WoW: Stitches in Goldshire

[Prometheus]

I found this posting in the World of Warcraft forums. To make the story short for those who haven't played the game to this point, Goldshire is a town for very low-level people and Stitches is a very, very, bad man. Cut and pasted the thing since linking it didn't work:

Today, Stitches attacked Goldshire. Here's how it went down.

Gumble and I had just finished most of the quests in Darkshire, when we decided to see how far we could train Stitches. On the first attempt, we got him half way through Westfall (Gumble did the pulling/kiting/training/whatever), but then he stopped moving, got bugged, and eventually respawned in Darkshire. A couple hours later, we decided to see if we could take him around Darkshire, through Redridge, then into Elwynn and to Goldshire. Gumble pulled and pulled and pulled..

Did it work? You bet. We got Stitches ALL the way to Goldshire, where hilarity ensued. And boy, did it ensue.

When we first arrived in Elwynn, I announced in general that an abomination was attacking Elwynn! No one really believed me, but a few people did see him on the road.

http://tinyurl.com/6x6x2
http://tinyurl.com/6b42n
http://tinyurl.com/445t4
http://tinyurl.com/5thl6
http://tinyurl.com/5m7ue

We arrive in Goldshire! Suddenly, people realize there's an Abomination about. Now, Stitches, being level 35 elite, can take down the Elwynn guards like cake. Hilarity began to ensue on TeamSpeak at this point, seeing as how he finally arrived in town.

We took him into the inn, first and fore most, because, you know, it'd be funny

http://tinyurl.com/699tp
http://tinyurl.com/57lfu

Suddenly, more and more lowbies started showing up. What great fun, watching people franticly zerg Stitches, as he slaughters most in one attack

http://tinyurl.com/5rnf8
http://tinyurl.com/6ntb9
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I myself died a few times, trying to pull him into the inn

http://tinyurl.com/49ldv

More and more Alliance gathered to fight for the common good, it was really quite inspiring.


http://tinyurl.com/6v62y
http://tinyurl.com/3odkz

Slowly, they started taking his HP down. Somewhere in the mass of alliance, people got the idea to pull him to Stormwind and get Marcus Jonathan to destroy Stitches. My guildie and I would see no part in that, and repeatedly pulled him back to Goldshire, to enjoy the event as long as it would last.

Minutes later, Stitches was getting low on health, as even more Alliance arrived to banish the creature (hey, he was just trying to make some friends =()

http://tinyurl.com/6cv8l
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Finally, Stitches was completely and totally surrounded. We all knew the end was near, and indeed, it was

http://tinyurl.com/6k7wd
then
http://tinyurl.com/59fls

=( Poor Stitches. The lowbies danced around his corpse, as the task was complete. Little did most know that Stitches would spawn many times a day in Darkshire.

Alas, the aftermath was enjoyable. Skeletons EVERYWHERE.
http://tinyurl.com/3zgy8

I hope to have brought much joy and excitement to the lowbies that participated (and the higher levels that came to aid the slaughter). My guild and I hope everyone who participated enjoyed it, and you enjoyed reading this write up

***VIDEO***

I cut out some two minutes of footage, as it was overly redundant (raw gameplay footage).

As for the music, well, myself and Gumble thought it would be very fitting

Download it here (about 22mb):
http://tinyurl.com/6ayr2
^^Movie link^^

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I found this in the World of Warcraft forums. Whether or not you think this should have happened, ect. it looks like most of the participation was willing, and it is rather hilarious.

[Spriggan]

Eh, that's old news.  People have been leading Stitches into Goldshire for months now.

[Nytwalker]

Not old news for me, thanks for posting, pretty funny stuff.

[Spriggan]

Some one got in trouble for doing it 2 weeks ago, about 10-12 people that were in goldshire filed harrasment claims with GM's about the guy becusae he was a lvl 30 who brought stitches in for the fun of it.  

[Fellfrosch]

I thought it was very funny; thanks Prometheus.

[Skar]

I can't believe anyone complained about it. It makes me want to buy the game and waste 6 months playing it because you can actually do things like that.

Sprig, tell me if it's true what some on that forum were saying about aggro keeping newbs safe if they didn't attack the thing.

Also, define aggro for me.  I get the general gist but what is it specifically?

[Prometheus]

Aggro (aggression) is a term for how much a monster wants to hit you. Most creeps in the game are aggressive, which means they'll attack you if they notice you and aren't doing anything else. Aggro as a game mechanic usually doesn't come into play unless you're in a party or a large number of players are about, like the attack against Stitches. In this situation, the creeps have a certain amount of aggro or hate for all the players nearby them, and they have to choose who to attack. The person they end up attacking is the one they have the most hate or aggro for.

For instance party members may want to keep the hate on their most durable party members, often a Warrior. The person the party chooses to have the monster attack is referred to as a tank in most discussions. To that end, the Warrior class has a number of skills that are used primarily to generate aggression against a monster to help them keep the monster on them. Other sources of aggression include dealing damage to the creep or healing amongst the party, and so party members that deal too much damage or heal party members too much may gain aggro from a monster, resulting in it attacking them rather than the tank.

As far as the situation with Stitches went, most of the low level characters were relatively safe from Stitches as long as they avoided close proximity with him to avoid his damaging aura unless they attacked him or otherwise started generating aggro. Left to his own devices, Stitches would have gone on a rampage, killing everyone in sight regardless of whether they were fighting him or not, but it appears that he was fairly well occupied by the players attacking him, resulting in a tenuous safety barrier for those who chose not to participate. If, however, Stitches ended up with an empty aggression schedule due to the inability of low-level players to hit him and the deaths of those who could, it'd be hard to tell who he'd go after next.

[Skar]

Interesting.  Thanks for the explanation.  

So, stitches would not, in fact, have gone running back to his home evading along the way once his aggro list was empty?

[Prometheus]

That depends. I guess in a sense, most monsters have a bare-bones aggro list for everyone in the nearby area...some minimum level of hate for everyone they can see maybe. Most creeps in the game however, including aggressive ones, tend to turn around if you lead them on for too long and go back home evading things like you said. Stitches sometimes seems a lot more determined than other creeps in this regard. Maybe he's coded a little differently...I wouldn't expect to pull any creep as far as these guys took him.

[Prometheus]

A Blizzard post in this thread in the WoW forums, if anyone is insterested in Blizzard's stance on the ocurrence. Also a bit of information about creep behavior in these cases.

"Very cool!

By the way, we intentionally designed the game to protect players from this kind of event if they don't want to participate. But if they want to participate, more power to them!

For example, only guards without quests will attack enemy units. Also, a creature like Stitches will only attack players and guards that attack him, not anybody who is standing idly by. If nobody is left who threatened him, he will try to go back to whatever he was doing before he was trained - in this case, rampaging through Darkshire.

So... no griefing was had. The only people Stitches fought were those that attacked him first. Of course, the same is not true in Darkshire, where he does rampage and slaughter if the guards or players don't defeat him first."

[Spriggan]

Which is odd since they also posted that it can be considered greifing (different Blizz rep) in another post and that they're going to be implementing changes to keep players from doing such things.  Course that thread was about a higher level mob then stitches, but still, there are times where they attack anyone, even those that don't attack them as this thread states.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-general&t=330238&s=blizzard&tmp=1#blizzard

[Prometheus]

The one I saw posting wasn't one of the normal Blizzard reps, so it's hard to know what to think of the whole thing. I think they are aware of the issues, though, and are taking care to make sure things don't get overly out of hand.

Perhaps the difference in the case you saw earlier was that the mob hadn't been taken so far out of its course that it would necessarily return after players stopped attacking it? Stitches was REALLY far away from home in this case.

[Spriggan]

Well the one that replied to the stitches is Blizzards UI designer.  The difference is that Stitches is coded not to attack anything around him.  While the mob those others brough in (a lvl 61 deamon that gaurds the dark portal) attacks anything and everyone no matter what.