Can’t talk for 20sec (can still emote) after you’re cured of infection. To prevent impulse hate, gives players some time to cooldown after the disappointment of not getting to be a zombie. Anything you say for 20 sec will be converted into random ‘thankyou for saving me!’ phrases.
The most important thing is still this:
*Every hit you do to a zombie takes away 20% of their max life.
*When one hits you, it does 5% of your max life.
LEVEL SHOULD NOT MATTER IN THIS EVENT.
A lvl70 pile of meat is just as easy to kill as a lvl1 pile of meat…it’s a pile of walking meat, you cut it’s head off and it dies. Even your grandmother could do it.
I dream of a world where a lvl1 player can take down a lvl70 burning-legion zombie.
/spit
/laugh
Where 7 lvl1 zombie’s can take down a lvl70 player…
/laugh
/slap
/tickle
“but…but I’m a lvl70, I’ve got a VIP pass and everything, I’ve even read all the WOW novels and collected all the figurines…I’m the best pvp’r on my server…and they ganked me.
I…I even wear WOW pajamas to bed every night, how could I lose?”