*shrugs at 0.000001% of players who hated the zomies*
I'm really amazed at the amount of people who took to this as fast as they did. From my point of view, it was one the best event's I ever expirienced in agame. For a few days, it was like I was in Day of the Dead movie. Starting with few infected and then escalating in a full blown Zombie apocalypse at times, hahaha, man it was epic.
Blizzard knew exactly what they were doing and execution was flawless. Few noobs were caught in the crossfire, there had to be some collateral damage, all in all it was the end of the world as we knew and it was great.
This post is primarily aimed at the world event design team and any other designers and developers involved in creating this and other world events.
I'll start with the good stuff: this event was a landmark experience. This was the first time in the three and a half years I have been playing the game that I have felt like the game's lore was really a pervasive part of the game. I have experienced some of it in instances, through quest text, and even through in-game books, but it has never felt so real and alive as it did in the last week. The dev team deserves great praise for their vision of the game in which the world really comes to life (or undeath, as it were); I hope that this is only the first of many similarly omnipresent world events to come. All that being said, the event had several major flaws that I would like to point out in the hopes that future events will be better:
PvP consistency problems
Normal PvP mechanics clashed with the zombie plague event in two types of areas: neutral cities and Shattrath. In the neutral cities, attacking a zombified player would incur the wrath of the guards, which made no sense at all considering that the zombies were causing wanton destruction in their town. Even stranger, it seemed that healing, cleansing, or resurrecting players under certain conditions could also invite attack. Shattrath had even worse problems, where player zombies could infect other players and kill NPCs while being immune to retribution from other players. These two mechanical oversights were pretty big, and led to some serious frustration for the anti-zombie side of the fight.
Lack of motivation and reward
While it is not necessary to apply the carrot-on-a-stick mentality to every aspect of this game, something as big as this event would have benefited from something to direct the flow of player energy. In the past week, I have seen by far the worst cases of serial grieifing ever in the World of Warcraft, and I believe it has a lot to do with the lack of incentive to do anything else. Adding long, engrossing quest chains that nudged players toward level-appropriate areas, rewarding gold and/or experience for kills, and having more sources of in-game education regarding the event would have gone a long way towards a better experience.
Equal opportunity participation
Here I come to the most significant flaw in this event, and the one that I am sure led to the most frustration throughout its lifetime. If an event is going to be omnipresent and inescapable, then participation must be equally possible and rewarding across the level spectrum. If a high level character decided to wreak havoc on a low level town, the low level players questing there would be able to do next to nothing to stop them or the NPCs they turned since the guards in an area are typically higher level than the players. When the low level players were inevitably turned themselves, they would be quickly dispatched by the guards and/or the high level players who would eventually show up to purge the area. Unable to effectively participate in the event or quest as normal, lower level players were pretty much left in an uncomfortable limbo either leaving them waiting and unable to play or driving them to log off in frustration.
So in summary (and for those TLDR folks), this event was entertaining at level 70 and had great intention, but it was marred by significant flaws that absolutely need to be addressed for any similar events in the future. Thank you for pushing the envelope, and get it right next time!
This post is primarily aimed at the world event design team and any other designers and developers involved in creating this and other world events.
I'll start with the good stuff: this event was a landmark experience. This was the first time in the three and a half years I have been playing the game that I have felt like the game's lore was really a pervasive part of the game. I have experienced some of it in instances, through quest text, and even through in-game books, but it has never felt so real and alive as it did in the last week. The dev team deserves great praise for their vision of the game in which the world really comes to life (or undeath, as it were); I hope that this is only the first of many similarly omnipresent world events to come. All that being said, the event had several major flaws that I would like to point out in the hopes that future events will be better:
PvP consistency problems
Normal PvP mechanics clashed with the zombie plague event in two types of areas: neutral cities and Shattrath. In the neutral cities, attacking a zombified player would incur the wrath of the guards, which made no sense at all considering that the zombies were causing wanton destruction in their town. Even stranger, it seemed that healing, cleansing, or resurrecting players under certain conditions could also invite attack. Shattrath had even worse problems, where player zombies could infect other players and kill NPCs while being immune to retribution from other players. These two mechanical oversights were pretty big, and led to some serious frustration for the anti-zombie side of the fight.
Lack of motivation and reward
While it is not necessary to apply the carrot-on-a-stick mentality to every aspect of this game, something as big as this event would have benefited from something to direct the flow of player energy. In the past week, I have seen by far the worst cases of serial grieifing ever in the World of Warcraft, and I believe it has a lot to do with the lack of incentive to do anything else. Adding long, engrossing quest chains that nudged players toward level-appropriate areas, rewarding gold and/or experience for kills, and having more sources of in-game education regarding the event would have gone a long way towards a better experience.
Equal opportunity participation
Here I come to the most significant flaw in this event, and the one that I am sure led to the most frustration throughout its lifetime. If an event is going to be omnipresent and inescapable, then participation must be equally possible and rewarding across the level spectrum. If a high level character decided to wreak havoc on a low level town, the low level players questing there would be able to do next to nothing to stop them or the NPCs they turned since the guards in an area are typically higher level than the players. When the low level players were inevitably turned themselves, they would be quickly dispatched by the guards and/or the high level players who would eventually show up to purge the area. Unable to effectively participate in the event or quest as normal, lower level players were pretty much left in an uncomfortable limbo either leaving them waiting and unable to play or driving them to log off in frustration.
So in summary (and for those TLDR folks), this event was entertaining at level 70 and had great intention, but it was marred by significant flaws that absolutely need to be addressed for any similar events in the future. Thank you for pushing the envelope, and get it right next time!
Thanks for reading.
Ok, maybe not compleetly flawless if you look to pick it apart.
Comments
*shrugs at 0.000001% of players who hated the zomies*
I'm really amazed at the amount of people who took to this as fast as they did. From my point of view, it was one the best event's I ever expirienced in agame. For a few days, it was like I was in Day of the Dead movie. Starting with few infected and then escalating in a full blown Zombie apocalypse at times, hahaha, man it was epic.
Blizzard knew exactly what they were doing and execution was flawless. Few noobs were caught in the crossfire, there had to be some collateral damage, all in all it was the end of the world as we knew and it was great.
this is good commentary from one poster - and even a Blizzard moderator posted liking it
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html
This post is primarily aimed at the world event design team and any other designers and developers involved in creating this and other world events.
I'll start with the good stuff: this event was a landmark experience. This was the first time in the three and a half years I have been playing the game that I have felt like the game's lore was really a pervasive part of the game. I have experienced some of it in instances, through quest text, and even through in-game books, but it has never felt so real and alive as it did in the last week. The dev team deserves great praise for their vision of the game in which the world really comes to life (or undeath, as it were); I hope that this is only the first of many similarly omnipresent world events to come. All that being said, the event had several major flaws that I would like to point out in the hopes that future events will be better:
PvP consistency problems
Normal PvP mechanics clashed with the zombie plague event in two types of areas: neutral cities and Shattrath. In the neutral cities, attacking a zombified player would incur the wrath of the guards, which made no sense at all considering that the zombies were causing wanton destruction in their town. Even stranger, it seemed that healing, cleansing, or resurrecting players under certain conditions could also invite attack. Shattrath had even worse problems, where player zombies could infect other players and kill NPCs while being immune to retribution from other players. These two mechanical oversights were pretty big, and led to some serious frustration for the anti-zombie side of the fight.
Lack of motivation and reward
While it is not necessary to apply the carrot-on-a-stick mentality to every aspect of this game, something as big as this event would have benefited from something to direct the flow of player energy. In the past week, I have seen by far the worst cases of serial grieifing ever in the World of Warcraft, and I believe it has a lot to do with the lack of incentive to do anything else. Adding long, engrossing quest chains that nudged players toward level-appropriate areas, rewarding gold and/or experience for kills, and having more sources of in-game education regarding the event would have gone a long way towards a better experience.
Equal opportunity participation
Here I come to the most significant flaw in this event, and the one that I am sure led to the most frustration throughout its lifetime. If an event is going to be omnipresent and inescapable, then participation must be equally possible and rewarding across the level spectrum. If a high level character decided to wreak havoc on a low level town, the low level players questing there would be able to do next to nothing to stop them or the NPCs they turned since the guards in an area are typically higher level than the players. When the low level players were inevitably turned themselves, they would be quickly dispatched by the guards and/or the high level players who would eventually show up to purge the area. Unable to effectively participate in the event or quest as normal, lower level players were pretty much left in an uncomfortable limbo either leaving them waiting and unable to play or driving them to log off in frustration.
So in summary (and for those TLDR folks), this event was entertaining at level 70 and had great intention, but it was marred by significant flaws that absolutely need to be addressed for any similar events in the future. Thank you for pushing the envelope, and get it right next time!
Thanks for reading.
EQ2 fan sites
this is good commentary from one poster - and even a Blizzard moderator posted liking it
forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html
This post is primarily aimed at the world event design team and any other designers and developers involved in creating this and other world events.
I'll start with the good stuff: this event was a landmark experience. This was the first time in the three and a half years I have been playing the game that I have felt like the game's lore was really a pervasive part of the game. I have experienced some of it in instances, through quest text, and even through in-game books, but it has never felt so real and alive as it did in the last week. The dev team deserves great praise for their vision of the game in which the world really comes to life (or undeath, as it were); I hope that this is only the first of many similarly omnipresent world events to come. All that being said, the event had several major flaws that I would like to point out in the hopes that future events will be better:
PvP consistency problems
Normal PvP mechanics clashed with the zombie plague event in two types of areas: neutral cities and Shattrath. In the neutral cities, attacking a zombified player would incur the wrath of the guards, which made no sense at all considering that the zombies were causing wanton destruction in their town. Even stranger, it seemed that healing, cleansing, or resurrecting players under certain conditions could also invite attack. Shattrath had even worse problems, where player zombies could infect other players and kill NPCs while being immune to retribution from other players. These two mechanical oversights were pretty big, and led to some serious frustration for the anti-zombie side of the fight.
Lack of motivation and reward
While it is not necessary to apply the carrot-on-a-stick mentality to every aspect of this game, something as big as this event would have benefited from something to direct the flow of player energy. In the past week, I have seen by far the worst cases of serial grieifing ever in the World of Warcraft, and I believe it has a lot to do with the lack of incentive to do anything else. Adding long, engrossing quest chains that nudged players toward level-appropriate areas, rewarding gold and/or experience for kills, and having more sources of in-game education regarding the event would have gone a long way towards a better experience.
Equal opportunity participation
Here I come to the most significant flaw in this event, and the one that I am sure led to the most frustration throughout its lifetime. If an event is going to be omnipresent and inescapable, then participation must be equally possible and rewarding across the level spectrum. If a high level character decided to wreak havoc on a low level town, the low level players questing there would be able to do next to nothing to stop them or the NPCs they turned since the guards in an area are typically higher level than the players. When the low level players were inevitably turned themselves, they would be quickly dispatched by the guards and/or the high level players who would eventually show up to purge the area. Unable to effectively participate in the event or quest as normal, lower level players were pretty much left in an uncomfortable limbo either leaving them waiting and unable to play or driving them to log off in frustration.
So in summary (and for those TLDR folks), this event was entertaining at level 70 and had great intention, but it was marred by significant flaws that absolutely need to be addressed for any similar events in the future. Thank you for pushing the envelope, and get it right next time!
Thanks for reading.
Ok, maybe not compleetly flawless if you look to pick it apart.