Rolling restarts to usher in new phase of the zombie invasion?
by Adam Holisky 
Oct 26th 2008 at 1:05AM
The announcement on the login screen tells us that there'll be rolling restarts for all realms between 5:00 a.m. PDT and 6:00 a.m. PDT. Each realm should be down for no less than 15 minutes.These restarts have become a common thing in the past few days. From previous information given to everyone from Bllizzard, we know that restarts correct server lag and other connectivity issues. And there have been quite a few of these issues since patch 3.0.2. A restart fixing these things is nothing new. But you have to ask yourself now, are these updates secretly pushing new things onto the server?
It seems like for the past few days after every "rolling restart" a new phase or two of the scourge invasion has begun.
So I'm going to make an educated guess based on what may very well be completely unrelated variables – tomorrow or Monday we'll see phase five of the invasion, complete with something new we haven't yet seen.
Prove me wrong, Blizzard... prove me wrong.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
zed Oct 26th 2008 1:08AM
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11829506258&pageNo=1&sid=1#5
I'm hoping this also addresses summoning a shadow and having another person steal it from you.
muhahahaha! Oct 26th 2008 6:30AM
LMAO I "tagged" one and then drug it over to someone else doing AoE after that it just went all over the place like a pinball while I DPS'd it enough to keep the kill and feigned whenever it came back at me. I looted thirty of the quest drops and an epic cloth chest to vendor. But at least it was my summon though. My shadow managed to kill at least six other players stupid enough to attack it because they thought it was one of the other quests mobs. Muhahahahaha!
Ragnaron Oct 26th 2008 7:24AM
I haven't seen an article or posting on this.. But I havent looked all that hard.. But at 6am EST an invadion of plague rats ran through stormwind on Malfurien, the guards auto attack them, and we had a crap load of 70 zombies running around. Caught part of it with my fraps. Anyone else seen this?
Amanda Oct 26th 2008 1:18AM
1:12am noticing floating pyramids above SW. We play on Dalaran server.
phisquare Oct 26th 2008 4:12AM
Durrrrr welcome to yesterday?
szilagyi Oct 26th 2008 1:18AM
The pyramids were already there. I'm expecting the plague to be nigh undispellable next and for plague zombies to start spawning random and approaching communities--not just brought on by players.
George Romero action is coming!
MisterMoose Oct 26th 2008 2:13AM
It already nearly is a good bit of the time, given the 2 minute duration and resists to cleansing. By the time you run across an infected group you can easily not have enough time to cure most/all of them, and once one turns he'll start turning the others.
Rydolomo Oct 26th 2008 1:19AM
I noted Blizz moved the AD dispel team to the FP. Must be to avoid inter-zone contamination. I'm assuming every FP has one, I haven't checked yet.
Rydo
Ironside Oct 26th 2008 1:41AM
Or people got tired of the extreme slow down with fifty angry griffons spawned every time a flightmaster was attacked
Generik Oct 26th 2008 1:52AM
But that stuff is hilarious!
Ranaulf Nov 6th 2008 7:27AM
I'm really starting to get sick of the zombies. I just wanted to go in to STV, start leveling my fishing but I kept getting attacked by stupid zombies. I understand they are trying to give us a reason to go to Northrend, but I was going to go there anyway to level up my toon. Blizzard better be glad that they started this after my last payment to them before the expansion because I would have just not played this month and started it back up for the expansion
Wistin Oct 26th 2008 2:05AM
The key to these invasions is to get a group, flag up and go to an invasion point. Everyone else will either tab target you (then you whack them) or have to be careful of their target giving you the edge on anything that spawns.
It was effective on my server, the other side was so afraid to take anyone on it became a spectator event for the non flagged. If they all flagged and attacked it might have thwarted the plan but they were too chicken.
MisterMoose Oct 26th 2008 2:15AM
This largely works because of the new auto-targetting system. If you don't have a target and hit an attack button, then it will target the closest thing you can attack. So if you are spamming attacks at a monster, have a tiny bit of lag or slow reflexes, then you'll easily attack a flagged player by mistake once your monster goes down. It's really lame.
Runstadrey Oct 26th 2008 2:42AM
We did the shadows earlier tonight, it was great fun. In Azshara for a long time it was just the 3 of us guildies and as we started getting the stone down to around 1200, out of nowhere half the server (lol) showed up. We lost those shadows, but another stone was near and we got one from there. I'd like to see some adjustment made to make it harder to steal the shadow from the first person to contact it.
But, even with that aggravation, we were remarking about how we hadn't had this much fun in the game in a very long time. I hope they have more such unique happenings in store before the launch of WotLK.
MassivelyFTW Oct 26th 2008 3:05AM
Partly it is to reset everything, but I heard it was impossible from Blizzards end to add stuff dynamically with the servers still up. However it is designed it can't be done technically. There are now loooads of plagued vermin everywhere. Anyone noticed anything happening elsewhere? The grave being dug up was almost missed. Something in Eastern Plaguelands perhaps? Also if Arthas made an appearance where in Azeroth would he turn up?
Reuh Oct 26th 2008 3:20AM
I found a rather large skeleton in between the Aldor and Scryer in Shattrath. It's on the outer ring, and you really can't miss it. This was about 2:30am ET on Argent Dawn server. Someone that came to look at it said it wasn't there about 4 hours ago. It's larger than a Tauren and it's only sitting down! Perhaps an ogre skelly as someone else mentioned while looking at it? I looked for the Ogre in Lower City, but couldn't tell since the zombies were playing down there. Maybe it's nothing, but it's interesting!
Kia Oct 26th 2008 3:30AM
That's pretty interesting that WoW can't add things dynamically. As the owner of a Ragnarok Online server, I can say it's possible to add pretty much anything at all without nuking the server uptime. Wonder why a game like WoW can't manage it.
Darxe Oct 26th 2008 4:08AM
Maybe it is possible, but they just don't want people to mine the data out for the next phases? They might want to keep it a surprise until it happens.
Simes Oct 26th 2008 7:27AM
I noticed a ghost hanging around the innkeeper on the Scryer's tier last night on Silvermoon-EU - no name tag, couldn't be targetted. But was moving around.
Had the same model as an Eye of Naxxramas from Strat
TCITH Oct 26th 2008 8:20AM
Kia - your comparing RO functionality with WoW functionaility? LOL
Anyhow the downtime has not been confirmed by blizz as to content change, they are doing restarts - bug fixes and other issues that have errupted from this latest patch would be the main reason - they often add content without restart and much of the current content was added due to a timer
your commenting on poster speculation not patch - but seriously RO compared to WoW, that made me laugh