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?”

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.

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

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.

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.

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