Corrupted Blood

Corrupted Blood was a virtual plague that infected characters in the computer game "World of Warcraft", spreading rapidly from character to character. Its resemblance to real-life disease epidemics drew international attention.

Creation and transmission

The "epidemic" began on September 13, 2005 when Blizzard Entertainment, the developer of "World of Warcraft", introduced a new instance dungeon called Zul'Gurub into the game as part of patch 1.7. Inside was a boss named "Hakkar the Soulflayer", alluded to as the "blood god". Players who fought Hakkar were affected by his debuff (a spell which has a negative effect over a fixed period of time). The debuff, in this case, was Corrupted Blood, a spell that caused 263–337 points of damage (compared to the average health of 2500–5000 for a character of the highest level, and with those at the mid-levels having about 1500) every two seconds to the afflicted character. The affliction was passed on to any characters standing too close to an infected character. While the curse would kill most lower-level characters in a matter of seconds, higher-level characters could keep themselves alive (via healing spells, having high stamina, or other means) long enough to spread the disease around the immense landscape inside the game. Death caused by the debuff did not cause any durability penalty, unlike most other causes of death in the game. The plague was spread by players' pets that contracted the disease and also by malicious players known as "griefers", who found ways to bring the digital virus into heavily inhabited areas.cite web|last=Ward |first=Mark |date=2005-09-22 |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4272418.stm |title="Deadly plague hits Warcraft world" |publisher=BBC News Online |accessdate=2006-08-05]

The disease would eventually go away as time passed or when the infected character died. The only way that a player was able to bring the disease outside of Zul'Gurub was by allowing a pet to get the debuff, dismissing the pet in less than five seconds, then summoning it in a populated area. (When dismissed, the pet retains the debuff and the timer of the debuff is paused.) This debuff transmission technique was first seen with the "living bomb" debuff from Baron Geddon in Molten Core.

cale and effect

After a few days, Corrupted Blood had become "World of Warcraft"'s version of the Black Death, rendering entire cities uninhabitable and causing players to avoid large clusters of others, and in many cases, causing players to avoid major cities altogether.

Due to the curse's peculiar behavior—it was never meant to leave Zul'Gurub—the ability to infect pets and NPCs was a side effect unconsidered by the developers. The intended behavior involves the final boss fight with Hakkar. Every so often, Hakkar will cast this debuff on a random player, effectively forcing players to be spread apart, or in the case of melee classes, to move away from Hakkar before spreading it to the other melee classes. Blizzard Entertainment tried several times to fix the problem, including imposing a quarantine on certain places. This "plague" was eventually "cured" by changing the mechanics of the Hakkar encounter to eliminate the spreading of the effect from character to character. Hakkar still has an ability called Corrupted Blood, but it now takes the form of a red bolt launched at a random player fighting the boss. The player and those nearby take damage, and receive a heavy damage over time, but the effect no longer spreads further.

Due to the large scale outbreak of the "plague" (some servers had half of their characters infected), it drew wide attention from the media.

Model for real world research

In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel, published an article in the Journal "Epidemiology" describing the similarities between this outbreak and the recent SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Dr Balicer suggested role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the dissemination of infectious diseases.cite web|last= Balicer |first= Ran |date=2005-10-05 |url=http://epidem.com/pt/re/epidemiology/abstract.00001648-200703000-00015.htm;jsessionid=GKDhp1mT1BQh4TTrB4747mvVPMZBMpz7j6GJML3301jPTtBfZJjB!-362743511!181195628!8091!-1|title=Modeling Infectious Diseases Dissemination Through Online Role-Playing Games |publisher=LWW |accessdate=2006-08-05] In a follow-up article in the journal "Science", the game "Second Life" was suggested as another possible platform for these studies.cite web|last= |first= science magazine |date=2005-10-05 |url=http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/316/5827/961a|title=This Second Life avatar looks healthy--so far |publisher=AAAS |accessdate=2006-08-05]

In August 2007, Nina Fefferman, a Tufts University assistant research professor of public health and family medicine, called for research on this incident, citing the resemblances with biological plagues. Some scientists want to study how people would react to environmental pathogens, by using the virtual counterpart as a point of reference.cite web|last=Sydell |first=Laura |authorlink=Laura Sydell |date=2005-10-05 |url=http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4946772 |title='Virtual' Virus Sheds Light on Real-World Behavior |format=Streaming audio |publisher=NPR |accessdate=2006-08-05] [cite web|url=http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article2296354.ece|title=How a computer game glitch could help to fight off global pandemic|first=Lucy|last=Bannerman|accessdate=2007-08-21]

In addition, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requested statistics on this event for research on epidemics, but it is unknown if they followed through with their request after learning that it was just caused by a bug.cite web|last= |first= |date=2005-01-04 |url=http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=131791 |title=Looking Back... World of Warcraft |publisher=CVG |accessdate=2006-08-05]

References

*Kim Coppola, "Virtual outbreaks, real world ramifications", "New Scientist" February 24, 2007

External links

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQ1n01SDm8 A video of a similar debuff being spread by a pet] YouTube
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoN4nCaULGo A video of the debuff in action, spreading in the horde capital Orgrimar] YouTube
* [http://thottbot.com/?sp=24328 Detailed information about that plague can be found here] Thottbot
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4272418.stm "Deadly plague hits Warcraft world"] BBC News
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm "Virtual game is a 'disease model'"] BBC News
* [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4946772 "'Virtual' Virus Sheds Light on Real-World Behavior" (Nina Fefferman interviewed)] National Public Radio
* [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=131791 "Looking Back... World of Warcraft"] ComputerAndVideoGames.com
* [http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11330 "Digital Plague hits online game"] SecurityFocus.com
* [http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19325921.700-virtual-outbreaks-real-world-ramifications.html "Virtual outbreaks, real world ramifications"] New Scientist
* [http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/09/plaguelands.html "Plaguelands.."] Wonderland blog
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/necrorogicon/tags/corruptedblood "Corrupted Blood Screenshots] NecroRogIcon @ Flickr Flickr