Anti-Aliased: Killing the auctioneers is a perfect reason to go to Northrend pt. 2

by Seraphina Brennan Oct 29th 2008 at 11:00AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Events, in-game, Expansions, PvP, Opinion, Roleplaying, Anti-Aliased

But, while some players used the event as a way to grief others, other players began to take a stand against it. Heroes pulled out their swords, turned on their sense undead, and began vigils in the cities to keep them functioning the way they should. By doing something as simple as "playing along" with the event, the cities could be kept in their standard working order, letting business be conducted as usual.

When players didn't work together -- when they were more concerned with complaining about how bad the event was and how they couldn't do anything -- the result was catastrophic. I dropped by Stormwind one night to find all of the NPCs dead, bodies literally covering the streets, and only about 4 Alliance players attempting to make a stand against 30+ zombified players. The bankers were turned, the auctioneers were turned, the guards were even turned. Stormwind had literally fallen to the plague. The Argent Healers had retreated, and now no one was left in the town square but me and my horseman's sword.

So my guild was sick of it, and they didn't want to see it happen anymore. We all got together in Elwynn Forest, made a 35 man raid group (which ended up becoming 55 once more people heard what we were going to do.) Our guild mistress made a bold speech, everyone cheered, and then we mounted up and rode straight into Stormwind. With arrows flying and exorcises filling the air, we took back the city, posted priests and paladins to keep watch for the infected ones, and turned the Cathedral of Light into a refuge shelter for lowbies who needed aid and assistance.

Many in the Alliance kept up what we had started by particpating in a new channel called the ArgentDefense, and Stormwind began to function again. Complaints about how "no one could do anything" began to dwindle, because people had stood up and done something. Griefers got tired of griefing because they would either get killed much too quickly or find themselves being cleansed of the plague before they could turn by groups of priests. Even roleplaying, which was amazingly sparse on my RPPvP server, was more popular as people openly roleplayed the defense of the city streets. Amazingly enough, there was a way out of this "bad game design" by, gasp, embracing it.

"Most importantly though, people have an amazing experience to share with others, even those who may not play the game."

If this event was something you could "opt-out" of, or avoid, I don't think it would have anywhere near the same impact. Stories, like this one above, wouldn't have occured at all. Instead, people would have just looted their loot, sold what they wanted, and gone on with the constant improvement of themselves. This event would have gone mostly unnoticed, perhaps applauded by a few people, but it would have found itself forgotten in the history books of WoW lore freaks.

Now people have a reason to really hate Arthas and the scourge. People have a reason to journey to Northrend and deliver the fight to the doorstep of Icecrown Glacier. Most importantly though, people have an amazing experience to share with others, even those who may not play the game. All because a few people stood up for themselves and did something to fight back when everyone else said "it was impossible to do anything."

Colin Brennan is the weekly writer of Anti-Aliased who likes to fight against impossible odds. When he's not writing here for Massively, he's over running Epic Loot For All! with his insane roommates. If you want to message him, send him an e-mail at colin.brennan AT weblogsinc DOT com.

Tags: anti-aliased, arthas, arthas-menethil, auction-house, auctioneers, blizzard, event, lich-king, scourge, scourge-invasion, woltk, world-of-warcraft, wow, wrath-of-the-lich-king, zombie-infestation, zombies

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Vetali said on 9:34AM 10-29-2008

Nice post Colin. It's great when complaints are transformed into fun. The thing that I never understood about the whiners was that they could just take a couple of days off of WoW and avoid the whole thing... But your approach is much better.

timmy! said on 9:55AM 10-29-2008

Great article. I had a similar experience only I was one of the ones doing the griefing, me and another guildie laid waste to South Shore and recruited a rogue in the area. Several alliance had turned on South Shore as well. Eventually several alliance showed up to cleanse the town. I retreated too Tauran Mill where some scourge had begun attacking there, as I was waiting for the inn keeper to respawn for my trick or treat, i saw several players logging in and immediately get attacked by zombies. There was a low level priest and paladin there, helping cleanse the town which eventually they did.

Great event and we're not even an RP server but I found myself getting into the zombie roll, even if I hadn't intended to get infected. Again great article!

timmy! said on 9:54AM 10-29-2008

Wistin said on 10:34AM 10-29-2008

This can work in real life, too, but that's a subject for another day.

Sounds like a cool time was had. I would have joined you were I on that server. On our own server, I stood vigil at the front gate of Stormwind along with a handful of others. The plague got bad, but not so much that Stormwind was overtaken.

I look forward to the next phase.

Brian! said on 11:48AM 10-29-2008

So sad that people find dynamic world events such a horrible thing.

Uh, it isn't as if getting turned into a zombie or not is going to affect your life. If it does, maybe you are playing too much WoW, hah.

I wish more MMOs were dynamic in nature like this. If you want to play a static world on rails, then I think single player games are the best solution. I think every MMO designer wishes they could have more life in their games, but they quickly cow down to the whiners (who are a vocal minority) and back down.

If you are going to make a game where your cities can be invaded, you have to sort of do that from the start and make people used to the idea that nothing is safe in their little world.

steve said on 1:32PM 10-29-2008

i to pray, hope, wish, and plan for a day when mmo are more dynamic in there world events. i find most mmo to be very very boring. most it seems untill recently just had one way too play hit lvl cap then roll a alt how boring.

maybe now more dev will have more dynamic world events of course they should well inform the player in a RP way that they will not be able too play with out getting into the event.

Brian! said on 4:12PM 10-29-2008

Funny thing is Steve, if you go back to Ultima Online days and before, the online worlds were actually way more dynamic. Text MUDs would have wildly changing events.

But even UO had some very interesting dynamics - largely because players were giving a choice of skills and no "rules" to how you had to use them. Of course, in UO zombies where player killers and they were fierce and death meant that anything and everything on your body was gone. It was soooo crappy to die.

Yet UO also had some interesting benifits to that. Stuff meant way less. It was pointless to horde some epic sword because you're likely going to loose it anyway. So nothing really was that epic. Also, everything wore out and eventually broke. Even if you repaired it, items were meant to be replaced - and often.

So people formed towns by placing homes where they wanted. Other players came in to terrorize them. Then other players came in to defend the town. Then eventually UO released a "safe world" like MMOs have today and then everyone started complaining how UO was not as fun just as much as they complained about the PKing before.

Funny thing is, EVE is close to what UO was and I have to give that game props for a very dynamic universe. If I didn't get so bored with their ship combat and travel I would play that game constantly. I would like to see UO+EVE+WAR.

faradhim said on 4:42PM 10-29-2008

Really nice piece. I too liked how the event transformed a normal PvE realm into a RP event for all.

I do however have one complain against the event. It is that unless you have a high level character there is little you can do other than honker down and ride out the event. When I was on my level 17 alt in Org there is very little I can do against the invasion of high level zombies.

In the next phase I hope Blizzard take all players into consideration instead just the 70s.

Rorlins said on 12:20PM 10-29-2008

I am so glad that you had the time, the guild, the organization, and the people and the levels to do what I'm sure Blizzard expected all of us to do. I don't doubt that they believed what happened for you would happen for everyone.

Sadly, they were mistaken, horriffically. I'm a very casual player and I only have one level 66 hunter at the top. My guild is a small group of RL friends that only play casually in small chunks of time around being parents, managing houses, and full time work. We weren't able to be part of your grand resistance even if we had wanted to. My time on Sunday was going to be spent leveling up my engineering between watching my 1 year old play. In the end I just logged out because coming back to the computer every 5 minutes to queue up the next recipe meant I was dead and had to do the corpse run first.

What upsets me to no end in ALL articles on this event was that those who were opposed to it are flavored as "anti-change". That is simply not true and completely unfair. I embrace change in the MMO world. Want to take out Stormwind? Go for it! Destroy it. But maybe warn me that I won't be able to play the game at all on Sunday because you're busy destroying it and not lead me to waste a few hours finding out.

I'm even willing to turn a blind eye to the /trade chat of the kids cheering about the carnage they were causing and how much fun it was to camp people, to seek out AFK people, or to manage to "trap" people in town by knocking out flight paths and covering exits. It was griefing and for a day I would have been okay letting them have their fun, had the rest of us had a better handle on how much our usual game play, PLAY was going to be disrupted.

I didn't find the event fun myself. I don't care for PVP and I don't care for griefing. I didn't have any opportunties to join a grand resistance and I couldn't have dedicated the time to particpate in one. I'm glad you did. At best, a paladin and I tried to hold the grand anvil in IF while we worked but even we were forced to retreat and I had to pray that the healer didn't move during my frequent AFK's. I wouldn't detract from anyone else's fun, but the totality of the event should have been advertised and those of us casuals could have planned around it like we do other known service outages.

I didn't find the event fun for myself at all. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to try, but running back to my corpse repeatedly after being over run wasn't fun. As I said I didn't have the resources you did, and because of that I had no positive experiences attached. I couldn't play as I wanted to (ie level up engineering) and I couldn't play as Blizzard wanted me to (got tired of running back to my body and didn't like being a zombie). So I had nothing to do.

It was a great idea on paper I'm sure, and I think it had great potential. But I think it was horrifically executed and while I'm sure that some had great experiences, I will view all future "events" with great leariness.

One thing I have learned in 10 years of online gaming, and over 20 of table top: When you railroad your players into a situation, when you remove all choice, you are going to piss them off. Some will roll with it. Some will complain. And some occasions they will simply get up and walk away.

Ærynn Lómëhtar said on 8:05PM 10-29-2008

If you had taken the care to read his article, you'd see that his guild did not storm Stormwind to attack it but to take it back from griefer zombies. His actions restored normalcy for people like you to continue what you want to do during the time that is available to you and gave immersion to those who wanted it as well. His point was that the zombie invasion became less of a problem as a result.

I am not accusing you of anti-change; the Zombie Invasion was disruptive and destroyed routine. But guess what: it was working as intended. This is what happens in a real plague. This is what happens in a real invasion. If you wanted your low level, non-PvP equipped character to survive to continue your way of life, a little creativity would have ensured this could have continued—leave the cities and major towns. Works in real life, works in this simulated environment.

I salute the OP for his and his guild's unique and creative way to preserve their way of life. And as much as I want to sympathize and empathize with people who want "higher powers" to solve things for them so they can go back to their routine, I find that I can't.

Tom L said on 1:10PM 10-29-2008

We also have another good reason as to why we never went to Northrend. Arthas had this zombie plague, which when unleashed on us made it impossible for us to maintain our lifestyle no less think about attacking him.

Great article. I found the event very avoidable and only mildly inconveniencing.

BTW, Rorlins, maybe you should think about doing something other than what you planned on for a while instead of trying to force the issue of levelling engineering in IF while the plague is running rampant.

I did while levelling a priest. I got to XR and the place was slammed so I got on my chicken, rode to Ratchet and flew to a place that was not a city and continued on with my life.

Ta,

Rorlins the Dwarf said on 9:19PM 10-29-2008

I would have, but when you're afk 9 minutes out of 10, you have limited things you can do in a game w/o a pause button.

Drifter said on 2:46PM 10-29-2008

@Rorlins, Maybe you should have logged for the day and spent that 1 minute (that you weren't afk) out of the 10 minutes with your one year old child. :P

Seriously, when you consider the length of time this event ran compared to the time that WoW has been existence, it's trivial. I've heard people complain that the event was taking time away from them preparing for WotLK. Uhm, hello?! You've had how many months? If you're not prepared now... it's no one's fault but your own.

If you're leveling a toon, sorry, last week wasn't a good week to work on that I guess. Thing is, the majority of the population has at least one level 70 character and so leveling a toon during the event wasn't a problem for them. Ask yourself, is Blizzard supposed to hold off on any new content or events until you reach 70 too? Of course not. So you had to adjust to events in the game.

Ærynn Lómëhtar said on 7:33PM 10-29-2008

If you really wanted to AFK, the safest place would have been somewhere remote... not forcing yourself to be in the middle of an invasion and assuming that you will be unharmed, like tourists who continue to snap pictures while terrorists and the armed forces exchange automatic fire... and then curse, condemn and blame everyone but themselves when they get hit.

I suggest Wildhammer Stronghold: I parked my banker there until the plague died down.

Drifter said on 2:46PM 10-29-2008

Great article. I enjoyed the event and hope we see more things like this in the future. It would have been great if there were achievements or even some small incentive for players on both sides (zombie vs. not) to participate in the event.

As a zombie it was challenging to see how large of a zombie army you could amass before being wiped out by other players. Competing for the zeppelin tower, the bank, the AH, the inn, etc in Org were a lot of fun.

Later Sun night I went to Shattrath (boring) and ended up stumbling around in Terokkar Forest for what seemed like a good hour seeing what I could do. When health ran low, I attacked wolves or basilisks to build it back up. I traveled to a couple NPC villages, Tuurem and Firewing Point, turning them into zombies, hoping they would thrive as zombie centers. Unfortunately the zombies would slowly die off and didn't propagate as I was hoping they would. Eventually I wandered over to Allerian Stronghold but wasn't able to turn enough NPCs to zombies to hold off the guards.

Like I said, I thought the event was great and something totally different than the norm. I would have enjoyed it if I could have logged in as a zombie (similar to LotRO's monster play) w/o having to run to my corpse, resurrect, and wait to get infected before continuing the invasion. Instead, I played Sun night as a naked Tauren (to avoid repair costs) running around finding zombies, punching them until they infected me and I turned into one myself.

Syme said on 4:48PM 10-29-2008

Good article! My server had a fair number of people who tried to fight the zombies. It was only the last day that the plague began to overwhelm our defenses. My guild had to concentrate on holding Thunder Bluff, and the bluffs were carpeted with zombie corpses. I'm sure there were servers where this didn't happen, and things were disrupted much more, but at least on our server Hordeside, it was only in the last moments that things began to really break down.

gojira shipi-taro said on 2:22PM 10-30-2008

Hmm. I like me some world changing events. Loved stuff that happened when I was playing Asheron's Call. Nuking of Lagwich, Shadow Invasion, Pookie attacks, Baelzaeron rampages, those were all good. Key: they were operated by game staff with a vested interest in creating an entertaining event and doing things that their targets ultimately ENJOY.

What I don't like is players being empowered to grief me or PvP me when I specifically select a PvE server.

In the AC events, there were occasional PvP elements that were available, but you had to FLAG to participate in those elements. No one was forced to endure ganker kiddies unless they wanted to.

Game designer story-line stuff GOOD.
Joe Pwnface fellow player random poop-flinging NOT GOOD.

Glad I stopped playing WoW way back before the first expansion, when they started talking about having PvP+ content on PvE servers.

JoeMello04 said on 1:44PM 11-02-2008

The event practically reeks of Edmund Burke's "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." If you act as if nothing has happened (and since complaining is the status quo, that's exactly what people did) you will have problems.

It probably would have been as much of statement for a large number of the gaming population to simply not play WoW. After all, wouldn't you want to avoid zombies like the plague?

Viceguy said on 1:45AM 11-05-2008

Hi, i havnt read al comments, but i think many of you missing one important thing, i am a warlock lvl32, i have only played wow 3-4 weeks, i didnt think that was so much fun, because i couldnt do anything without getting killed. They could have made it so that even i could have "enemies" that was about my lvl, that when a zoombie atacked me he shouldnt do more damage then as if he was level 35, then i would feel that it was any meaning to fight him,, but i couldnt do anything, no meaning to play at all, as you said, i could stop playing the game a couple of days,, hmm, thats a f*#ing dumb comment, i pay money to play the game..
Offcourse, i like that it happens stuff, its so damn cool the whole epedemic thingy, zombies and all, i was the one announced in sporregar that it was a ship above the city entrance, that was damn fun :) But, it should have ben made so that pepole that dont have a lvl70 dude can play to. And that wouldnt have been so hard to do. I cant say that i feel like going to that other place wanting to kill someone now, i cant, im just a lvl32. I didnt complain in chat once, no point, but i didnt enjoy getting killed all the time either. If i would have atleast a small little tiny chanse to kill anyone, then i would have enjoyed it :)

Oh well, thats my modest opinion, happy gaming dudes and dudettes ;(