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World of Warcraft is Infectious

Posted by Zonk on from the practice-safe-mmoging dept.

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.

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds familiar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like a return of a Sims add-in for a pet gerbil.

    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.c gi?entry_id=179

  2. Re:Fixed by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Zul'Gurub is an "instance" zone. A fresh copy is created for every group that enters it. (more or less). The disease in question is caused by one of the encounters in the instance. It is not litterally raging in that zone.

    It is in fact normally cured while the group is still in the zone. the current "plague" behavior is being caused by malicious individuals who are intentionally re-calling to populated areas in order to "greif" other players.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  3. Unintended? I don't care by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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