Shadowlands PTR - Zombie Invasion Changes and Stress Test

[Thage]

The bottom two changes were all that were necessary, in my opinion. Give new players a stay of execution and let players who aren't interested in the PvP aspect of the event avoid it, while players who want to ghoul it up can go absolutely ballistic without having to deal with people who don't want to partake whining. I feel like nerfing the ghouls further when they're already opt-in now is needless.

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WTF else is there for you to do ingame for the last month of this Shit Xpac, this event at the Wrath Prepatch clone would have made me move BFA from Last to above WOD and Legion in my rankings. That shit was amazing back then.

Well, given the sheer number of systems changes being brought in with Shadowlands prepatch, between the level squish, unpruning, Chromie Time, spec revamps/updates, alongside the PvE side of the event in Northrend and Marris Stead, there's plenty to keep people entertained if they're not interested in the PvP side of the event.

[Lora]

so they bring back the event and then also ruin the event.

[Thage]

Ghouls can no longer attacks players and players can no longer attack ghouls unless they turn on War Mode.

that's dumb so whats the use of the event now ? in that case most people will have WM off and will boring as frak. i remember the zombie event back then. was fun as hell. dont know why people complained. it was a short event and was fun

People who aren't interested in PvP didn't feel particularly excited at having their non-PvP servers forcibly made into a free-for-all PvP environment that other players immediately turned around and abused the hell out of. Blame players who can't be trusted not to be shitheads for Blizzard making the PvP aspect of the event completely opt-in the second time around.

[Martymark]

No point the event now. It was a lazy rehash anyway, so sure, why not make it COMPLETELY pointless?

[catalystical]

so they bring back the event and then also ruin the event.

There's a lot of middle ground. It's not strictly 0 or 11.

[Bigcountry11782]

And Blizz caved to the crying babies again..... sigh

[Matt0193]

Good riddance, the event was mind numbing and glorified griefing when players were somewhat less toxic. The playerbase is substantially worse now between anonymous gameplay and hopping to other servers, giving a small fraction of the playerbase free reign to live out their degenerate desires was asking for a riot.

[mrsohta]

They should just remove the zombie invasion now lol

[Kuja]

Those are bullshit changes. Here I was hoping it would be as cool event as it was last time. But nope. But if at least all NPCs can still be zombified, I'll play.

[FlubberPuddy]

I'm loving the subtext of 'I can't grief during this event now, Blizzard sux0rs!!' , especially those complaining about having to turn on War Mode (shouldn't these people have turned it on and left it on in the first place if they always wanted to emulate a PvP server?)

[tru]

I think you are completely blowing this out of proportion. "degenerate desires". lol

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They decided to remove the players instead .

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They have been getting better at that since the end of Wrath.

[Pohut]

This is beyond dumb. Original wrath event pissed me off a lot, but at least it was insanely fun.

[Relapses]

A bit miffed that they added an opt-out button this time around but... I can't say I blame them. This forum would implode upon itself as it became the negativity epicenter of the universe had they decided to release the event the same way they did back in TBC.

[TriHard]

This'll be a very carebear version of the scourge event, as expected considering how people behave in 2020.

Fucking dumbass company can't even do this right.

[arandomuser]

Great way to fuck over the whole event. Good Job Whinebabies.

basically
might as well remove the whole thing now

[schwarzkopf]

There's a lot of middle ground. It's not strictly 0 or 11.

Well - mathematically it is either 0 or 11.

With such over the top restrictions on the spread, it will move to irrelevant and 0 very quickly.

The whole point of the event was to show an overwhelming invasion, now - you will barely notice it is there.

May as well remove it.

[Ryzek]

It sucks for sure but not surprising. *Sigh*

[Hitei]

Well - mathematically it is either 0 or 11.

With such over the top restrictions on the spread, it will move to irrelevant and 0 very quickly.

The whole point of the event was to show an overwhelming invasion, now - you will barely notice it is there.

May as well remove it.

It never showed an overwhelming invasion. It was always just people being shitty in auctionhouses or griefing random zones.

[Frinata]

This'll be a very carebear version of the scourge event, as expected considering how people behave in 2020.

Fucking dumbass company can't even do this right.

So... I'm going to opt to make this post right here the 'champion' of all the other posts that are complaining about the change.


I'm going to go ahead and presume here, that you weren't on the PTR when the ghoul version of the event was up.

That means you're likely getting information either from the Wotlk event, or from your favorite WoW Influencer, YouTuber, Streamer, what have you. Either way, it's second hand information at best.

I, however, went onto the PTR the moment I was aware of it being up, because the level squish and revamp was, is, and will be one of my favorite things coming to Shadowlands. I quite frequently hit the character cap of 50, and I'm into leveling, alot. So, I figured if there was one thing to test, it should be that. I'm not a high end raider, but I can contribute to testing in that way, at the least.

Exile's reach went as it did, but the issues arose when I left Exile's reach. The quests there take around 5 minutes to get done, after leaving, and then you're sent off to BFA proper. Nice and quick, right?

Let's throw in the ghouls, now. The moment you zone out of Exile's Reach, you're in Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, and guess why your loading screen is taking longer then usual. There's an army of ghouls waiting for you there that your computer is having to render. By the time you actually load in, you've already died and come back as a ghoul.

If you're like me, you get annoyed at that, so you blow yourself up, and corpse run. Realise that there's 5000 (hyperbole, but it's alot of ghouls) ghouls around. Ok, maybe it'll be fine. You res, and turn in the quest, and then immediatly get set upon by the ghouls.

Alright, this is getting silly, you blow yourself up, and figure that the guards will spawn in and deal with it... And spawn in they do. But one guard can barely take on 1 ghoul, let alone 5+. So, the guard dies.

Alright, maybe other players will respond to it. Alot of the veterans would be testing this out, right? Oh... They're just up on their flying mount watching and flying away... Or trying to fight, but dying because they're the only one trying... And that guy over there is just spamming laugh while outhealing the damage, but that's it...

Alright, so theres no end to the ghouls. Brute force it.

The quest line that takes 5 minutes suddenly takes 3 hours, because not only are they killing you on repeat, but the NPCs that you NEED to talk to are being camped as well.


That is why the original Wotlk event can't come back in the same way. War mode is a fine compromise between the two. Not everyone wants to be a ghoul. Every single event except for the Ghoul event has been optional to participate in. Suddenly forcing that onto players is fairly toxic.

And because I know it's coming, "Just don't log in" is not an option. Pre-patch is a hype moment. People WANT to log in and check it out. There is no way that people this excited would want to wait a few more days. They'll log in immediatly. Giving them breathing room is perfectly fine.

The only people upset by this is the same people who camped the new characters leaving Exile's Reach, and then pretended like they weren't impeding the whole point of the PTR by body blocking the whole entire way.

[schwarzkopf]

It was always just people being shitty in auctionhouses or griefing random zones.

... causing an overwhelming invasion