All You Zombies: Shuffling Off Into The Sunset

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 44 Comments

In an announcement COMPLETLEY UNRELATED to the Blizzard forums exploding with pro- and anti-zombie related sentiment, Jeff “Tigole” Kaplan announces that the zombie plague is ending today.

While we recognize that the event could prove to be disruptive at times, we hope you made the most out of it while it lasted. Part of playing in a “living and breathing world” means that things are going to change from time to time. We meant no harm but only wanted to create a lasting impression on players as they head to Northrend to defeat the Lich King. The Lich King’s goals (as you will soon learn) are to turn the Horde and Alliance not only on one another, but on their own kind as well. I think the plague truly demonstrated this firsthand.

Have Kaplan and Blizzard learned anything about implementing world events from this? Let’s ask the Angry Eight Ball!

Well, there you go.

This entry was posted in Angry Eight Ball, OMG ZOMBIES, World of Warcraft, _. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://forge.ironrealms.com Matt Mihaly

    A living, breathing world? That’s an odd thing to call WoW, which has about as static a world as they come.

  • Recursion

    Well why shouldn’t it be static? Look at all the bitching and complaining when they try to add a little life to it… Honestly.. Players are the worst thing that ever happened to MMOs.

  • Justdave

    And I for one would like to thank the epic weeping over having been denied the mailbox for a couple of days to ensure that that remains the case.

  • FNORD

    I can’t help thinking that with a little more care, this could have gone much better.

    Equalize the levels giving a (large) scaling damage boost or penalty when a high level player/zombie attacks a low-level or vice versa. City of Heroes uses this for some of their world events, I believe.

    Make it work off PvP flags, like normal PvP, but give players an incentive to flag. Maybe have the Argent Healers hand out a significant buff that only works if you’re flagged.

  • TurdBlossom

    Better yet, just stick to your guns and let the whiners rot. Let’s face it, where are they going to go?

    I can only imagine the myriad cries of “I’m going 2 sue blizzard 4 all teh times I dyed tonihgt! OMG this event suxx!”

  • http://wowpanda.blogspot.com wowpanda

    It was fun, I zap the elite guards to death easy. Till I found all the battle masters are dead.

  • Athryn

    I’m pretty sure there’s more to come. ^_^

  • Freakazoid

    At times like this, I’m glad all EQ2 had to offer was haunted houses. No inconvenience and the quests are actually fun!

  • Vaxhacker

    Too bad they caved, I was truly enjoying the chaos. I wasn’t even one of the so-called griefers who were making the zombie event fun, I just sat back and cackled with glee at the destruction. I mean, the xpac is out in a couple of weeks, what the hell else is there to do but get the exploration achievements out of the way?

  • GregC

    Running the event stuff in UO was fun, except for the lovely hate emails.
    I can sum them all up in one short statement: “Not in my backyard”. I had emails from the same guy prior to and during some big world events.
    Prior: “make more events now!”
    After: “get your event away from my house!”

    People want this type of thing in games until it infringes on them in a way they do not like – then the sky is falling and “how dare you?!” .. how dare you put content in my backyard.

  • Aufero

    Best summary I’ve seen of the design problems with this event was on the WoW general forum. (I was amazed at finding anything reasonable there, but it happens.)

    Zombie plague review

    It was a great idea, but the execution ignored a number of obvious things I’d assumed Blizzard had already learned about player behavior.

  • Slyfeind

    Well, of course players like to opt out of things if they’re not in the mood for it. But really it’s all about expectations rather than choices. I don’t play WoW because it’s a static world, but a lot of people find virtue in that. Then when something happens that tries to break that mold, it causes a bit of upset in The Way Of Things. Those expecting static play can’t have it anymore, and become confused. This also happens in A Tale in the Desert when players expect it to be a cooperative community-oriented game, but the devs want to challenge the players with tough choices and socio-political issues…so they drop ideological bombs on the game world, and yay, more upset.

  • Pandanapper

    I bet $20 it was mainly the gold farmers complaining.

    Any takers?

  • Alex

    This was a sudden introduction of PvP to a player base that was not accustomed to it. Given enough time, an etiquette develops. A good example is Darktide on Asheron’s Call. It generally takes new players on the server a while to figure out that you don’t have to attack every one you see at all times.

    Since everyone is comparing this to UO, I’ll also mention the unguarded island in the city of Jhelom. For a variety of reasons it became a neutral area with an unwritten truce between red and blue players.

    Global PvP creates a dangerous and anarchic world, but some form of order inevitably arises out of it.

  • Iconic

    As one of the “whiners” allow me to clarify the problem with the event.

    Blizzard provides players with a choice of what kind of experience they want. Want a game experience where other players have the ability to impede you at any time, and danger is (potentially) lurking around every corner? Roll on a PvP server.

    Want a world where competition with other players occurs in a structured and predictable way? Roll on a PvE server.

    There’s no point in arguing over which experience is “better” because in the end both preferences are backed up by millions of players with potentially billions of dollars, and Blizzard has been smart enough for the most part to understand that they’re best served by providing both.

    The zombie event is an example where Blizzard lost their mind, and forgot the almost allergic reaction that many players have to ganking and unrestricted PvP. Customer reaction was predictably negative. For any one to label it as whining is ignorant of the past, and the fact that yes, customers WILL leave in droves if they have a choice between an MMO that offers a gank free environment and one that does not.

  • Toastrider

    FNORD is correct.

    Most zone and server events have critters that either scale specifically to the character’s level (in the case of trick or treating, the mobs that spawn are spawned at your level), or use what’s called the GM (giant monster) code.

    GM code basically treats all inbound attacks on the GM as if they were coming from a character with the same level as the GM, and the GM’s attacks all scale to the character’s level. So a level 2 gets hit as if he’s being hit by a level 2 critter, etc. Originally used for those big monsters like the giant octopus and the giant mecha robot Kronos, CoH’s devs figured out how to utilize it for the Rikti invasions, thus ensuring everyone could pitch in and help repel the aliens.

    (Granted, higher-level characters do more, because they’ve got more attack powers and mez resist in many cases. But lowbies and newbies can still put forth a decent effort.)

  • Viz

    I keep hearing “PVP” in reference to the zombie event, but the major flaws of the zombie event have nothing whatever to do with PVP. If all the zombies were actual players, it wouldn’t have been a big deal–active griefing requires time and energy on the part of the griefers. Each one can only make life miserable for a very small number of others. The problem was that there were plenty of NPC zombies, too. NPCs have nothing better to do, and there’s a very large supply of them. Late in the event, they could be extremely difficult to avoid in cities, and being touched by one virtually guaranteed your death unless you had the ability to cure disease.

  • Anonymous

    Blizzard has been progressively dumbing down streamlining the game to attract the casual crowd. What the hell kind of feedback did they expect with an event that makes it difficult or impossible for these people–who make up the bulk of their playerbase–to play?

    If this event had taken place in the days immediately before the release of the expansion, fine. If being attackable by zombies was opt-in (possibly through the use of the PvP flag), fine. If being killed didn’t result in the usual 10% durability loss, fine. If there was a reason to kill zombies besides lollore, fine. If the event was geared to be engaging and potentially threatening rather than an annoying tool for grief, fine.

    Blizzard’s design philosophy seems to be schizophrenic these days. This event, the spectacularly unbalanced retadin changes going live, an achievement system that encourages people (particularly in BGs) to play the “wrong” way–these things seem likely to hurt casuals who just want to log into the game and get things done. Contrast that with the aforementioned dumbing down streamlining of the gear system, the stat system, the talent system (goodbye speccing in more than one tree), the spell system (goodbye downranking), the skill system (hello more spammy skills)–which seem designed to lower the ceiling on configuring and playing the right spec, to the detriment of the “hardcore,” the poopsockers and minmaxers. (While not design issues per se, the latency and server stability problems these past few weeks have been biting everybody on the ass.)

    Pity that the almost-but-not-quite Warhammer couldn’t have provided a credible alternative to keep Blizzard honest. I expect further changes geared towards the Runescape and Ragnarok Online crowd, as well as more shameless, game-destroying cash grabs (phat epix for USD? it’s only a matter of time).

  • Hatch

    The players provide free content to the game for the company. Sometimes the company has to kick the player base to generate more content.

    MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

  • Triforcer

    Things like this are why Blizzard has 10 million players, and every other MMO does not have 10 million players. Virtually all developer/pundit types react to this like Lum- “OH NOES, THEY R MINORLY INCONVENIENCING PPL FOR 2 DAYZ EVERYONE WIL LEAVE AND HATE THEM 4EVER.”

    Whereas, Blizzard shows time and time again (this thing, the armory tinfoil hat recipe, etc.) that it has a sense of humor and doesn’t let the screeching butthurtedness of .1% of the playerbase stop it from doing something that is fun.

  • TurdBlossom

    Just to add on to my whiners comment above, here’s the problem as I see it: by and large, the current WoW playerbase has little to no adaptability. They like to be able to mindlessly do quests, check their favorite online database for the quest spoilers, and grind out the stuff in accordance with whatever walkthrough they’re using. Unpredictability is their enemy, and they cry foul in the loudest possible voice when they encounter something that doesn’t fit their nice, tidy mold of how their virtual world should be.

    When you start messing around with peoples’ cushy, comfortable, virtual escape mechanism, they get cranky. Rather than just ride it out for a few days and realize that their characters exist in a dynamic world, instead they scream, yell, and yes, whine until things return to their nice, normal, predictable state and they can get back to mindlessly following their spoiler site and grinding out the quests that they’ve already read the walkthroughs for.

  • http://www.thisisnotacommunity.org D-0ne

    It isn’t the players fault when all the thought going in to a world event consisted of, “That’d be cool! Everybody is 70!”.

  • Anonymous

    “their characters exist in a dynamic world”

    This is WoW we’re talking about, right?

  • Jay

    In theory won’t this event help recruit more people to PvP servers? From what I’ve seen they need it.

  • xzzy

    It’s a shame that “My Porsche needs some performance upgrades.” won’t fit on that little polyhedron.

  • Skelanth

    About 5 of us from our WoW guild moved around as a pack. It took about 5 hits from a player to turn another player into a zombie, thus a group of 5 could be quite effective. We just assisted one another to co-ordinate hitting a target. Ranged classes easily took us out without being at risk for infection. Melee never stood a chance.

    As the infection timer counted down to 1 minute from 10 minutes, it was harder to reach the farther ends of the map. Easiest way was to get infected in a major city and have the warlock in the group summon you to somewhere remote.

    The most interesting part of turning other players into zombies was that some players of the opposing faction would ‘join’ our little run against the big cities. Horde & Alliance working together and able to communicate. It’s too bad so much of WoW is focused on pitting the factions against each other and less on co-operation. On PVP servers it makes sense but on PVE it doesn’t really matter. What’s really funny is that you couldn’t enter a battleground while infected. Upon entering the BG, the infection was removed. Now that would have been funny, turning AV into a zombie fest. So, a event that encourages PVP couldn’t be used in the standard PVP environments.

    Although some people we knew were upset at the event, most of our guild didn’t mind it. Sure, finding your daily quest npc turned into a zombie was annoying at times. I think the annoyance factor was that your static world wasn’t static anymore. As much as players complain about wanting a more dynamic world, something little like your quest npc being a zombie some of the time really upset some folk’s sense of order in the universe.

    In our fast food instant gratification culture, having to wait 5 minutes for an NPC to respawn was driving folks nuts. Here was something that couldn’t be counted on, pinpointed, wowwiki’d, wowhead’d and planned around. When you read the box for most MMO’s it has a disclaimer that online game experience may change. But most players fear change.

    Lum, lead us to the promised MMO.

  • Mandalla

    “I think the annoyance factor was that your static world wasn’t static anymore.”

    Exactly, which equates as “annoyance” in most people’s mind.

    As for me, this is the first thing in a long while that made me want, even a little bit, to subscribe to WoW. Fortunately, the reaction of the players to the event has well warned me off again.

  • TurdBlossom

    I felt exactly the same way; initially reading about this made think that it might be worth reactivating my WoW subscription. Now I see that my suspicions were confirmed, and the WoW population consists primarily of sniveling whiners who just want to follow a predetermined script without any significant variation.

    Routine, routine, routine.

  • http://bjornstar.com bjornstar

    If people are getting this upset about zombies in a game, just imagine the epic whining that would take place when they can’t get their Frappucino at Starbucks’s because the baristas have all been turned into zombies. It’s times like these that make you thankful zombies aren’t real.

  • Ashendarei

    ” Triforcer Says:
    October 28, 2008 at 6:47 am
    Things like this are why Blizzard has 10 million players, and every other MMO does not have 10 million players. Virtually all developer/pundit types react to this like Lum- “OH NOES, THEY R MINORLY INCONVENIENCING PPL FOR 2 DAYZ EVERYONE WIL LEAVE AND HATE THEM 4EVER.”
    ”

    How’s that fanboyism working for you?

    Personally, I’ve always enjoyed the world events and dynamic environments, (some of the occasional events EQ had, such as undead invading a zone, or the giants on the move and invading a neighboring zone, etc were my favorite parts of those games)

    Blizzard made quite a few mistakes with this event, and it was that interruption that caused such a problem.

    Things they could have done better:

    1. The zombies shouldn’t have reduced the time-to-turn by 10 seconds per attack. as stated above it was pretty easy to get a horde of NPC zombies to follow you and attack players, and NOBODY enjoys going from 59 seconds to cure a disease down to .1 seconds just because a horde of zombies caught them as they were zoning into an area. If you’re bit, fine. you’ve got 2 minutes (or whatever) to get to a healer.

    2. The zombie disease itself was HIGHLY resistant to cure disease. If each time you got bit you gained a 4% chance to “resist” the next zombie attack it would provide a bit of protection towards repeat ganking and the griefing that ran rampant during the event.

    3. Not having an “opt-out” quest that could be completed for the PvE crowd (such as a “go here and gather these materials to help create an innoculation” quest)

    4. Zombies didn’t do any REAL damage. If this was to be a truely horrific effect, Blizz should have had all the areas that were zombie infested become war-damaged.

    Imagine riding into Ironforge to see half the buildings burned / charred, and some completely closed (temporarially) while dwarves and gnome NPCs are running around w/ repair kits?

    Imagine Thunder Bluff in flames, with tauren crews trying to rebuild over the course of a couple of weeks.

    Stormwind would be a wreckage, AoE disease clouds that spawned randomly in the city and caused a nasty debuff / DoT.

    All of these effects could persist till just before release date, then the horde/alliance would have a REAL reason to go to Northrend and bring it to Arthas himself.

    all in all, it was a good try. I hope the blizz events team learns from this however and improves on future events.

  • roc

    It was an indefensible mistake to run that event as it was.
    A good idea, done wrong, gone bad.
    It looks like someone let the B-team have at it and is stubbornly ignoring the glaring mistakes.

    They should never have allowed risk-free newb griefing on a PvE server. Changing fundamental rules with an event is ballsy enough (pvp on pve servers, third-faction, penalty-free faction switching) — there’s no upside to having newbs on the menu.

    Compounding that mistake, is the fact that the game -is- static; this event just drives that home. There is absolutely no change in the world, or any character, despite the global chaos for the last few days. Nothing mattered whatsoever, which only -encouraged- people to indulge their inner griefer. Why -not- get your grief on? There was -no other point- to the whole event: Nothing productive to do as a zombie. Nothing productive to do as a non-zombie.
    No quests, no penalties, no rewards, no tomorrow. Woohoo!

    That’s not ‘shaking things up’ in any sort of positive way. All it did was -encourage- people to meta-game the event and recreate the worst parts of UO’s veal-fattening-pen-pvp days. Ya know, the -last time- griefers had -unwilling-, -unwitting-, -helpless- victims and no repercussions whatsoever.

    In other games, the event as it was wouldn’t have been so bad. But not in a level-based game with no mitigating mechanics. Not on PvE servers with no protections for those who don’t know any better.

  • yunk

    Iconic wrote Want a world where competition with other players occurs in a structured and predictable way? Roll on a PvE server.

    Sorry but playing Horde on a PVE server, Alliance always, every day, impeded my goals in an unstructured and unpredictable way. Actually it was somewhat predictable: quest givers and the flightmaster in Crossroads would be dead almost every time I was playing.

    The idea that this can’t happen on a pve server is laughable since it happens constantly if you are on the underpopulated side. The only difference is they can’t force you to flag (though they certainly try, I always had paladins -yet it was always paladins too – standing on top of mobs I was fighting, jumping around in my way, and sometimes I’d accidentally right click on them, then boom i was dead. that happened too many times to count.

  • AcidCat

    If nothing else this *highly enjoyable* event served to point out one glaring weakness in WoW’s overall design, how static the world really is. To me this event was like a gift to veteran players – we’ve been running these same quests for years, shaking things up for a few days was incredibly refreshing. I find myself thinking about it and really craving a less static world. I’ve avoided PvP servers but I may transfer at least one of my 70′s to one in the future, just for a bit more unpredictability.

  • Mist

    Too bad most ‘veteran players’ I know have their accounts frozen until WOTLK and weren’t around to enjoy it. :P

  • Lightstalker

    One doesn’t go to McDonalds for daring and dynamic culinary experiences. One goes to McDonalds because no matter what town or country you are in there is an expectation of consistency that McDonalds delivers against year after year.

    Complaining that people didn’t appreciate their Big Macs being replaced with Pan-Seared Mahi doesn’t make any sense.

  • Tesh

    TurdBlossom has the right of it; players don’t like being shaken around when they have come to expect a certain game experience. Thing is, that’s what they are paying for. If they wanted a crazy truly dynamic world, they wouldn’t be playing WoW in the first place. The designers have only themselves to blame for that expectation, and trying to remold the game into something that it never has been will inevitably cause problems.

    A truly dynamic game world certainly does have appeal to some gamers, but there are other gamers who want a happy little Zen sort of highly predictably experience. The two aren’t necessarily the same audience. Most importantly, WoW to date has banked on being highly predictable and highly static. If they had been crazy and dynamic (including changing the world geography and buildings and such) from day one, this event would likely have been the fun that it was probably meant to be.

    As it is, the complaints are no surprise. Telling people to suck it up isn’t good when you’re happily taking their $15/month for a service you’re not delivering any more.

  • AcidCat

    I fully understand the appeal of the “comfort zone” playstyle, but you’d think that even people who enjoy the predictable WoW experience (which of course I do or I wouldn’t play) would be up for a brief, temporary, one time foray into unknown different territory. This was no NGE that changed the permanent nature of the game. It’s the fact that a significant amount of people couldn’t handle a *few days* of *limited* disruption to their normal routine, that makes the Zombie complainers come off as … slightly irrational (tried to think of a noninflammatory way to put that).

  • Demetra

    Just because some people bitched doesn’t mean everyone hated it. I loved it. I play on a VERY rp non-pvp server and I know a lot of us enjoyed the challenge. We managed to pretty well hold the Cathedral Square up until the disease reached insta-zombie stage in the last few hours of the event. I’m looking forward to what will happen next.

  • AcidCat

    Are you on Moon Guard perhaps Demetra? Definite kudos to the RPers who saw a great opportunity for RP and ran with it.

  • ello

    ==============
    As it is, the complaints are no surprise. Telling people to suck it up isn’t good when you’re happily taking their $15/month for a service you’re not delivering any more.
    ==============
    It worked for EQ for so very long when there wasn’t even a flight master to be there. But your raid was when mobs were gone or a FoH monk gave a certain sword to a certain mob in fear.

  • Demetra

    Yeah AcidCat, I’m on Moon Guard. In the Cathedral, there was a core group who were making sure that the three gates were well covered nearly all of the time. Cures for infected were mostly always available. Most of the time we were able to keep them out and when we failed it was still a load of fun. I hope they do it again sometime or something similar. Things like this are what has kept me interested in the game.

  • Lucas

    Simply put: without a “boost” mechanic (call it “sidekicking” or whatever) implemented for low level players like me (who are not raising an Alt, but are still working on their main without any assistance), for a few days I felt like a ping-pong ball.
    ——

    Log in as a Tauren. A few seconds later: boom! a zombie hits and infect you :P

    Great! I’m a zombie now, it’s time to wreak havoc!!!

    A few seconds later, a high level character approach and kills me.

    Great! I’m a Tauren again!!

    Wait, what the, nooo, braaaiins…..!!!

    Awesome!!! Zombie!! Time to eat brains!!!

    Hey, what the….Dead again!!!

    And so on.

  • faefrost

    I must confess I found some aspects of what they did with the zombies to be absolutely brilliant. While I understand that some were discomfitted by having access to their ah mules disrupted, I think the tech and the shear nature of the world event was worth it. (I will concede the should have used something like coH’s GM code to lessen the impact on lower levels).

    But think about this. Most game world events, in any game, feel horribly scripted. They take place in X zone for Y level players, have little to no impact on the game world beyond that, and can easily be ignored (like most are doing with the current scourge retread event in WoW now.)

    But for the zombie event, the WoW developers did something very unique. And it needs to be looked at more closely. Instead of staging a scripted event, they simply seeded the world at a few points. (The suspicious crates in Booty Bay an out of the way neutral town) and then let the event itself spread organically via the playerbase itself. It wasn’t limited to specific zones or level areas. It went where the players went and rapidly drew the entire game world into the event. The event moved organically, and was not bound or restricted. While the execution of it was far from perfect, the absolute imersiveness of what they did is really interesting. And there is something there that really needs to be more closely examined for how it can be used to tell stories and allow the players to impact the MMO game worlds themselves in the future.

  • VoiceofReason

    .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

    One 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…
    /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?”