World of Warcraft is Infectious

ringbarer writes "News is coming in that the lands of Azeroth have become infected with a deadly plague which the developers never intended to spread. Originating from the new Zul'Gurub instance, the plague has spread from player to player via town NPCs. Entire cities are being wiped out, yet players are finding this surprise content entertaining!" From the article: " Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die). GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infect other players." Commentary on Terra Nova.

Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a return of a Sims add-in for a pet gerbil.

It was downloaded from TheSims.com, and it could infect players, which could infect other players, etc.

Some linkage on the item:
http://www.alexjacobson.com/cgi-bin/mt-comments2.c gi?entry_id=179 [alexjacobson.com]

Re:Fixed

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Zul'Gurub is an "instance" zone. A fresh copy is created for every group that enters it. (more or less). The disease in question is caused by one of the encounters in the instance. It is not litterally raging in that zone.

It is in fact normally cured while the group is still in the zone. the current "plague" behavior is being caused by malicious individuals who are intentionally re-calling to populated areas in order to "greif" other players.

Unintended? I don't care

[Red Flayer]

This is absolutely great. This is an element of gameplay that even if unintended (which I'm not so sure about) can have far-reaching consequences.

Why shouldn't MMORPG characters get sick? Maybe once you're exposed and recover from a certain illness, you have immunity. Maybe this immunity will be helpful in a later instance.

I would love for more MMORPGs to release world-affecting things like this into the game. It might be hard to balance, but I think this is fantastic.

One of the reasons gameplay in MMORPGs gets boring is that typically, the world never changes except for the addition of new material.

Give me the four horsemen of the apocalypse any day!

Re:Unintentional?

[buffer-overflowed]

I wouldn't call it a bug. It was a complete lack of foresight.

Of course, the unintended consequence of that is probably the most amusing unintentional world event yet.

Re:Dam that is some plague.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Only natural variation in your immune system would offer a difference, and because extreme physical exercise actually weakens your immune system, the level 12 billion warrior would likely die more quickly than the CPA.

That does not sound right unless there is a point where excercising too much does start to reverse the good side effects.

Re:Unintended? I don't care

[Irish_Samurai]

I agree absolutely. The reason I quit playing these MMORPGs was because nothing ever happened. I mean, I could go and try a quest, level some, and then wait in line to kill some MOB for an earring or some boots. It got old really quick.

I began to read the the article synopsis and got really excited. REAL PLAGUES! Oh yeah, that sounds cool! Unfortunately, it was not by design. I'm aware that it would be expensive and difficult, but thses types of events happening on a regular and accelerated basis would bring me back to MMORPGs in an instant.

Re:Unintended? I don't care

[Irish_Samurai]

Even cooler would be if such a plague were to hit the world and a randomly chosen player, or handful of players, were dropped limited amounts of the cure in their inventory, with directions for use.

Would they charge money for it? Would they give it away for free? Would they try to make copies of it so they could innoculate the whole world? Would they use it on themselves and destroy it?

Events where players across all levels of acheivement and dedication are allowed to influence the world to a significant degree would really drive subscriptions.

The question is would the subscriptions outweigh the costs enough to generate a substantial profit?

Re:Unintended? I don't care

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Events where players across all levels were allowed to affect other players without their consent would really drive subscriptions... into the ground.

Most people don't play games to roleplay a victim.

Social experiments don't work outside of games designed to be a social experiment (like ATITD). I certainly don't wish to pay to be part of someone's master's thesis. I have better things to do with my free time.

Look at what happened to UO. A tiny minority liked the whole dreadlords era. The people that threatened to quit if that crap continued far outweighed that minority, so the game was changed.