The Zombie Event, what did it mean?

#0 - June 28, 2009, 2:28 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Concerning the Zombie Event before the release of WotLK.

Before the last expansion was released, I felt very disappointed about World of Warcraft. I was not the content or the developers fault. It was the WoW population, the people who play the game, that let me down.

It seemed to me that each time Blizzard introduced a change, for better or worse, the majority of people were adverse to a change at all. However, there was never that much complaint, normally those affected cry louder than those who are not or do not care.

However, the zombie event revealed something that I had only slightly suspected about the WoW player-base. They cannot break the monotony of the game, for even a day or two. The daily actions of WoW players to me has become: Gold Grinding, AH, Gold Grinding, AH, Gold Grinding, AH, raid, AH.

Upon attacking the Isle of Quel Danas duing the zombie event, I was kicked out of my guild. Upon taking over 300+ zombies into Stormwind (guards respawned instantly in the Stockades), and holding the city itself for over a half hour, I was blacklisted from my server (Blizzard wouldn't even give me a free name change for participating in their event).

Ever since I transferred to Sargares, A PvP realm, expecting the gameplay and attitudes to be generally different than what I had experienced for four years on a PvE server.

I was very wrong. The attitudes are the same, there was arguably more PvP on PvE servers, because people could elect to turn their flag off when things got too dicey. On PvP servers, people are practically adverse to any suggestion of major world PvP.

My brother has since taken over this account (around Jan-Feb), I've been playing Team Fortress 2. When my brother asked why I quit WoW, this is pretty much what I said to him. It inspired me though to write this post.

Anyway, what I'm asking is:

Are WoW players far too adverse to change?
#235 - July 10, 2009, 5:10 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
Are WoW players far too adverse to change?


Some people can be, sure, but we also knew this while designing and running the zombie event and that didn't stop us from doing it. We are okay with changing things up here and there and (in this case) implementing a little chaos into the everyday world (of Warcraft). If we do something like this and we aren't happy with how it turned out, then that is feedback we can take into consideration in the future.
#323 - July 10, 2009, 7:10 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:
The zombie event was the only real world event to ever happen in WoW. Hopefully more like it are on the way, and more often.


The more often part would be hard to justify for anything that is potentially a one time event since it still takes a lot of time to develop these types of events. We also have to take the players into consideration as you can see some people have a hard time adapting to different circumstances in the game.
#332 - July 10, 2009, 7:29 p.m.
Blizzard Post
Q u o t e:


If you do it again, one of two things would solve it completely for me:

1. Don't break the PvP flag rules. The ability to opt-out of PvP is a big part of why I play WoW. When I think about an MMO, I research PvP; if it is not possible to play the game without ANY possibility of being attacked by other players, that completely kills it for me.


This is a possibility if it makes sense for the event. It made more sense to us for the Lich King to be completely unforgiving for the short duration that was the event.

Q u o t e:
2. Or, alternatively, just put up an announcement on the login screen. "During this world event, other players may be able to attack you whether or not you are flagged." I woulda seen that, not logged in, and gone and done something else.


This would ruin the surprise of the event wouldn't it? Part of the excitement was not sharing much information and watching as things totally took over one bit at a time. There were a lot of players asking for an event like this after the accidental one those years ago and we were happy to deliver it.

Q u o t e:
As I've said, the different circumstances aren't a problem for me. If there'd been an event just like this where I could play against NPC zombies, or play a zombie against NPCs, I would probably not have logged out that whole weekend except to sleep. That woulda been AMAZING fun.


I couldn't stop logging in the whole week myself, both to enjoy the event and take care of my daily routines. Sure some things got in the way but I found I was able to get away from things pretty easily when needed.

I talked about a lot of this stuff just after the event so I feel like I'm just repeating myself. It was a good time, great memories on my side, heh.