wow The Scourge Zombie Invasion Has Been Toned Down

[Starym 3,800]

 

After the initial chaos of the Scourge invasion on the PTR it calmed down a little, but was still raging on until very recently, with players entering the capital cities and being overrun and turned into zombies themselves. This replicated the original invasion event from Vanilla and Wrath of the Lich King and Vanilla pretty well, as it also made the game fairly frustrating to play for its duration, but definitely made it different as well. It seems that has all changed recently, as Blizzard have decided to reduce the impact of the plague speading zombies significantly. Unless these changes are reverted before the patch launches, you'll have to go over to Classic when Naxxramas launches to get the full  chaotic event experience.

But before we get into the changes, let's take a look at a video from the event less than a week ago, which conveys the previous situation pretty well:

Apparently that was a little much for Blizzard, and as redditor Siggythenomad noticed, they implemented several changes to the rules for the zombies/ghouls, with the main one being you need to be flagged for PvP to interact with the event:

Quote

Falling higher than 10 ft will cause instant death. *Jumping on an incline will deal 20% max HP DMG*

Ghouls have been designated to 50-70 second timers, and are spawn capped to around 10-20 *Used the murloc lake as a test.*

Players can only attack ghouls only if they are flagged.

This will certainly stop the chaos that we've been seeing on the PTR before this, but it might also be just another testing step to find a solid middle-ground where both the players that just want to go about their day unmolested by zombification and those that want as much chaos as possible will be pleased.

Which side are you on? Do you want the event to be more chaotic like the old WotLK and Vanilla ones (or even the Blood Plague one)? Or do you just want to go about your business without fear of zombie hordes?

For more zombie crazyness, check out the original article on the invasion event.

Source.

[Lithari 194]

Good, this way, players that want to do it, flag themselves in Stormwind or Orgrimmar and do the quest there, those that do not want to do it can...well not do it.

[Libraridan 36]

What if I'm a hungry zombie and everyone has Warmode off? I will starve to deat...er...to undeath?

Too late for this design consideration, but maybe not in the capital cities? That's where more players do business, are busy doing other things. It should be optional, or extremely rare, but enticing rather than annoying. Rewards from the zombies you drop? Rewards for certain achievements AS a zombie?

I think, as a whole, the playerbase has become more focused on end results rather than the process. This is both from an overall design concept plus simple aging of the game.

[Eshy 4]

This was expected. This event hardly has a place in todays wow community which is mostly consist of of triggered whiners who are never satisfied with anything.

[Mythicdruid 6]

To be truthful, as much as I and many others would hate it, we need to experience the full effect of zombie apocalypse to teach us what it could be like in real life and prepare for it. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Just saying... 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Mythicdruid

[guyangon09 0]

"To be truthful, as much as I and many others would hate it, we need to experience the full effect of zombie apocalypse to teach us what it could be like in real life and prepare for it. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. Just saying... "

Absolutely not. I know we aren't expecting a surge of new or returning players with this expac, but imagine this. You hop on for the first time to see what the hype is about, you make your character and enjoy Exiles Reach for an hour or so. Then you get dropped in your capital and the place is infested with Ghouls. Your getting 1-shot constantly, your quest npcs keep getting killed, and you have no way to progress except to wait like a week for the event to pass. You just paid $60 to wait a week to actually play. It's a horrible experience. I played it in the PTR. The rival faction would fly over to your capital to intentionally target everyone and everything, and because getting killed turned them into ghouls there was no consequence to it.

 

The new version Ghouls can still attack players even if they have War Mode off (might be a bug, idk) but you don't get 1-shot and the ghouls die much more easily. It's enough to convey what is happening in the story, but not to completely halt your progress.