Mission: Ambassador vs. Invasion: Zombie

Love that Lich King with his awesome scourge-y plague crates.

Like many, I’m sure, I find this new Scourge invasion both exciting and annoying as fuck.

Exciting in that wow, what a way to foreshadow the next expansion – dropping a new invasion on the gameworld and having it directly impact the players and their game lives. Last time, we had to actively seek out and engage the invaders near the major cities. This time it started in a wonderfully organic manner – a far-off rumor of some crates in Booty Bay. Then an undead zombie ported to a major city and began infecting people. The guards took it down, but a few were infected in the process. The next day some crates were found in the portal cave under Thunder Bluff. Reports flooded in of plague deaths across the Barrens. Crossroads, Dustwallow, Gadgetzan, Ashenvale.

I love this stuff. Might sound morbid, but mass plague and zombie stories are some of the most compelling fiction around in my opinion. I thinking 28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead and The Stand.

Shattrath was a mess of skeletons last night. Argent healers and Dawn soldiers appear to be everywhere, trying to protect people from what they always suspected was coming.

On the shit side of things, zombies fucking suck.

I must have picked the worst possible time to grind my Horde faction rep. With the plague spreading and zombie NPCs and players lurching around everywhere, it’s very difficult to reach lower-level quest hubs and turn in or pick up quests. Either your quest giver is dead or you’re not paying attention and get whacked by a zombie while you’re reading new quest text.

That said, I made some great progress with the rep. I hit Exalted with Undercity on Saturday and got well into Revered with Darkspear Trolls, Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff. I remain kiss-close to Exalted with Silvermoon, but as I spent much of Paquita’s youth in Eversong Woods and The Ghostlands, I think I’ve fairly dried up any further Silvermoon rep and must rely on sympathetic points to push it into Exalted. I’m not worried, though. Thunder Bluff was on the low end of Honored when I started this project, and that reputation rose to Revered completely on spillover from Undercity and Orgrimmar.

I finished all available quests in Deathknell, Brill and The Sepulcher. Polished off a few more forgotten tasks in Tarren Mill and Hammerfall, in Arathi Highlands. Then I made my way over to the Orc/Troll newbie zone and rolled through those quests. It was on the way to Sen’jin Village in Southern Durotar that I started hitting zombie resistance. The whole village was undead, save a couple of neutral NPCs. I killed as many as I could, but eventually turned into a zombie myself.

That’s when it got interesting. When I turn into a zombie, my priorities change. Yes, I could just let myself die and respawn and wait for the whole thing to be over with, but that takes time. I figure I may as well have fun while I’m zombiefied.

Example: I rode into Orgrimmar last night around 11:00pm server time. Noticed that the front gates looked very eerie without guards. That was my first indication that something was wrong (fucking brilliant staple of any zombie movie, and it’s an organic event in a goddamn MMO :D). Inside the city, death was everywhere in a cloud of plague. Diseased NPCs were faltering amidst packs of NPC and player zombies. I took down quite a few before I got hit myself and promptly joined in on the zombie action. I infected several players and ran into the auction house for more fun. Probably pissed a few people off, but what the hell – you’re supposed to spread the infection. It’s part of the event.

So yes, zombies suck while you’re questing or leveling or simply just standing in the auction house checking prices. But I realized last night that it’s supposed to suck. You’re supposed to get angry. From a game perspective, those who die are your friends, your neighbors and your enemies. When you turn into a zombie, you’re essentially playing out the final moments of the Azerothian Everyman who falls to the Scourge in this most vile recent attack.

All of this bullshit is happening so that when you step foot off the boat in Northrend, you remember all those who died – and who is responsible. When I think about that, and how the player population at large had no idea this was going to happen, it’s clear that this was a fantastic moment in World of Warcraft, and a brilliant precursor to Wrath of the Lich King.

And if my little peeks at some spoilery spoils for Wrath are any indication, all of this is going to lock together in an INSANELY cool way for a major part of the WotLK storyline. Cannot freaking wait.