Thursday, April 19, 2012

Awaiting The Plague

A crowd dutifully awaits someone infecting us all.
SWTOR became the latest MMO to try a plague-themed live event over the last week, rolling out an outbreak of the Rakghoul plague. 

I'm not high enough in levels to actually do the content associated with this event, but it is interesting to see how a heavily story-based game handles additional content - the story leading up to the outbreak and its aftermath appears to be unfolding over the course of the week.

The part I am able to participate in is repeatedly killing my character for DNA.  Samples of the plague DNA are the event currency, and one of the best ways to be covered in plague DNA is to get infected and explode due to plague.  This process takes about 45 minutes all-told - a good control versus issues that other games have faced, since being involuntarily killed once every hour at worst is not much of a griefing issue.  In typical MMO fashion, players, myself included, are helpfully gathering in large crowds for the purpose of infecting each other and AFK-farming the DNA currency. 

So far, I've snagged a minipet and a pair of plagued cosmetic outfits for random companions (unfortunately, of classes I do not yet have, but these are bind-to-legacy).  It's not deep, and I probably wouldn't even bother if it weren't for the fact that I can passively accumulate this while doing other things (eating dinner, surfing the web, writing this very blogpost, and - in an irony that may amuse or horrify Trekkies and Star Wars fans alike - resetting my duty officer missions in Star Trek Online).  Still, it's not bad as first world events go, and perhaps a promising sign of things to come.

Finally, infected!

3 comments:

  1. I haven't paid any attention to the event. I just got going on my third server in SWTOR, so I've been a lot more focused on establishing my new newbies than what is going on with the game at large.

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  2. I've found that I don't particularly care for "World Events" in any MMO I've ever played. My only contact with this one has been that my crafters that I keep on the Fleet for faster load times when I'm swappign back and forth have had to move to avoid being infected a couple of times, but that's been it. Dn't care to stand around in an AFK DNA farming group, don't care to go find dailies on Tatooine, etc. For me this is a big non-event, really.

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  3. While I like the option of AFK death farming (w/ repair costs) in lieu of traveling all the way to Tattoine - this event was super confusing for me. I logged in for the first time in two months (extended computer fixing issues) and was completely perplexed by having my character start randomly sick emoting.

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