Slashdot Mirror
World of Warcraft is Infectious
ringbarer writes "News is coming in that the lands of Azeroth have become infected with a deadly plague which the developers never intended to spread. Originating from the new Zul'Gurub instance, the plague has spread from player to player via town NPCs. Entire cities are being wiped out, yet players are finding this surprise content entertaining!" From the article: " Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die). GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infect other players." Commentary on Terra Nova.
Sounds like a return of a Sims add-in for a pet gerbil.
c gi?entry_id=179
It was downloaded from TheSims.com, and it could infect players, which could infect other players, etc.
Some linkage on the item:
http://www.alexjacobson.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments2.
This was unintentional? We had no idea on our server and assumed it was something Blizz had added to add some depth to the game. It was actually quite amusing to watch it spread as people attempted to go about their business between the bank and auction house in Ironforge.
I don't even think the real plague had people dropping dead ever few seconds.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Wonder if you can get the plague and go visit the other guys towns. :) That would be worth it.
Well, now WoW finally has taken indiscriminate PK to a whole new level with your body itself as the weapon. Question is, would those be honorable or non-honorable kills for every person you spread the disease to (disregarding the rollback)?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is absolutely great. This is an element of gameplay that even if unintended (which I'm not so sure about) can have far-reaching consequences.
Why shouldn't MMORPG characters get sick? Maybe once you're exposed and recover from a certain illness, you have immunity. Maybe this immunity will be helpful in a later instance.
I would love for more MMORPGs to release world-affecting things like this into the game. It might be hard to balance, but I think this is fantastic.
One of the reasons gameplay in MMORPGs gets boring is that typically, the world never changes except for the addition of new material.
Give me the four horsemen of the apocalypse any day!
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The Romans used to fling diseased corpses into the towns that they were laying siege to, and not surprisingly the tactic worked quite well. But can you fling a player into a town in WoW?
Monstar L
This hit last Friday, and as the FP mentioned they fixed it with the rolling server restarts. Not knowing if this was permanant or not, I walked my level 6 Priest up to Ironforge (Dwarf) and promptly got infected - died from the first blast of damage as I didn't have as many health points as it inflicted.
Lasted until death, upon resurrection you'd have to be reinfected to suffer from it again. Enabling PVP mode seems to be the known fix (in case it escapes again) which can be done by doing "/pvp" in-game.
I didn't notice it at all on Saturday after the rolling restarts, seems to have fixed it. We'll see.
On another note, Websense now seems to block WorldofWarcraft.com, so I can't read the forum post about the plague spreading again, at least here at work.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
everyone must be running around town naked.
I agree absolutely. The reason I quit playing these MMORPGs was because nothing ever happened. I mean, I could go and try a quest, level some, and then wait in line to kill some MOB for an earring or some boots. It got old really quick.
I began to read the the article synopsis and got really excited. REAL PLAGUES! Oh yeah, that sounds cool! Unfortunately, it was not by design. I'm aware that it would be expensive and difficult, but thses types of events happening on a regular and accelerated basis would bring me back to MMORPGs in an instant.
"I began to read the the article synopsis and got really excited. REAL PLAGUES! Oh yeah, that sounds cool! Unfortunately, it was not by design. I'm aware that it would be expensive and difficult, but thses types of events happening on a regular and accelerated basis would bring me back to MMORPGs in an instant. "
I sure hope Blizzard, et al read slashdot. Oh wait, of course the game companies do -- that's why release dates are pushed back.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
It's been a long while since I've last played this MMO, but if I recall, there was an event involving a plague that was spread around the various servers. The disease would lower your stats increasingly over time until it was cured. After a bit, I think it would kill you. Of course, death was a much less inconvienance in Horizons.
I think the dragons were immune to the disease. They actually could create a temporary cure to remove the disease, but you were likely to get affected again.
I don't know how it ended up. I think there were some monsters in the blighted regions that needed to be destroyed, along with special machines to disable the disease-bearing spots. However, Horizons had this before WoW. And it actually had some bearing to the storyline, rather than getting griefed.
Bleh, I had the same problem on the MUD I was coding in 92. I should have patented it.
They've already said why they don't want to make events like this. Every major change they make affects all the new players just joining, and balancing content for all levels equally is pretty much impossible.
Yeah, basically they don't want to do it because it would be too much work.
Even cooler would be if such a plague were to hit the world and a randomly chosen player, or handful of players, were dropped limited amounts of the cure in their inventory, with directions for use.
Would they charge money for it? Would they give it away for free? Would they try to make copies of it so they could innoculate the whole world? Would they use it on themselves and destroy it?
Events where players across all levels of acheivement and dedication are allowed to influence the world to a significant degree would really drive subscriptions.
The question is would the subscriptions outweigh the costs enough to generate a substantial profit?
I think we all know who is to blame. LEEEEROOOOOY JHEEEKIIINS!!!!!!!!
I'm not scared of anonymous cowards.
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
"They've already said why they don't want to make events like this. Every major change they make affects all the new players just joining, and balancing content for all levels equally is pretty much impossible. "
I'm not talking about changing game mechanics or skill sets or anything like that, which is what they were referring to. How about places that change over time? Or NPCs that change?
When their base shrinks and they need to keep people motivated to play, you'll bet they roll out something like this.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I could see them implementing something like this for registered guilds/clans/what-have-you. I don't see it happening for individuals, since there are a TON of people who play, and that might be considered unfair.
How about a guild being responsible for saving the world? The cure being 'viral' as well, so the guild would have to expose themselves (not literally) to as many people as possible... by traveling to as many locations as possible. If they succeed (say, 95% inoculation within 7 days), then they get rewarded and something changes in the world. If they fail, an NPC delivers the cure and something bad happens (like a town is temporarily depopulated for a month).
On the plus side, this would encourage guild-play for more than just PKing. I could really get into set-ups like that.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
When they did a plague like this in EQ2, it spread through NPCs just like the WoW one is. Instead of killing you, it just made you turn green and puke every now and then - no stat effects. It was curable with a store-bought potion, but the disease was rampant in the cities (where you could buy cures), and once you left the city generally only spread by idiots and NPCs. I remember WoW players laughing at EQ2 players about the "lame plague" at the time. Now it happens in WoW, worse, and they like it? rofl
According to Shacknews, City of Heroes are also affected by another disease.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
You sound like a stupid child.
If it's unintended, how on earth do you recover and get immunity?
Did you think MMORPG characters had an immune system?
This isn't so much an "event" as a way for assholes to grief their fellow players (on the same faction, which is against the TOS, mind you).
Getting sick as a random event in the game is one thing.
Getting sick because some shithead decided that it would "teh funnay" to kill you while you were trying to get something done is quite another.
Bans have already been handed out. More should follow.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Events where players across all levels were allowed to affect other players without their consent would really drive subscriptions... into the ground.
Most people don't play games to roleplay a victim.
Social experiments don't work outside of games designed to be a social experiment (like ATITD). I certainly don't wish to pay to be part of someone's master's thesis. I have better things to do with my free time.
Look at what happened to UO. A tiny minority liked the whole dreadlords era. The people that threatened to quit if that crap continued far outweighed that minority, so the game was changed.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
They had this in Everquest, it was called languages. You started with a few (based on your race), and you learned more by being exposed to other people speaking the language to you. The number of languages you could learn was unlimited, but you could learn them all given enough time.
Guess what happened? During any downtime (like boat rides), people made macros that spammed their local channels (say, party) with the language of their choice. Going to a boat was like visiting a multi-lingual chat channel filled with bots. And eventually, everyone could speak every other language. The only problems were that languages were fairly useless, and there was no way to limit the player from learning more, to give them an incentive to become specialized in one languages (instead of the universal polyglot).
But if you convert this to illnesses, you come up with some interesting possiblities.
Players would be encouraged to create disease infested areas, to expose each other to whatever germs they had managed to pick up. If diseases were deadly enough, this would have to be some sort of anti-hospital run by a class that could give high amounts of regeneration (druid, priest, cleric).
I can see this working better as some sort of elemental effect. Make the effect more constant (so that players can't spam themselves), and reverse the effect (so that the element works better as time goes on) and suddenly you give an incentive for players to stop camping in one spot forever. Give them an advantage once they're infused with one element against some other element, and you produce useful paths of destruction for each player to follow.
Strange, that ringbarer submits an article and then immediately trolls it (with a first post I might add).
I dont know whether to congratulate you or feel confused.
Maybe Blizzard has designs on this plague spreading even further. Maybe it is intended to spread out of the game and kill anyone who won't build up an immunity by buying their game and paying their monthly fee.
*goes back to reading snowcrash.txt"
swanker than you
It was intended to work in a single, small enclosed area - you kill a MOB, you receive the effect/damage as result, and it spreads over everyone who participated. The unintentional element was that it can be carried away to the city, so that people far, far away, not involved in killing the monster contract it.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Better, drop the cure into inventories of more powerful monsters. Kinda fun quest to be the savior of the MMO universe :)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
If the plague was weaker on low level chars that wouldn't be as much of a problem.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Now if only SWG could find a cure for SOE...
*duck*
If plagues were a regular part of the game, the developers might have included an immune system. But since it was a bug, I would be very surprised if there is any mechanism for handling the plague.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Can't a paladin just use their cleanse spell to cleanse it off? Heck, Paladins could start charging lowbies for doctor visits. Finally a use for Paladins.
"The Trouble with Tribbles"
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
They don't make events like this because they're worried about newbies (or established players) getting frustrated. Getting angry that their plans to go camp such-and-such are now interrupted because some invasion wave is in their cross-continental wave, or running the streets and they can't get to the damned bank.
And yet...and yet...
And yet, if some new MMORPG came out, and announced they'd be heavy on such events, and if you don't like it, tough, don't join...wouldn't you make a beeline for that MMORPG?
We have yet to see a game tie together the two most seductive aspects of online games: The "little constant rewards" of MMORPG's, and the live event hectic, now now now! nature of games like Quake.
Imagine a well-done AI group of NPC orcs coming down the street. "There, kill the healer first!" and they all run at him. Now that's some action.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.