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[WoW] Musings on the zombie plague
Oct. 27th, 2008 05:18 amOkay, so World of Warcraft is doing a new zombie plague as the lead-in to the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
Some parts of it are pretty much the same as when Naxxramas was first introduced. There are zones that have necropoli floating over them, and you can do quests and earn special 'undead slaying' pieces of gear.
There's also the zombie plagues in the cities. Basically, yes, the people of Azeroth are fucking stupid enough to fall for the 'plague in the grain' trick. Again. So there's plagued roaches skittering around. Killing one of them with a melee attack or a throwing knife (in my case) gets you the plague. There are occasionally a number of plague rats running through the cities. Killing one of them with a melee attack or a throwing knife gets you the plague. (Please note, killing these critters with spells does not get you the plague.)
The plague, if left uncured, turns you into a zombie. As a zombie, you can try and infect other people (players and NPCs), but if you're in a major city when you change into a zombie, you're probably going to die pretty quickly.
But the plague has been changing as time goes on, you see. Initially, it took 10 minutes, once infected, to turn into a zombie. (Note, if you were infected, and you got hit with any additional infections, it took 10 seconds off of the timer to turn you into a zombie.) A day or so later, it was down to five minutes from infection to zombie-hood. Then a day or so later, two minutes.
Now it's one minute. And re-infection when already infected still takes 10 seconds off of the timer, so if you're melee attacking a zombie, you're probably going to get turned into one unless you kill it exceptionally quickly. The plague basically sucks if you're a melee-based character, or one without a combat pet of some kind. If you're a mage, or a priest, or a warlock (or possibly a hunter too, I haven't asked), you can kill zombies all day long and barely risk infection.
And it's a real pain in the ass to get cleansed unless you go to an Argent Healer, which, by the way, as the plague has progressed, there are less of around.
And Wrath of the Lich King doesn't come out for over two more weeks. I'm almost expecting auto-zombie infection rates by the time this event ends.
Some parts of it are pretty much the same as when Naxxramas was first introduced. There are zones that have necropoli floating over them, and you can do quests and earn special 'undead slaying' pieces of gear.
There's also the zombie plagues in the cities. Basically, yes, the people of Azeroth are fucking stupid enough to fall for the 'plague in the grain' trick. Again. So there's plagued roaches skittering around. Killing one of them with a melee attack or a throwing knife (in my case) gets you the plague. There are occasionally a number of plague rats running through the cities. Killing one of them with a melee attack or a throwing knife gets you the plague. (Please note, killing these critters with spells does not get you the plague.)
The plague, if left uncured, turns you into a zombie. As a zombie, you can try and infect other people (players and NPCs), but if you're in a major city when you change into a zombie, you're probably going to die pretty quickly.
But the plague has been changing as time goes on, you see. Initially, it took 10 minutes, once infected, to turn into a zombie. (Note, if you were infected, and you got hit with any additional infections, it took 10 seconds off of the timer to turn you into a zombie.) A day or so later, it was down to five minutes from infection to zombie-hood. Then a day or so later, two minutes.
Now it's one minute. And re-infection when already infected still takes 10 seconds off of the timer, so if you're melee attacking a zombie, you're probably going to get turned into one unless you kill it exceptionally quickly. The plague basically sucks if you're a melee-based character, or one without a combat pet of some kind. If you're a mage, or a priest, or a warlock (or possibly a hunter too, I haven't asked), you can kill zombies all day long and barely risk infection.
And it's a real pain in the ass to get cleansed unless you go to an Argent Healer, which, by the way, as the plague has progressed, there are less of around.
And Wrath of the Lich King doesn't come out for over two more weeks. I'm almost expecting auto-zombie infection rates by the time this event ends.