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

Once 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…
/laugh
/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?”

I have several level 70s, and it was difficult at times to simply survive, get out of the heavily infected areas and try to have any semblance normality. When a 70 paladin cannot survive a handful of zombies, something is out of balance. I became a zombie several times, had no interest at all in contributing to the chaos and ended up paying a significant repair bill as if I’d just finished 4 hours of raiding. I was mostly peaved because I could not get or turn in daily quests because the quest givers were either dead or fighting. The constant “zombie bombs” in AHs and in banks grew tiresome immediately.

Good idea; poor implementation. There were too many “loopholes” for griefers to take advantage, and from what I saw being a zombie, the zombies were given great advantages and only needed numbers to quickly overrun an area. Even now the continuation quests are impossible to solo, but survivable with a group. I guess this was Blizzard’s attempt at forced team work.

I don’t mind surprise content and not knowing the outcome, but at least give me the ability to survive and fight back on my own.

Why not? You don’t know it’s possible unless you’ve studied it.

This isn’t true of everyone but: Casual players think that since they pay the same $15 a month as the hardcore players, they should be able to see all the content and collect all the stuff the hardcore players do. Hardcore players think that since they “work” harder than others in the game, they should be rewarded with better stuff. Role-players want people to respect their fantasy, even if they don’t partake in it. Druids think druids should be “balanced” with the rest of the classes (and by “balanced,” most people really mean “slightly better than everyone else”). Every other player of a particular class feels the same way about their own. Players want to be left alone when they intend to solo, but expect that a party is easy to find when they want to group. Etc, etc, etc…

No game can be all things to all people, all of the time. WoW gets pretty close for all the millions of people that play it, but no matter how talented the developers (believe me, I work in the industry and the guys at Blizzard (overall) are awesome), its just not possible. The result? Constant, never-ending complaining from hordes of ignorant players that want their own desires meet instantly, every time they log into the game. It’s like digital masturbation. They have to be satisfied right effing now!

As a game designer, I think Blizzard did a phenomenal job implementing a cool twist into the game world to give players something new, strengthen the fiction and upcoming content and make the world feel more alive than ever before. Yes, some people are going to make noise about it because they want to keep their daily, digital ego stroke going without interruption and they think that, even though there are millions of other people in the game, the game must satisfy their desires each time they log on. That cannot be avoided and I applaud Blizzard for having the guts to say “This is temporary, fun for a lot of people and overall, this is good for the game, so STFU.”

You do not have the right for the game to be exactly what you want it to be every time you log in. So when Blizzard makes a change you don’t like, either log off until its fixed, suck it up and deal with it, or find something else to play. Those are your rights.

The game after .. not so much. I’ve reached 70 and now I’m unsubscribing for a while.

I don’t know why, but I still find it funny that people think there’s a game BEFORE level cap.

If the game were either free to play or had a history of frequent game-altering messes like this, it wouldn’t be such an issue. Rather, we have a subscription model where people can’t play the game they paid for, and Blizzard using the “it’s a living world” excuse when the vast majority of the game is and has been extraordinarily static by design. That doesn’t make this event special, it makes it an aberration. Change is good, but change too much and people will rightfully be annoyed.

No, it isn’t, though there are servers for role playing, if that’s what you’re interested in doing.