Heh, didn’t mean for a double swtor posting this week, but I wanted to get this out there before the rakghoul invasion event ended. Pretty cool stuff though! Reminds me of the lich plague in wowcrafts just before WOTLK came out. But what’s the deal with zombies anyways? They seemed to have gained quite a bit of momentum in the last few decades. Hell, I challenge you to name a single FPS game that doesn’t have some sort of zombie level or zombie DLC from the last few years! Ok, don’t take me up on that offer cause I’m sure you lot can name plenty… my readers are a little too on the ball, lol! But you get my point. There seems to be an invasion of zombie invasions!!! I guess psychologically, we like things that go wrong. That whole schadenfreude thing. Disaster movies are a huge seller!! I think deep down we like to see a little adversity for us to overcome. I don’t see the human race ever just “settling down” and sipping sweet tea on their porches. They’d sooner set fire to the planet for something to do before ever reaching a state of utopia.
So with that, I think zombies are a hot commodity right now because they offer that fictitious extinction level event we’ve been craving so dearly, but with just enough real world deniability to ease our minds that it’s not real. Meaning, they’re a creepy bad guy that’s more believable than vampires or godzillas, yet not as plausible as a mile long meteor… so it’s ok! Well… kinda… we’ll get back to that. Continuing with why they are so intriguing, I think it also comes back to the Uncanny Valley effect! Zombies ARE the things that all other UC phenomenon are measured against! They ARE uncanny valley! That’s the reason why those creepy robots with latex stretched over their “faces” freak you out so much… because the “animated dead” concept strikes us in an exceedingly uneasy way. It can terrify us, make us sick, or just give you the willies. For whatever reason, our brains don’t like it. Which, of course, makes them an excellent antagonist for any story!
As for that deniability thing, well… I really wouldn’t put too much stock in it. Of all the mythical “monster” creatures, the zombie is probably the closest to being something real. No, I’m not saying you should start sawing off your shotguns just yet, but since we’ve come so far with our knowledge of medicine and infectious diseases, we can say with a good degree of certainty that the zombie effect is real and can be problematic. Ok, first off, the closest we human folks have to anything like it is rabies; which there’s been like, what, 1 death from? However, the way it spreads and causes massive malfunctions in the brain making the infected creatures extremely aggressive and powerful, and the ease by which it’s transmitted, rabies is a great candidate for the zombie apocalypse. Viral and bacterial strains evolve and adapt all the time, making more and more lethal versions, crossing boundaries of species as well, which doesn’t bode well for us peeps… cause you know, a frothy mouthed raccoon with a bad attitude is one thing, but an actual human with a mind like ours can be a dangerous thing to have under the influence of a powerful disease. However, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the zombies to start shambling into your living rooms… It’s just a theory, plausible and possible as it may be, the likelihood of an outbreak of a strain like that is astonishingly low… we have much more to fear from the germs coming out of China because of improperly handled livestock than we do of a zombie rabies strain.
And there are actually things out there right now that are basic “zombiesque” pathogens… well… sort of. There’s this really cool fungi out in the depths of Brazil that latches on to the brains of ants, controlling their bodies to go to a nice little spot that’s perfect for the parasite to release its spores and continue the cycle. An amazing use of parasitism, especially with our modern goggles on, because we just see “zombie fungus”! Still, when you apply this sort of idea to a “reanimation” type case, we don’t really have anything that compares to that aspect… so no undead walking around. But with stuff like parasites and viruses, we can get a pretty close interpretation of the zombie effect.
Food for thought! … heh!
Problem?
Jelly?
While I can imagine some easily contagious illness that would produce “zombie” effect on the mind I can imagine what would actualy give them any level of durability.
Human body is incredibly fragile, cells require oxygen, sugars, proteins to sustain themselves. That is achieved by blood beeing pumped through veins delivering these nutrients… without oxygen and sugars for 10 minutes brain will simply seize to be able to send electric impulses throughout nerve system, after another five minutes the structures decay beyond any reasonable functionality.
Rest of the body is slightly more durable but even it can not effectively move after loosing two liters of blood. (the cells will simply have drained all avaiable “power supply”)
the problem with disease or parasites is that when they have this sort of level of infection, usually the host doesn’t last for very long.
I guess the trick is to control the mind and body using chemical signals, rather than a crazy invasive infection, so that you don’t damage the host too much, but get it to do what you want. or something like a Goa’uld.
I can totally see an apocalyptic level plague spreading, even more so when you consider how rapidly some strains of bacteria mutate into something resistant to current medicine. Dying and coming to life, however, I think would be unlikely.
Zombies in games make sense, because they’re safe. It’s hard to offend people in shoot the zombie games; whereas shoot the Russian (or country of choice) is going to at least upset some folk in that demographic; and therefore be a harder game to sell.
Anyone liking zombie apocalypse stories comics might want to check out the pocalypse, it’s a pretty nifty flash comic with a great story so far.
Anyway, as asked, but not wanting to post back on original comic because that was a week ago: BETA
A lot of my focus has been on frost mages so far, but I’m checking out arcane next. Frost feels… feast and famine. The proc rate on FoF was lowered, but in return for taking away deep freeze damage, Ice lance hits like a two trailer truck. It HURTS. I was getting 50k crits from it often, and there is a glyph that makes it do half the damage as a cleave to one other target. However, it still feels like too much frostbolt spam. The new spell effect for frost orb (not frostfire orb anymore) looks cool an flashy, but I kept thinking it was blocking the tanks view it was so big. Seperating brain freeze from Fingers of frost was probably from the best, but it makes those BF procs less exciting since they only proc off the new bomb spells. I’ve been using frost bomb mainly because of the guaranteed proc, but it feels a little off. Frost feels less fun than the live version, mainly because it feels like taking a single target rotation (FB to get FoF to ice lance) and an aoe rotation (pet freeze for more FoF, bomb spell to get BF) and squishing them together. I still love Fizzy the elem, but the freeze mechanic is annoying still. Mainly just the targeting circle. I would be happier if he had a single target ability he cast at his target to give me FoF procs, that shared a CD with freeze so I could choose damage or control (freeze is still useful for actually freezing stuff).
Combat rogues feel very much the same. Main things to note: Bandits guile doesn’t go away when you attack a new target (OMG FINALLY THANK YOU BLIZZ SO MUCH). You have to keep revealing strike on the target all the time now to get bonus combo points on sinister strike. There is this awesome glyph for high gear levels: SS does more damage but costs more energy. This is amazing, my rogue on live with adreniline rush on, then random bloodlust or timewarp that shouldn’t have happened then usually mean I keep capping on energy. This glyph prevents that.
Holy priest still felt good, I had few issues in the dungeon I healed. As soon as the issue with changing specs is fixed, I am making her disc offspec holy as well so I can try out attonement healing (it’s a glyph, and evangelism is baseline) in smite chakra. Should be fun!
The two available zones (jade forest and valley of the four winds) are very fun, with some notable bugs. Jade witch is eternally broken. A horde quest for meditating is so bugged, only one person can do it at a time so people have to wait in a line (and jerks kept cutting or bugging it out again). Also, there are turtles FROM HELL! Anytime they do a melee attack, they make nearby people crash.
I can’t say anything about the panda newbie zone since I’ve barely done much there, and less about monks since I haven’t even tried it.
Anything interesting in arcane front? I never liked frost and fire
Not that I’ve tested yet, but it SOUNDS more fun that the live version, which puts me to sleep.
~following paragraphs until last describe half remembered common knowledge of things described on wow insider, a few threads on the mage forums, and my own glances at the wow talent calculator before beta was live; if you know all that, feel free to skip to the end~
Looking over stuff, AM is something you’ll want to hit everytime it’s up because it generates charges (like the AB stacks, but I believe it has a new name now). The only way to clear the charges (I haven’t checked to see if they can fall off during inactivity like live) is through ABar. I’m personally glad to that this beautiful spell has actual use.
Pretty sure the stacks of unknown, to me, name also super charge AM and they DEFINITELY buff ABar. Barrage will do a cleave type affect depending on the number of charges you have (0 charges will launch one barrage at the target, 1 charge will launch one at the target and ANOTHER at a nearby target, up to a max of 5 charges being launched). This is pretty awesome for arc AoE since you don’t need to deal with the dangers of melee range whilst arcane exploding. AE will still be useful for masses of small adds that die fast though (like bloods on madness, esp if you have AE talented down to one second global, all the spellweave procs are fun).
Plus you get that new bomb spell from talents, IDK if it interacts with arc in a significant way besides straight up extra dps; like it does for frost by proccing BF.
Regardless, AB spam, AM every chance you get (maybe; if it is still manaless it might defeat the purpose of burning) ABar to clear and deal nice burst, plus that new bomb spell, people would have to be completely ignorant idiots to still accuse arcane of being a one button spec.
I’ll play with it in the next two days and report back on monday for you what I think of it. The beta forums are able to be read by everyone, if you want to read other people’s thoughts you can head there in the mean time.
Just nobody ask me about fire. I don’t know much about how to do the spec on live, let alone beta, and like mentioned in my first post (with the holy priest thing), it’s impossible to change specializtions right now (just glyphs and talents with the dust/tomes) and I transfered Niv from live so she is stuck with arc in her off spec anyway. (it’s wierd, the spec you’re wearing when transfer is totally wiped, but the off spec is not and you’re stuck until blizz finally fixes it).
well… mostly non offensive… remember the hubbub that “resident evil goes to africa” game caused?
excellent write ups!!! any experience with the ret pallies?
Can’t say I do remember, I played a FPS, once. I don’t even remember which one.
Glad you liked them, especially after the second one, I was feeling like I hijacked page >.<
My ret pally is level 70. So… no.
Maybe I should just list? I can play survival hunter, Elemental and enhancement shaman, all rogues, boomkin, discipline priest, and affliction warlock, in addition to the previously mentioned frost/arcane mage, combat rogue and holy priest.
I was planning on getting around to all those eventually; I just have my mage, rogue, and priest on beta right now, and if anyone wants to hear about those from me, I'll go do those sooner rather than later (boomkins in the crowd should speak up, I was probably getting to that last).
I could probably get a pre-made pally over there, but the most I could do is tell you how intuitive it feels. I know some of the changes, divine wrath being a holy power consumer, and I think there is a new cleave strike. I wouldn't be able to tell you much, but if you want, I'll see what I think of the spec from the perspective of a noob.
I did chat with one recently though, apparently in pvp they are broken in an overpowered way. Something self heals being over tuned for a dps player, and it makes them pretty unkillable. I was talking with her because she was happily "Making Friends" everywhere in this one quest hub.
Ok so tried warhammer 40k dawn of war 2 and said i would give you feedback so here ot is…….. It really cool, the most intresting part is the less focus on base building. And more on capturing point but mostly squad combat which makes it very fun. There is a demo in steam so there no pain in trying it out.
Also this vieio watch it it’s only 4min long
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V7HtO57f1Es
Really good
you say there was a free steam demo? might have to take a peek!
so… it’s more about zerging then? >)
I feel like zombies tend to lose their ”edge” as being this ”DEATH HAS RISETH ! ” ….to ” Well get your gun or chainsaw and cut them down from your home ! ”
As with anythingelse….Zombies ARE overused and the publishers are Dead-set on finding something that spark interest in a majority….then suck the life out of it ( no pun intended ) (welll maybe a little intended )
Personally, I wouldn’t want anything like a Zombie Apocolypse since I know I wouldn’t last for even an Hour…not like those guys in the games or in the movies. People who think they can …well they probably will be the first food for the zombies.
As for your scientific points…yes it is one of the more ”possible” disaster scenarios that people are weirdly facinated about but it won’t be ,as you said, the traditional zombie thing that we expect as ”walking corpses ! ”. For that to happen, we need to unquestionable define what LIFE is. Is it something that our organs pump to our brain and nerves until they fail ? Or is it something more ”spiritual” as in our Spirit wields the flesh as ”Life”. Because either case asks for a different explanation and solution. If it is indeed a scientific and biological event…then corpses might as well get ” risen” by some Overly-developed virus ( might be human-made ) being planted in the nervous system and so forth.. If it is the spiritual kind….well then you have to go for the myths and religious stuff which you won’t be able to find any satisfying answer other than ”Dark Sorcery ” or ”God’s Wrath ! ”
At anyrate though… in a gamer stand-point….please don’t OVERDO IT >_> Nearly EVERY publisher shooter and even some non-shooters now have zombie modes…and it is taking the place of ”Horde mode” style games that have actual variety.
maybe this has all just been a cleaver attempt by the CDC to prepare us for survival when the zombies attack. go on, I dare you to name 3 things you need incase of an army invasion… now what 3 things do you need with a zombie invasion? I bet you could name 3 of the latter. >)
I could do with some more discretion with our zombies in gaming… but some games have done it very well and blended it into the story (like wow or swtor), others… well… they’re just proud and singing it loud with their zombie parades down the street. I guess it could fly a few years ago, before we knew better, but now with science and medicine, you need a darn good reason why that corpse is up and sipping tea from your empty skull.
I remember the rakghouls from the Knights of the Old Republic game. Appeared in the lower cities of Taris. Out of Curiousity, are they the same in this new Kotor game as they were in the first one? In the First one, they were humanoid that were whilte, furry, and had a head similar to that creature that attacked Padme in the geonosian area.
Picture: http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/5457/1269255-567px_rakghoulgame_large.jpg
…okay, so they don’t have fur….
um, they look similar, no eyes though. and the human ones just look like pigpen from the peanuts with green stank lines coming up.