Almost every game nowadays posts a message before the game starts stating that game play experience may change when playing this game online. Which rather makes us think that internet can be such a scary place to be in or it maybe the next best thing that happened to you. But more than scary people lurking the internet it’s the people who disrupt gameplay and spoil the whole experience of playing an MMORPG.
The idea of going to a PvE Server is mainly to avoid having to handle with stupid fights when you want to learn the game and try new things. That’s the mistake I did, I got into a PvP server and needless to say my level one paladin stood no chance against the bunch of rogues I ran into. Every time I went back to my body (after they killed me) they used to lurk around, waiting for me. And me being a grade A World of Warcraft noob, did not realize it for the first 8 times they killed me! I don’t know how level 52 rogues can stoop to such low levels by assaulting a level one paladin time and again. I so wanted to say “I did not wish to lower myself by engaging your kind, but you leave me little choice!” and decapitate them all.
That said, I quit that server and hopped onto a PvE server. I get to create my player character once again. Fortunately (or unfortunately) I do not need to take the same character that was mauled up in the previous PvP server. I would say out of all the MMORPGs out there; World of Warcraft employs the most number of character customization. It will let you change the head gear, skin color, hair style, facial hair, etc you name it. It’s probably the case with most gamers out there, but I always tend to use a male character for an FPS game, but a female character for third person game. I guess, it’s because I don’t want to keep looking at a dude running (and dancing) for multiple hours in-game. Anyways the strategy of moving to a PvE server proved the most effective, as there were much “friendly” NPCs in this world. I had already decided that I will show no mercy. In a skirmish I cornered a “ferocious” pig and showed it who is boss!
Lastly if you are going to die, die with honor, or at least style. Fellow players talk about your “bravery” at great lengths for a long time after you die; like one to two minutes! You don’t want “diseases” killing you in game. I over heard about this disease called corrupted blood that killed a lot of people back in the early World of Warcraft days. I was so curious, I had to look it up in Wikipedia and unsurprisingly I did find some interesting tidbits.
Virtual epidemics are worse than virtual thefts. Corrupted Blood was a virtual plague that infected characters in the computer game World of Warcraft, spreading rapidly from character to character. Its resemblance to real-life disease epidemics drew international attention in the news. The epidemic began on September 13, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of World of Warcraft, introduced a new instance called Zul'Gurub into the game as part of patch 1.7. Inside this instance was a boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer, alluded to as the "blood god". Players who fought Hakkar were affected by his debuff (a spell which has a negative effect over a fixed period of time). The debuff, in this case, was Corrupted Blood, a spell that caused 250–300 points of damage (compared to the average health of 2500-5000 for a character of the highest level, and with those at the mid-levels having about 1500) every few seconds to the afflicted character. The affliction was passed on to any characters standing too close to an infected character. While the curse would kill most lower-level characters in a matter of seconds, higher-level characters could keep themselves alive (via healing spells, having high stamina, or other means) long enough to spread the disease around the immense landscape inside the game. After a few days, Corrupted Blood had become World of Warcraft's version of the Black Death, rendering entire cities uninhabitable and causing players to avoid large clusters of other players, and in many cases, causing players to avoid major cities altogether.
Every so often, Hakkar will cast this debuff on a random player, effectively forcing players to be spread apart, or in the case of melee classes, to move away from Hakkar before spreading it to the other melee classes. Blizzard Entertainment tried several times to fix the problem, including imposing quarantine on certain places. This "plague" was eventually "cured" by changing the mechanics of the Hakkar encounter to eliminate the spreading of the effect from character to character. Hakkar still has an ability called Corrupted Blood, but it now takes the form of a red bolt launched at a random player fighting the boss. The player and those nearby take damage, and receive a heavy damage over time, but the effect no longer spreads further.
In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the
1 comment:
Wow. I wonder if Blizzard made the epidemic on purpose. That is a really interesting event for any game.
Post a Comment