blizzard
Via Brian Howell
I close my eyes, trying to fall asleep at night, only to be struck by a barrage of tormented images....the corpses of players lining the once busy streets of Orgrimmar. Such devastation and ruination, in such an alarmingly short period of time. Some folks found it humorous, as it was all one colossal f**king accident. For those unaware, here's what you need to know about the 'Corrupted Blood' incident in World of Warcraft:
The Corrupted Blood Incident began on September 13, 2005 and went on for one week. The epidemic took root in the intro of a new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar the Soulflayer. Whattup Hakkar:
If you attacked Hakkar he'd cast a hit-point draining, debuff spell called 'Corrupted Blood' that was highly contagious, on players.
Now this is where it gets interesting in our little story...
The spell which was only intended to last a few seconds and STAY in Zul'Gurub ended up being spread by way of pets and minions well outside Zul'Gurub. And thus the pandemic was underway--both low and high level players were instantaneously 'rekt' by this curse that massively altered traditional gameplay.
Players tried everything...quarantines, straight up abandoning zones, but nothing worked until a series of new patches/updates were implemented. Pretty damn funny, pretty damn annoying. So pour one out today for the brave souls lost in The Great Plague of Zul'Gurub!
Via Baron-G
You died? Ah, that's sh*tty man. Best of luck making a mad dash back to defend the first point on Anubis without her.
Via eurogamer
World of Warcraft's Executive Producer J. Allen Brack released the following statement via Eurogamer, as a response to the Nostalrius server closure:
"Failure to protect against intellectual property infringement would damage Blizzard's rights. While Blizzard had looked into the possibility of working with unofficial servers, there was not a clear legal path to protect Blizzard’s IP and grant an operating license to a pirate server.We wanted to let you know that we’ve been closely following the Nostalrius discussion and we appreciate your constructive thoughts and suggestions, added Brack. Our silence on this subject definitely doesn’t reflect our level of engagement and passion around this topic. We hear you. Many of us across Blizzard and the WoW Dev team have been passionate players ever since classic WoW. In fact, I personally work at Blizzard because of my love for classic WoW.
We explored options for developing classic servers and none could be executed without great difficulty. If we could push a button and all of this would be created, we would. However, there are tremendous operational challenges to integrating classic servers, not to mention the ongoing support of multiple live versions for every aspect of WOW.
Over the years we have talked about a “pristine realm”. In essence that would turn off all leveling acceleration including character transfers, heirloom gear, character boosts, Recruit-A-Friend bonuses, WoW Token, and access to cross realm zones, as well as group finder. We aren’t sure whether this version of a clean slate is something that would appeal to the community and it’s still an open topic of discussion.
In closing, Brack made reference to the 235,000 signatures for the petition to reinstate the server, saying: "They obviously care deeply about the game, and we look forward to more conversations with them in the coming weeks."
What do you make of all this?
In case you could go for a trip down memory lane, we've provided the original video that depicts the final few minutes leading up to the server shutdown:
You can also check out the compilation of screenshots depicting the original massive pilgrimage staged by players in response to the Nostalrius server shutdown, over here.
Via Seba
At long last, one of Overwatch's most cherished fan creations is canon thanks to a new emote on game's test server. You better believe she's got her Doritos, Mountain Dew, and that custom stream overlay. Thanks to Seba for the video!
