Posts with tag plague

Nethaera hopped on the forums today to let us know that the massive city deaths were indeed a result of an exploit taken by nefarious individuals. The exploit has been hotfixed already, and it should no longer be a problem.

Blizzard doesn't mess around with stuff like this... if people are found exploiting the game and causing problems, they'll not only find themselves banned but also in some other troubles.

Nethaera

Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities. This exploit has already been hotfixed, so it should not be repeatable. It's safe to continue playing and adventuring in major cities and elsewhere in Azeroth.

As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation. If you have information relating to this incident, please email hacks@blizzard.com. We apologize for the inconvenience some of you experienced as a result of this and appreciate your understanding.

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Mists of Pandaria is here! The level cap has been raised to 90, many players have returned to Azeroth, and pet battles are taking the world by storm. Keep an eye out for all of the latest news, and check out our comprehensive guide to Mists of Pandaria for everything you'll ever need to know.

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This afternoon, Paris time, something very strange happened on various realms. Argent Dawn's forums have a long thread about it, but to cut a long story short, everyone in Stormwind and Orgrimmar was killed, NPCs included. It's also been happening on Tarren Mill, Ragnaros, Draenor, Twisting Nether, and no doubt other servers.

Of course, rumors abound as to just exactly what happened. Most people point towards it being a hack, and there's some videos out there floating around that give credence to this theory. Has it happened on your realm? What on earth is going on? And what do you think is causing it?

Update: Blizzard has posted on the forums, informing us that this exploit has now been hotfixed.

More screenshots as they come in after the break.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Why yes, that is the most disgusting whale you've ever seen. Unless, of course, you've witnessed local authorities taking dynamite to a beached whale to get it out of the way since they couldn't move it just by pushing the thing. That is disgusting. Whale guts landing on cars a mile away? No thanks. I'll take the guy pictured above over that.

Moonkinmaniac asked...

"On the WoW calendar there's an undead whale picture. What the heck is it? Is it a rejected project for the current expansion or possibly one for Cataclysm?"

I apologize for the grim picture accompanying today's column, but I found it fitting. You know, even if it does have an artificial grain filter thrown over it to make it extra creepy. Chernobyl is creepy enough as it is without the filter, but I happened to like this particular shot. It's relevant, too! I promise!

Sal asked...

"Why don't the level 80 gnomes take back their home and clean up the toxic in it? We're able to run through at level 24 or so and clear the place, but a bunch of level 80's can't?"

This is extremely interesting. Guildox is a site that tracks raiding progression solely based on earned raiding achievements -- they check the Armory entry of your guild, and then add them to a list of who's toppled which instances and when. But they recently sent us a note about some overall data, and it's fascinating. Below the pulldown bar of the achievement listings on their site, you'll find an "achievement rate" stat. That is the percentage of guilds who've completed the selected achievement as compared to the number of guilds in their system who've completed any of the 10 or 25-man raiding achievements.

In essence, that's the percentage of guilds raiding who've completed that achievement. And the toughest achievement in the game right now is The Immortal, which requires you to get 25 people through Naxx without dying once. Only about 1.5% of guilds raiding have finished that one. After that, it's Heroic: You Don't Have an Eternity (take out Malygos in six minutes), and Heroic: Shocking! (bring down Thaddius without crossing charges). The hardest 10-man achievement is the non-Heroic version of the Malygos timed achievement -- The Undying actually isn't too bad, with almost 20% of guilds having attained it.

More after the break, including information on the easiest raiding achievements.

Starting this week, we have a little change coming to The Queue. Adam Holisky and I will be tag-teaming the column, taking turns writing it each day. Today is me, Alex. Tomorrow is Adam. The day after is me. The day after that is him. I think you get the picture. It'll let both of us do a lot more work on the site as a whole, while still keeping The Queue fresh and awesome. I think it'll work out well!

Ezzy asked...

Did they remove the ability to buy Ruby Shades from Haris Pilton? I camped them for a while and the never spawned.

A bad case of space cancer put me out of commission for the last few days, and for that I apologize. In addition to my apology, I blame the pandas. They caused me to come down with such a horrid plague. I'm back on my feet now though, so the Q&A will continue!

jtrain asked...

I'm admittedly new to tanking, and I hear people talk about a 'rage dump'. Why would I want to dump rage? I thought the whole idea was to build up a good amount so I don't have to sit there auto-attacking waiting for my abilities to become usable. In Wrath, I never seem to have a problem generating rage and at the end of a fight in which I've pulled several mobs, I usually have quite a bit of rage still available. Am I doing something wrong?

Forget Fox News -- the Times Online has an analysis up of Blizzard's zombies event, and their main point seems to be that you can't compare a plague outbreak in the World of Warcraft to one in real life. Risk is what defines real outbreaks, and since there was really no risk in whether you became a zombie or not, players didn't necessarily act as they would in the real world. Some players even willingly submitted to infection, which of course presumably wouldn't happen with a real widespread fatal disease.

But there are parallels to be drawn, and professors say that the zombie plague worked a little closer to real life than Hakkar's corrupted blood did (no coincidence, I'm sure, that the zombie plague was designed to be spread, while the Corrupted Blood was basically a bug). While the plague never did really infect everyone in the world, it did spread pretty quickly -- apparently there's a number you can use to track how quickly a disease spreads, and the zombie plague landed in the arena of a normal outbreak of smallpox (given, of course, that we don't know exactly how fast or how widely it spread).

Very interesting. There is still more to say about this plague, I think (and though things have slowed down on the realms, hopefully the event itself isn't completely over). But it is fascinating how Blizzard turned emergent gameplay into an official event, and how they mimicked the real-life qualities of a spreading disease (the more of it around, the more likely you were to pick it up) while still leaving the idea firmly grounded in the in-game lore. Very cool indeed.

So by now, you've probably heard of Tenris Mirkblood, the Blood Elven vampire boss in Karazhan who is surprisingly generous with his loot, dropping a Vampire Batling for everyone in the raid as well as a very sweet axe by both the musical and weaponry related terms -- Although only one of those, unfortunately.

Tigole answered a few questions about this boss in a recent post on the forums. Tenris will only be around for about 10 days, which is why he's so generous with the bat pets, and the axe is the only other item on his loot table, if you don't count the Badges of Justice.

So what this means, first of all, is that if you haven't managed to get a group to go beat him down, you'll want to do it soon or lose your chance at a pretty cool pet and a pretty cool -- if rather weak -- novelty trinket. In addition, if you weren't lucky enough to win the roll on the Arcanite Ripper on your first try, it looks like you'll only have one more chance at it. Sacrifices to the gods of dice and/or the Gods of Metal, whichever you subscribe to, are recommended.

Our friend Boubouille over at MMO Champion has done some more digging in the datafiles of the beta realms, and pulled out a brand new boss in Karazhan of all places. Meet Prince Tenris Mirkblood of the San'layn, a group of elven princes aligned with none other than The Lich King himself. He's not live on active servers at all -- again, Boubouille dug this up from beta realm files, so we may never actually see Tenris in game.

But there are a few quests surrounding the boss as well -- for more on how he might be included in the game during the world event (including possible spoilers), hit the link below.

I had a ton of fun on the servers last night running around and eating as many brains as I can. As I'm a huge fan of zombies in all their forms, Blizzard's world event hit the mark for me, and so, I've spent my every minute as a zombie plotting how the living undead just might take over the world. Here's a few tips for making sure the zombie apocalypse really does shake the world.

Strength in numbers: This one's obvious by now, but you need to be with other zombies to really do any damage. You can convert NPCs, but not very quickly unless they're low level, and low level zombies drop relatively fast. It's far better to convert players (usually by listening in for anyone who wants to be a zombie, and then inviting them to a zombie party off the beaten path). But the key is to wait until you've got a good group -- any zombies that go shambling off by themselves are going to get quickly overtaken by NPC guards or overzealous Paladins.

More tips after the break.