All You Zombies: Everything I Needed To Know About Event Design I Learned From F13

So, at first blush, turning every World of Warcraft server into a zombie movie? AWESOME!

Turning every server into a PvP server? Eh, not so much.

Blizzard has a history of telling whiners to STFU about such things, and this is no exception. As CM Nethaera says, if having an event where other players randomly cause all your quest turn-in and flight NPCs and you yourself to explode upsets you… maybe it’s just you.

While we don’t mind constructive feedback, this event will continue and has an end. It’s not forever, though some would like it to be.

 

If this event is causing you undue pain or stress, then, it might be a good idea to take a little time off until it is over. Again, it won’t last much longer and has an end. It’s important that you take care of yourself first and foremost above anything else.

Remember kids, it’s just a game! Certainly not a world or a social hub or anything like that that would preclude care being taken in randomly upsetting millions of people as an introduction to a new expansion.

The curiously named WoW blogger Lume the Mad has more commentary, including tales of his thwacking errant guildmates.

But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for having fun with people near the cap, considering they can immediately defend themselves. But thinking about the lowbies who have yet to build up connections on a server, I can’t help but wonder how frustrating this event must be for them. How many of them have quit over this fiasco? I’m willing to bet a rather sizable amount. The fact that safeguards weren’t put in place for low level areas is greatly disappointing.

 

What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to becoming a zombie other than to kill and infect other players and NPC’s. If there was actually a quest to perform as a zombie, and if lowbies could actually defend themselves, I’d be a whole lot more forgiving and inclined to view the event in a positive light. I definitely think it has its place as a fundamental concept. But the specifics are broken.

In retrospect, there are some takeaways here.

• Players really, really like world events that mix things up, especially ones that allow you to temporarily ‘play the bad guys’.
• Players absolutely cannot be trusted with ‘playing the bad guys’, especially on servers specifically set aside from world PvP (where you can assume players selected those servers for a reason). Given the ability to kill other players with impunity, unsurprisingly for those of us with MMO live team experience, a very high percentage will immediately rush to new player areas and make the lives of those who thanks to game mechanics can’t do anything about it a living hell. While laughing. And bitching at anyone who tries to stop them.
• No one at all is complaining about the temporary new dungeon/raiding content.
• Maybe keeping the brainsucking zombies segregated in a high level city (oh, I don’t know, maybe Shattrath, where you have to be level 60 to gain access unassisted) would be a nice compromise.
• Telling your players STFU and log out if you don’t like it? Not the best idea.

Anyway, it won’t last much longer, and if suffering random death and expensive durability hits upsets you for some reason, well, I’m told there are other games which would be glad to have you! Oh, wait.