Zombies have started taking over and causing havoc across Classic WoW, thanks to the legendary plague event added to the game early this morning. Across World of Warcraft, suspicious boxes can be found in hubs such as Booty Bay, which allows players to self-infect and go off and be mischievous.
To find out more about the Classic WoW zombie experience, I jumped in (before the massive queue times started) and met up with several players looking to make a mess in Classic WoW, through a truly limited, special event that may never return again.
My gateway to a zombie adventure was Millehouse, a level 48 Rogue in my guild who was going to great lengths to make the lives of horde players significantly spookier. They told me via in-game whispers: “I got to the crossroads and infected like 30 people. I don’t kill them, I just infect them so it can spread.”
The way it works is simple. Millehouse starts off in Booty Bay where infected crates can be found, he intentionally infects himself which starts a 10 minute timer until they transform into a zombie, then they make the trip over to the Crossworlds via a ship in the nearby docks.
With plenty of time to spare before they reach a highly populated horde levelling zone, they’re able to set up in a great position to catch average players. “If you’re a solo player, it’s the level 15-25 quest hubs as most people are still low level and a lot of them are there. But for maximum dopamine you try to go boom inside the auction houses.”
However, this isn’t a barrier-free venture. Players can dispel the infection off you if they notice you’re infected. This practice had stopped many a raid for Millehouse by the time I started talking to them. “Because you have to travel and can’t hearthstone, people on the way notice you’re infected and cure you. They might think they’re being helpful, or maybe they’re just preventing “malicious” people like myself from causing havoc.”
However, there was more to the zombie event than just a lone player messing up low level players. In fact, raid groups filled with like minded players were forming. Organised via the new in-game group finder, a group titled “SPREADING PLAGUE”, 16 people met up north of Goldshire and stacked on top of eachother, Retching on eachother until the full group were made undead.
From there, we stuck to the roads and took out questing players upwards of 20 levels below us, infecting them when possible if they were able to speed off and escape. The main problem? Level 75 guards around Goldshire Inn and Stormwind, which stopped us from rushing into the Trade District and infecting dozens of unsuspecting people.
Eventually, the group huddled together and ran all the way down to Westfall, killing quest NPCs, transforming some guards at Sentinel Hill into plague zombies on our way to Deadmines, where we eventually stopped to camp the summon stone. This was where we really shined, killing off quest-critical NPCs and turning merchants and guards into zombies. It wasn’t until a sole level 70 Warlock came, surely requested by a slain guildie, to rain fire on us that we rushed away.
At that point I had to go, I had actual work to do and couldn’t keep tabbing in to keep up with the pack as they went off towards Darkshire.
Is this griefing? Kinda, but I don’t care. For me it draws the line between griefing and taking part in a special event. It’s worth noting that this was on the new fresh PvP server, so everyone had signed up for some level of mishchief from others out in the open world. More than making questing players’ lives worse (players who then begged in LFG for help I might add), it was a true social event. I was able to sit down and chat shit with total strangers, more so than any Mythic Plus or pugged raid in retail WoW.
Look, there’s no way around it. This was probably the most fun I’ve had playing an MMO in years. It was stupid as hell, with members of the zombie raid team yelling “Morb them!” every time we came across a levelling player, but this is the sort of thing that makes Classic WoW so special, and if you can, I recommend you log in and try it out too before it’s gone forever… again.