Kruul invades, and the day before TBC.

So I was in WOW, grabbing some new recruits for my guild. I'd heard the chat going on, people yelling 'OMG KRUUL AT UC' which translates into 'Oh, I'm quite surprised, there appears to be a large demon just outside Undercity, the undead capital city.' I figured as usual, someone's just messing about, getting people to travel halfway across the world and there's nothing there.
So I step out of the main gates of Undercity to walk into this.

And for a sense of scale, you can see below he's about the height of a flagpole, and I as the largest race in the game, don't even come up to the low ring at the base of the pole.


Now the tricky part behind this new monster that just appears near the entrance to main cities, is that every time he kills ANYONE, and that includes pets, demons summoned by warlocks, people who dont even know what's going on and were just passing through, anyone, he gets a heal of 70,000 points. To put that in perspective for non players, my fully kitted out top level warrior, who's built for survival, has around 5000 health points. This guy, as well, as getting 70,000 heals for every kill he manages, is sending out around 40 homing missile things that hit for 2000 ish each, and has a clutch of demon hounds with him, helping people to die a bit quicker.

The real genius behind it though, I think, its the knowledge of human nature. Ok, you've been playing for a while, kinda seen it all, done it all, still enjoying it, but not much in the way of surprises, or you're a wide eyed newbie who's heard there's a giant demon smashing up your capital city. Either way, instinct says' HEY! I gotta go see this!'

So we're outside Undercity, and a group has formed of about 40 top level players, including my warrior, and we're trying and trying to take this guy down, and we'll get him to about 75% or 50% health, and some level 5 guy will wander over going 'hey, whats that big thi-' 'oh I'm dead', and on top of that, if you're within about 100 yards of this guy, you ARE gonna take 2000 damage from every set of missiles he hurls, he's got enough for everybody!

So, on top of the tactics required to take down a beast of this nature, and dealing with his pets and special attacks, we're also having to send people around especially to act as that police guy in the movies 'Please move along, there's nothing to see here, move BACK Sir, please retreat to a safe distance until the situation is under control..HEY! get back he-, oh too late, Kruul's on full health again.'

Now the outside of undercity looks like a real graveyard, skeletons of the fallen all over the place.


Can you imagine trying to be the ones wanting to stop people seeing a huge world event, but having to do so in order to deal with it? There just seemed to be a never ending supply of people willing to wander straight up to a 100ft tall demon and go 'hello!'

Having said that, eventually things settled down, and it was great to have 40 people all playing together to beat a common goal, and we DID take him down, despite him getting a few heals mid fight.
He did have a couple of very nice things on him, too, all caster items, but I was there more for the fun of being part of it than for looting, you've gotta be pretty optimistic to join a 40 player, one off event in the hope for shiny things.

Tomorrow, the big day, the portals open to a whole new continent, the Burning Crusade begins, and I will let you know what I think as soon as I get to try it. I'm thinking every server is going to fall over under the combined weight of 8 million players all making a level 1 Blood Elf or Draenei, (the new races available), and the ones that do stay up, are going to be laggy as hell, and the starting areas, well...

Normally, you create your character, and you'll be placed somewhere like, for instance, the orc's Valley of Trials, a safe-ish place with low level enemies to build yourself up a bit before you go out into the big wide world. Now, normally there'd be maybe 5 new players in that area at once, and around 30 boars and scorpions and assorted beasts to slay, no problem. tomorrow however, I can see there being hundreds of Blood Elves ALL appearing in the same place at the same time at the same level, all waiting for giant spiders to respawn in the forest so they can kill 8 of them for their first quest.

Still we shall see, and I'll know more tomorrow.