Diseases, Poisons and Infections

The point would be to get you back on your feet and dealing with that huge axe. If you are an armored knight, blocking a hallway full of, oh say...goblins. And I am a priest standing just behind you, then I die as soon as you fall. You may actually outlive me, crippled and bleeding, but down, because I don't have armor, I'm not that tough, and as soon as the goblins get past you, I'm a corpse. So for me, healing you, ANYTHING that results in you not falling down is a good thing. Now, perhaps I cannot fully heal you and mend all of your wounds in mid combat. But if I have effects at my disposal, whether by magic, alchemy, first aid, science, herbal concoctions, or whatnot, that numbs your pain, stops your bleeding, makes your adrenaline surge or your eyes stay focused, then I'll use it. I can do a proper healing after the fight when the goblins are dead, but during the fight it's all about keeping you off the floor moment by moment.

 

And that makes for MUCH more entertaining gameplay for the healer than just having a "mana pool" and spamming a "greater heal" spell.

 

I like the complexity with healing that your getting into. What of the spell currently used in Uo by Paladins, it causes the caster to lose all health in exchange for ressurecting anyone in the immediate area. I would think having one of those "extra" abilities of a healer would be to take on damage of his comrades in emergencys. Like Malak said if your meat shield of a buddy goes down you as good as goblin dinner anyway. This opens up the difficulty of if any of those goblins looses an arrow in the healers direction he is going to severely soil himself. All or nothing for the healers final act of desperation.


Save the cheerleader, save the world.

 

Just be careful you don't end up with another "Corrupted Blood" incident like the one that happened in World of Warcraft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

 

Actually, I quite like this concept... What if there was a disease that if not "cured" in time would kill you, but then your body would get back up, and start attacking people all slow zombie-like, but would be super hard to kill? Anyone who engages the "zombie" in melee runs a risk of getting the infection themselves. Would be an awesome world event if this thing was infective enough, and the zombies went after NPCs too.

 

Generally speaking I'd prefer not.. unless it really was an actual GM/story based event. The incubation period would have to only count down while you're online and last for quite a good while to ensure all players have a fair shot at a cure and also give them a shot at detecting and curing NPCs.

 

I found the corrupted blood event kinda trite, the entire thing about the scourge in story was that it was an unstoppable plague, slowly spreading and corrupting the earth, and then suddenly me and every other random hero was infected, we spread the plague across two different worlds, every SINGLE township got scourged, the lich king's mission to destroy the world was UTTERLY successful, and then we all just got better. The horrible weapon that had been sent to destroy the world was just sorta brushed aside like an inconvenience, the incredibly dangerous demon army that had been planning on invading for the ENTIRE storyline dropped the ball and failed to do anything at all when our pants were down around our ankles, and then we turned around and launched an implausible counterattack that mostly consisted of a three month tour vacation of the northern continent (that nobody had noticed was settled, inhabited, and crawling with amazing stuff)...

The corrupted blood event was a great example of how WoW went from an effort to make the world of Azeroth an intense, story driven experience of the Warcraft saga's world, into Blizzard, and the writers behind it, wiping their backsides flossing their buttcheeks with the fanbase's collective credit card statements.

 

Sounded like a very badly balanced "plague" and nobody had the sense to come up with a creative solution. If it were me I would have introduced some kind cure players had to fight through and followed through with the invasion. But it sounds to me like the invasion itself was supposed to be a threat only for story purposes. I still would've held all sorts of events to get around the problems. The whole thing sounds like a fumble start to finish.

 

@Bowen Bloodgood Yeah, that's basically how it felt to play through it. When you got attacked in melee combat by one of the transformed, you picked up a debuff, 10 minute duration I believe, that could NOT be dispelled by most players. I don't remember if cure disease would work on it, but since I played through that period on a druid, I didn't have that effect anyway. My memory suggests that the debuff was red bordered, which means it was not dispellable by normal means regardless. Once the timer ran out, you "died", rose again as a zombie, and got to attack other players. They could likewise attack you. Forced open PvP, really, though since you had to use only the zombie's attacks, it wasn't what I would have chosen for PvP. Of course, since even a single melee strike from you would put the disease on any PC or NPC you struck, the fact that you wouldn't live long wasn't the point at all. I think it was designed to do exactly what it did, the devs just didn't expect their player base to delight in spreading it to every single corner of the game.

 

It was a bug, it was never supposed to leave the dungon where it was contracted, the problems were caused by a single mistake in a line of code. As for the solution Blizzard had no choice, they HAD to reset the world because the bug had wiped out most of the players and destroyed the world.

BTW the CDC and Bioterrorism researchers wanted to use it as a model because it behaved the way a plague would including the players delibratly infection others. However Blizzard refused to give them the data