I happened to be one of the 100,018 people at the MCG who witnessed only the 3rd ever drawn AFL Grand Final, and the first in my lifetime. It was a truly incredible experience and I am extremely glad that I got up and queued for a seat at 4am the morning of. I'll be there again this weekend for the rematch and seeing that I am a supporter of neither St. Kilda or Collingwood (thank god) will happily cheer for another draw.
How does this relate to wow?
Well it got me thinking about the one-off events that occur in-game. I remember with great fondness the zombie invasion that preceeded the launch of WotLK. It was totally unique event whether you were desperately defending your home city against relentless waves of the living dead or (like me) laughing over the corpses of the Stormwind audctioneers before running off to turn more heroes into mindless killing machines. Basically it was full to the brim with win. It was fun.
Darkshire has had its share of troubles in the past
Another one that comes to mind is the opening of the gates to Ahn'Qiraj. I started playing after BC was released so unfortunately couldn't get involved with this one but from everything I've read about it, the AQ questline and resulting world event was a truly epic undertaking. It took the cooperation of luterally hundreds of players and several months of effort to complete and all the way through was chock-a-block full of pure win.
The most players I've seen in the same place at the same time outside a city
What I'm getting at was the fact that these were truly unforgettable, once in a lifetime events. Compared to most other facets of the game they took unprecedented amounts of cooperative effort and caused world changing repurcussions. Running through a Stormwind almost totally devoid of players or NPC's only to be chased down by a pack of zombies gave me a shiver down the spine moment and I'm sure hordes of epic bosses pouring forth from the just opened gates of AQ would've done the same if I was there to see it.
The reason I bring it up is that I feel Wrath hasn't had one of these moments yet. The closest thing I can think of is the Wrathgate questline which culminated in an amazing cutscene movie and a quest into the depths of undercity with your respective faction's leaders. The difference however was that this questline didn't require the cooperation of even 2 players to follow to its epic conclusion. It was merely a series a single player quests with a super cool ending. The other one that springs to mind is the battle for Gnomergan (alliance side) which opened up a few weeks ago. This was cute for sure, but it felt fairly uninspiring. I didn't kill or even attack a single enemy and Gnomer was saved. There was no player cooperation or coordination required (although, staying behind Mechatorque did require coordinted yelling at various people) and the NPC's did all the work.
What I'm desperately hoping for is a throwback to these old-school epic server wide events. I'm hoping that the pre-Cataclysm event will be as awesome as the zombie infestation before Wrath and will engage the entire server. Blizzard is very very good at making things feel truly epic but I'd love something that captures the minds of entire factions on the server and shakes people out of the anti-social tendencies we've picked up as the game has become more and more streamlined. As much as I love 15 minute random heroics with 4 silent killers at my side sometimes it's just not enough.
The most rewarding things in life are those you have to work hardest to achieve.
-Seal
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