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Uncategorized Sunday, September 16th 2012 at 11:00 am

Death Knight’s Plague Rips The World of Warcraft to Shreds

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A bug in World of Warcraft allowed Death Knight players to cast plagues on friendly characters, triggering untold levels of destruction in Azeroth on Friday night. Players looking to enjoy a regular raiding, looting, questing session of WoW may have been met with a rude awakening when they logged on to find that whole towns of players and NPCs had been turned into piles of bones.

Coincidentally (or not), the glitch just happened to trigger one day of the seventh anniversary of WoW‘s infamous “Corrupted Blood plague”, which involuntarily spread from players to pets to NPCs, killing just about everybody back in 2005. However, unlike the Corrupted Blood incident, which spread from character to character without direct contact, this week’s plague was caused by spells that had to be cast by human players. In other words, when given supreme power over their virtual world, players immediately decided the the best thing to do was go on a killing spree, wiping out everything in their path.

Blizzard managed to patch out the glitch on Saturday morning, but by then the damage had already been done. Killing NPCs, including shop-owners and quest-givers seems like a douchey thing to do, since it pretty much ruins things for everybody else. Then again, I would be way more interested in MMOs if crazy, unpredictable stuff like this happened more often.

(via WoW Insider, Image Credit; WoW Insider)

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  • Brian Beacom

    ”
    Then again, I would be way more interested in MMOs if crazy, unpredictable stuff like this happened more often.”

    This – I always find MMO’s are the hardest thing to immerse yourself in, they can’t have big quests that are available permanently because every player will be at different stages of making peace between warring nations or destroying that Juggernaut or whatever so it always has to be at start of quest settings and then where’s the achievement on completing it? Either that or each player gets a different view and people at the start of quest watch people who’ve completed it wander past locked doors and giant enemies.

    Best thing you could do is have a team dedicated to causing mayhem every week or 2 in a certain area of the map, that said I wouldn’t wanna be a programmer on that MMO.

  • Rawr

    Actually this is all wrong, I haven’t played WoW for a while now, but even in the Lich king expansion, you could have world changing quest lines, where it literally changed the landscape of massive areas, strongholds obliterated and now you’re side has set up a town/garrison inside the ruins, and more than I can explain here.

    If someone who had already completed the “epic” questline was in the area, they would be invisible, and literally interacting in a different zone (aka not able to interact with you at all), unless you invited them to a group, then they could be with you and help you etc etc. My point is Blizz did some interesting things to make your quests/decisions seem to have more impact :P

  • verybored

    Sure, but what I would want (and I guess what Beacom wants) is to be able to actually affect the world around you, not just for yourself, but for the other players as well. If the world only changes for you when you destroy the great evil that is shadowing the land (or whatever… never did play WoW, and this is why) then what is the point of destroying that evil?I would love to see an mmo where by happenstance or by doggedly following up on tiny little rumors you could actually become a hero, whether it be saving an npc village from marauding orcs, or hunting down a baby dragon that will soon grow in power and begin destroying the land.

    Also, no way in hell the date is a coincidence.

  • Greg

    I think the largest problem with what you’re asking for out of an MMORPG is that if they were to program in an event that is to slowly progress over time, this would mean multiple patches for each phase of the event. To put it in psuedo code:
    Patch ‘Alive – Phase 1′
    IF Dragon Whelp = Alive THEN
    Release Patch ‘Alive – Phase 2′
    IF Drake = Alive THEN
    Release Patch ‘Alive – Phase 3′
    ELSE
    Release Patch ‘Rebuilding – Phase 1′
    END IF
    ELSE
    Release Patch ‘Dead – Phase 1′
    END IF
    So on and so forth. For every possible outcome of the event, there would have to be a patch ready to release in the event. That would require a massive work load for the programmers and would no doubt reduce the quality of the day to day gameplay and support.

  • http://twitter.com/Propaganda_Ink imsosly

    “when given supreme power over their virtual world,
    players immediately decided the the best thing to do was go on a killing
    spree, wiping out everything in their path.”

    see: EvE Online.. lol wow, none of these WoW players would last 30 second in EvE Online.