I like how epidemiologists used to like to cite that Tainted Blood incident in World of Warcraft to model what humans would do in the face of a REAL pandemic, but none of that behaviour happened, and no one talks about it any more. Players vacated cities because of a fake plague in a game where there isn't really a penalty for dying ...
Players vacated cities because of a fake plague in a game where there isn't really a penalty for dying
That's not entirely what happened, they tried to vacate cities but players/PVPers from opposing factions unified and enforced lockdowns on those cities, actively killing anyone trying to get out to prevent further spread of the Hakkar plague.
Familiar, no?
As this was back in Vanilla it meant no flying mounts so the best someone could do to get past this was try to rez a slight distance from their body and hope nobody saw them quick enough that they might then make a run for it. Considering this was Vanilla WoW PVP however that would have meant a lot of Rogues, Druids, and NElf characters in stealth making attempts such as the above even less safe than it might appear.
Not that this was the first time raid mechanics spilled over into the rest of the game, wasn't even the last time either. One of the first raid bosses in Molten Core, Baron Geddon, had an ability where he turned a player into a time bomb.
Throws a bomb at an enemy. After 8 sec., the bomb explodes, inflicting 3200 Fire damage to the target and its nearby allies.
3200 fire damage was death to everything back in Vanilla.
The problem was that this ability could originally target pets. On its own that isn't a problem, however said pets could then be dismissed which would simply remove the ticking time bomb from the fight. On the face of things this would be a good way to mitigate the mechanic in favour of the raid group. However the pet retained the effect until it was eventually set off. Leading to this:
Pets can no longer be made the bomb, previously, players with pets would dismiss their bombed pets and summon them in certain areas, such as the Ironforge Auction House and cause much havoc.
Vanilla was a massive mess of bugs like this where mechanics could and would be exploited to either cheese a fight or grief other players. Mostly because MMOs of this scale were still emerging and evolving so a lot of mistakes were made along the way. The Paladin Reckoning Bomb for example being another where someone ended up 1-shotting a World Boss that was meant to take an entire raid group.
I like how epidemiologists used to like to cite that Tainted Blood incident in World of Warcraft to model what humans would do in the face of a REAL pandemic, but none of that behaviour happened, and no one talks about it any more. Players vacated cities because of a fake plague in a game where there isn't really a penalty for dying ...
That's not entirely what happened, they tried to vacate cities but players/PVPers from opposing factions unified and enforced lockdowns on those cities, actively killing anyone trying to get out to prevent further spread of the Hakkar plague.
Familiar, no?
As this was back in Vanilla it meant no flying mounts so the best someone could do to get past this was try to rez a slight distance from their body and hope nobody saw them quick enough that they might then make a run for it. Considering this was Vanilla WoW PVP however that would have meant a lot of Rogues, Druids, and NElf characters in stealth making attempts such as the above even less safe than it might appear.
Not that this was the first time raid mechanics spilled over into the rest of the game, wasn't even the last time either. One of the first raid bosses in Molten Core, Baron Geddon, had an ability where he turned a player into a time bomb.
3200 fire damage was death to everything back in Vanilla.
The problem was that this ability could originally target pets. On its own that isn't a problem, however said pets could then be dismissed which would simply remove the ticking time bomb from the fight. On the face of things this would be a good way to mitigate the mechanic in favour of the raid group. However the pet retained the effect until it was eventually set off. Leading to this:
Vanilla was a massive mess of bugs like this where mechanics could and would be exploited to either cheese a fight or grief other players. Mostly because MMOs of this scale were still emerging and evolving so a lot of mistakes were made along the way. The Paladin Reckoning Bomb for example being another where someone ended up 1-shotting a World Boss that was meant to take an entire raid group.
Fun read, but what a waste of time playing those games.