The ONE thing that would have made this an acceptable event for all, a fun event, but still deadly and world changing…

Make zombie health go down by 20% per hit taken. By anything.
(Zombies do 5%etc damage per hit)

some additional things:

A lvl70 goes to a newbie area to gank as a zombie? goodluck against those lvl 1′s…
they will band together and kill it very quickly.

5 lvl1 zombies against ONE lvl70… potentially a tough fight, allowing zombies to ONLY overwhelm normal players by sheer force of numbers. 5 to 1 gives even odds.

Zombies can infect any npc, boar, spider, guard etc

One turned into a zombie, your equipment doesn’t take damage.

Once turned into a zombie, you get a 30-minute immunity to the disease after you die and become a normal player again. You can log off, then on to get rid of the immunity.

Priests can make temporary holywater to hand out to other players, lasts 5min and a priest can make 1 per hour. It’s a ranged *1 hit kill* to a zombie.

Players get EXP from killing zombies, equal to killing something 3 levels below them.

There are no crates, no roaches…
Zombies come into Azeroth through NPC spawns.
Yes, they spawn in random areas, gather together and make raids on outlying towns etc

Eventually zombies only lose 5% of health per hit (and do 5% to anyone else).

Zombies gain a health buffer of 1 hit for every player they kill, max of 20 additional hits they can take.

Zombies gain 2x the experience they would have got from a npc 3 levels below them when they kill a player.

If you are killed while infected, killed by a zombie etc or your infection has turned you into a zombie…
YOU GET A CHOICE.
1. Actively play the zombie you’ve become
2. Come back as a normal player, no armor loss at your current location or to your hearth location.
If you choose number 2 then you’re immune to infection for 30min, and being killed by a zombie simply kills you. In your place, a NPC zombie is spawned, either way a zombie is created…but you choose if you want to play it or let it seek brains on its own.

Zombies can’t damage auctioneers,
flightmasters *or any npc* that can potentially give out a quest AS LONG AS there’s a non-zombie player within 100 yards. This means that as long as there’s resistance, the auctioneer will be safe…same goes for random npc mobs, can’t attack them (they won’t attack you) if there’s a non-zombie player nearby, you have to clear the area of players before you can start on the npc’s and turn them into zombies.

Zombies drop random humanoid loot based on the lvl of the one looting them.
So do players the zombie’s kill…they give ‘body parts’ that can be handed in to your zombie quest givers for items, temporary buffs and other fun stuff.

Zombies can last until they logoff, no health decline…there’s no point in having it.

Holy-Snowballs (frozen holywater) are given out, these last until the invasion ends…they’re 1 ‘limb’ each (loot of zombies). they only work on zombies, and have a 1min cooldown. Knock a zombie 3 times as far as a regular snowball would and affects any zombie within 5 yards of where it lands, throwing them in random directions.

Zombies can play dead, like a hunter.

oh ho ho! this one’s good…

In the Battle Grounds, WSG etc the opposing side appearance is that of zombies! superficial difference.
Their spells have different visuals etc and their flag is a tied up captive you have to rescue.
To them YOU APPEAR TO BE ZOMBIES, and they the good guys.

Undead players can choose to end being infected at any time,
because of their hatred for the burning legion and physical characteristics…through willpower.

Priests etc gain Reputation (depending on where they are) for every time they cure an infection.
Once per player per day, so can’t keep curing the same player, to avoid abuse.

Saying ‘fag’ etc in chat will make you have *a weak zombie every time* you’re turned into one, for the entire event. It take only 1 hit to kill you. “why you kill me you fag? I wanted to infect more people”

Zombies can walk right through a Paladins ‘bubble’.
Can’t use hearth while infected, and Can’t cure yourself.

Arrows etc only take off 5% of a zombie’s max health every hit, instead of the normal 20%.
You have to fill them with arrows before they start to fall apart.

-Turning a zombie into a sheep-
permanently changes it’s appearance to that of a zombie sheep.
It’s now like a normal zombie, but gains the ability ‘ram’ which takes off 5% of your health and is like being hit by a snowball. 10 sec cooldown for ‘ram’.

Zombie players can go to any graveyard and ‘loot’ a grave,
to create a weak (1 hit and it’s dead) zombie minion, 1 minion per grave and graves become available to loot once every 10 min. Every player can have 10 minions, each one gets their own action-bar icon and are controlled like hunter pets. Zombies can ‘loot’ any corpse in this manner.

#DETER Out of character zombie hate#
After being a zombie, IF YOU DIE AS A ZOMBIE YOU CAN’T SPEAK FOR 10 MINUTES.
No speaking in chat, or whispers, nothing.
This prevents ‘zombie hate’ “omg why you kill me you fag!!!$!”
You can of course become a zombie again to speak to other zombies.

Can’t talk for 20sec (can still emote) after you’re cured of infection. To prevent impulse hate, gives players some time to cooldown after the disappointment of not getting to be a zombie. Anything you say for 20 sec will be converted into random ‘thankyou for saving me!’ phrases.

The most important thing is still this:
*Every hit you do to a zombie takes away 20% of their max life.
*When one hits you, it does 5% of your max life.

LEVEL SHOULD NOT MATTER IN THIS EVENT.
A lvl70 pile of meat is just as easy to kill as a lvl1 pile of meat…it’s a pile of walking meat, you cut it’s head off and it dies. Even your grandmother could do it.

I dream of a world where a lvl1 player can take down a lvl70 burning-legion zombie.
/spit
/laugh
/I love this game

Where 7 lvl1 zombie’s can take down a lvl70 player…
/spit
/laugh
/slap
/tickle

“but…but I’m a lvl70, I’ve got a VIP pass and everything, I’ve even read all the WOW novels and collected all the figurines…I’m the best pvp’r on my server…and they ganked me.
I…I even wear WOW pajamas to bed every night, how could I lose?”

well, no. I don’t think so. I certainly don’t mind folks being zombies, or having a grand time being zombies, as many of us have mentioned here – it’s the high level folks *intentionally* going to low level areas where folks had NO chance, and just camping the newbies. That, while part of the game, is an abuse of the mechanics of the game. That is just mean spirited and purile (I believe that was used before – to describe us folks that didn’t much like lvl 70s killing off lvl 3s).

yeah, bring back the gold farmer whispers! bring back the spam in your mail box – give us our Game Back!

riiight.
/shibumi

To the QQing posters in the comments who cry that this wondrous event might never be repeated [sob], I point out it was EXPENSIVE to repair gear damaged when you were zombied and then assaulted by guards. It was DISRUPTIVE to lowbie players who were merely trying to quest. It was TIME-CONSUMING when you noobs inactivated our auction houses and quest npcs and flightmasters and when you forced us to the effing graveyard. Had Blizz intended us to love this thing and embrace it in all its glory, no healer outside the Argent Dawn healers would have been able to cure it at all.

1) The Greengill Murlocs were susceptible to the plague, and they have a fast respawn timer.
2) The zombified versions of the murlocs don’t keep the originals from respawning.

So there were ENORMOUS swarms of zombies at many of the villages. This wouldn’t have been so bad, as the resulting zombies were only level 60, and I had a blast volleying downs huge swarms as they wailed on my crocolisk. (Sidenote: Wanna have a big repair bill in no time at all? Use Volley! Since every hit does durability damage to your ranged weapon, usage on large swarms or mere prolonged usage will TRASH your ranged weapon.)

The problem was:

3) The murlocs on top of the huts cannot get down and evade-bug any player-attacks made on them.
4) The zombified murlocs do the same, but frequently, uninfected murlocs would get too close, and the zombies would attack, and thus infect them.

This resulted in not only HUGE swarms of zombies, but huge swarms of zombies that COULD NOT BE PERMANENTLY DESTROYED.

This kind of poor planning on the part of the event planners is what turns a cool, fluffy world event into a gigantic nuisance.

I personally had a great time getting infected in booty bay with some guild mates, before decimating the town, hopping a boat to ratchet, and leaving a trail of destruction all the way into Orgrimmar.