2008: When Zombies Invaded WOW

Basically, Blizzard thought it would be cute to add a zombie outbreak to the game just before The Wrath of the Lich King expansion came out, to keep folks playing instead of just waiting for the expansion to hit.  And things went horribly wrong....

https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/news/wows-most-famous-bug-ever-the-corrupted-blood-incident-revisited/

This website explains it, but it doesn't really explain the chaos when the outbreak infected the entire game, making it unplayable as griefers ran around infecting everyone and killing NPCs.  There were attempts to heal, but the griefers just infected or killed everything again and again.  The Solo MMO Player finally stopped playing for 3-4 days until Blizzard got everything under control.

https://everything.explained.today/Corrupted_Blood_incident/

You can get more explanations of the various phases and a few photos at these links.

https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/guide/scourge-invasion-event-pre-patch-wrath-of-the-lich-king

https://vanilla-wow-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Zombie_Infestation

https://www.wowhead.com/news/on-this-day-the-zombie-infestation-and-the-second-scourge-invasion-happened-324529

This site lists zombie abilities and goes into further detail as to how the event unfolded and ended.

https://wowwiki-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Zombie_Infestation

Apparently Blizzard tried several hot fixes that failed.  They had to do a hard reset and a patch to put an end to the whole thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

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The Caverns of Time (WOW)

The Solo MMO Player just reminded me of The Caverns of Time, a way for players to access older versions of WOW to get to areas destroyed by later version of the game before Classic was re-released.  If you are bored, you might enjoy exploring here.  The Solo MMO Player thought there were some unique and interesting quests and items found here.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Caverns_of_Time

Blizzard has begun reintroducing items that were removed or destroyed.  Here is information about some of the new old stuff.

https://www.wowhead.com/guide/collections/accessing-old-instances-hub

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Dreaming of WOW 2

The former president of Blizzard always wanted World of Warcraft 2.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/world-of-warcraft-2-was-something-former-blizzard-president-advocated-for/1100-6539664/?utm_source=crm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=category%3Dnewsletter;name%3DGameSpot-Report;id%3D17896345;date%3D042926;lctg%3D2f821d399ba22b07c49e0f4630dec859f529a7dd861b79e64bfb6b45f32d0f91

I guess we can dream but I cannot see Blizzard pouring money into a sequel when updates and expansions will do.

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Just How Many WOW Expansions Are there?

The Solo MMO Player just asked me how many expansions there have been to World of Warcraft?  I didn't know, but it looks like as of May 2025 there have been ten addons to the original game which we call Vanilla WOW:  The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, Dragonflight, The War Within and Midnight.  Looks like at least one more is planned:  The Last Titan.

https://wowvendor.com/media/wow/all-wow-expansions/

After all, the game is 21+ years old.  And we are still talking about it.

By the way, Microsoft bought WOW in October 2023.  The War Within and Midnight are the expansions released in the Microsoft era.

https://www.gamer.org/wow-expansions-in-order-complete-timeline-2025-rankings/

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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com

Is This What Happened to Gaming?

I used to read the Greedy Goblin's blog religiously, not because I played World of Warcraft (I don't), but because he was always interesting.  This morning I clicked on a link to one of his old articles and discovered he has a new blog.  This was the last posting at the new place, dated February 2019.

https://greedygoblinblog.wordpress.com/2019/02/25/goodbye-dear-readers/

Food for thought....

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World of Warcraft's Legion Expansion Announced UPDATED

There's no announced date for the release, but a beta is expected sometime later this year (2015).
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2489196,00.asp

UPDATE:  The release date for Legion is now "Summer 2016" but the beta is still expected sometime later this year.  Signups are available at Battle.net.

UPDATE #2:  Stuff about the new class of demon hunter and more.
http://www.wowhead.com/legion#new-class-demon-hunter

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Bows (World of Warcraft)

Bow database
http://www.wowdb.com/items/weapons/bows

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Warcraft Lore in Forty Minutes

Want to catch up on the storyline and lore of WOW?  Here's your chance.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/28/get-the-full-story-of-warcraft-in-40-minutes/

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The WOW Retrospective

A WOW player who is also a game developer looks back at World of Warcraft and its expansion packs, describing how the game worked and the changes Blizzard made with each expansion.  This is the first article.  There are links to the rest of the series at the end of each article.
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/10/29/wow-endgames-vanilla/

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How the Mighty Have Fallen (Revisiting WOW)

The Solo MMO Player is messing around with the "battle chest" version of World of Warcraft, just killing some time by revisiting WOW after almost two years away from the game.  He is shocked at the change in the game.  He's playing in a PVP realm and just got asked by another player if he needs help taking the blimp from one point to another.  He's  used to being ganked while waiting on the platform for the zeppelin....

As a level 1-2, he was besieged with Join My Guild requests.  Exactly who is eager to have a level one player in their guild?

The chat line has no swearing, no racial or sexist or homophobic slurs, no constant references to anal and oral sex.  Stunning.

The way to Orgrimmar used to be an open plain. Now it looks like strip malls have been set up.
The towns are crowded with junk.  It looks like an interior decorator was hired to do a 24 hour makeover to what used to be our favorite game location.  It didn't turn out well.

The NPCs are programmed now to make snotty comments.

Farming has been made much more difficult on PVP servers as the zones are so chopped up.  This isn't surprising as Blizzard never paid a lot of attention to crafting.

The Auction House has very common low level items available for huge prices.  There must not be much farming going on.

Blizzard claims 10.2 million players, down from a peak of 12 million.  We've always been suspicious of the numbers since they are unverifiable.  It's hard to believe that the loss of two million players would have such an impact on player behavior as the Solo MMO Player sees in the game today compared to when he last played in November 2010.

Some things never change, however.  People are still arguing about Chuck Norris.

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