Unintended Virtual plague hits online game 'World of Warcraft'.

[esskreemr]

This is entertaining if you're interested in computer and/or people:

http://wow.stratics.com/#newsitem1127357022,82391,

An Ebola-like epidemic is raging in World of Warcraft, the enormously popular online game -- and it's killing players left and right. The trouble began when Blizzard, the company that runs World of Warcraft, introduced a new opponent called Hakkar, the "god of blood". When you fight him, as a defense he infects you with something called "Corrupted Blood", which shaves off your hit points so rapidly that your character dies very quickly. Problem is, the Blood is infectious -- get close enough to another player and you'll pass on the disease. As one player reports from inside the game:

The amazing thing is SOME PLAYERS have brought this disease (and it is a disease) back to the towns, outside of the instance. It starts spreading amongst the genral population including npcs, who can out generate the damage. Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die).

GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarentine and infect other players.

Over at the superb game-theory blog Terra Nova, one player notes that the disaster has taken on Katrina-like proportions, complete with a fumbling bureaucracy. Some players feel Blizzard's executives didn't read up on their network-theory carefully enough to predict how badly things would rage out of control:

Deaths on Suramar numbered in the hundreds, I personally have screenshots of skeletons piled waist high in parts of the auction house. The biggest disappointment wasn't that it happened, but that Blizzard was so incapable when it came to dealing with it.

And the living shall envy the dead. Of course, this digital pandemic isn't all that awful, insofar as when you die in World of Warcraft you can just reanimate yourself. But the stories from witnesses to the in-game carnage are pretty amazing, and it makes me wonder: Maybe we should be using online games to study the effects of a real-world bioterror attack? Maybe FEMA and the government should hire Blizzard to build them an online world, and populate it with players by offering it for free. They researchers can test the effects of a contagious bioterror attack such as smallpox -- by releasing a virtual version of it, and seeing how players react.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...ca.com&x_ddp=Y

It was designed to spread between players within close proximity. So if someone near you is hit with it then when it fires the blood effect you can get contaminated as well and then when your blood effect fires off any near you can be contaminated (including the person that may have originally infected you). The effect only lasts for around 3 seconds and I believe the blood effect fires once a second during that period of time.

So the spreading aspect was very much intended and was not an accident. It is part of the dynamic of the instance they added.

What wasn't intended was that players would purposely attempt to remain contaminated long enough to get out of the instance (mainly by porting out) and into populated areas (major cities) such that the general high proximity of players to players would maintain the effect for very log periods of time (recall on an individual basis it only lasts for 3 seconds).

Also several high-level players purposely maintained the infection by staying in close proximity to each other, allow it to ping-pong between them, while healing themselves.

I found/find the issue interesting and fun in one regard but I also feel sorry for lower level players that basically get killed instantly while trying to carry out their "lives" in area of the world that they often need to be in.

It is likely they either meant to not allow it to exist outside the instance or it was an oversight on what would be possible.

[Zilverzmurfen]

(And extra...)

[Elemental]

Wow. Strangly this increases my respect for MMORPGS. It adds an extra dimension of role playing (sort of) outside of hack and slash.

[Westley]

Yes, I kind of agree. It's actually really funny. I'd like to see the screenshots of skeletons. To hear them describe it is like the Black Plague. It's so.... weird!

[esskreemr]

http://files.filefront.com/WoW_plaug.../fileinfo.html

[Westley]

Found this on the forums::

TheDeadCollector: Bring out yer dead.
TheDeadCollector: Bring out yer dead.
TheDeadCollector: Bring out yer dead.
TheDeadCollector: Bring out yer dead.
LargeManwithDeadBody puts TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't on the cart
LargeManwithDeadBody: Here's one.
TheDeadCollector: That'll be 9 Copper.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I'm not dead.
TheDeadCollector: What?
LargeManwithDeadBody: Nothing. There's your 9 Copper.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I'm not dead.
TheDeadCollector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Yes he is.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsitIsn't: I'm not.
TheDeadCollector: He isn't.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I'm getting better.
LargeManwithDeadBody: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
TheDeadCollector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I don't want to go on the cart.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Oh, don't be such a baby.
TheDeadCollector: I can't take him.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I feel fine.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Oh, do me a favor.
TheDeadCollector: I can't.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
TheDeadCollector: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Well, when's your next round?
TheDeadCollector: Thursday.
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I think I'll go for a walk.
LargeManwithDeadBody: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't: I feel happy. I feel happy.
TheDeadCollector glances up and down the street furtively
TheDeadCollector attacks TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't
TheDeadBodyThatClaimsItIsn't is stunned
LargeManwithDeadBody: Ah, thank you very much.
TheDeadCollector: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
LargeManwithDeadBody: Right.

[esskreemr]

History of the World, part I?

[Fechter1]

History of the World, part I?

Naw, that was mel brooks. This is definitely Monty Python, but for the life of me I can't remember exactly which one... Thinking Holy Grail...

Edit: Just checked it out. Holy Grail

[MikeHarm]

Yep holy grail.

Whatcha think of a fencing net WOW clan on a pvp server?

[ReverseLunge]

AH YES! The Lord has sent this "virtual" online plague as a foretaste of their judgment to come! You know how the Lord hates imaginations and fantasy worlds...

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing which exalteth itself against God." (2 Corinthians 10:5)

The Lord abhores creativity and those losers who can't function in the real world and therefore, escape into a fantasy world that the Lord didn't build!

Do you think the Lord will send a real "bug" in the form of a disease to kill them soon, or do you suppose the Lord will just surprise them in hell when they die naturally to be tormented by that worm which does not die in the dungeons of Hell?

"where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." (Mark 9:44)

[Amadeus]

AH YES! The Lord has sent this "virtual" online plague as a foretaste of their judgment to come! You know how the Lord hates imaginations and fantasy worlds...

"Casting down imaginations, and every high thing which exalteth itself against God." (2 Corinthians 10:5)

The Lord abhores creativity and those losers who can't function in the real world and therefore, escape into a fantasy world that the Lord didn't build!

Do you think the Lord will send a real "bug" in the form of a disease to kill them soon, or do you suppose the Lord will just surprise them in hell when they die naturally to be tormented by that worm which does not die in the dungeons of Hell?

"where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched." (Mark 9:44)

oooo, look at me. i'm reverselunge. i'm quoting the bible, which is funny! haha!

jeesh, i thought you had moved on from that phase. why don't you go back to writing stupid poems, which are actually close to being funny?

[codedread]

hi...its rhia, newbie here...is this thread still working? coz i also play WOW...and i have some questions here about the game...can somebody help me?

[mrbiggs]

hi...its rhia, newbie here...is this thread still working? coz i also play WOW...and i have some questions here about the game...can somebody help me?

Probably.

Although I should warn you that overall we tend to be better at answering questions about fencing.

[ReverseLunge]

Probably.

Although I should warn you that overall we tend to be better at answering questions about fencing.

Not you though!

[mrbiggs]

Not you though!

Not true, actually. Though I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on fencing, I've never so much as seen a game of World of Warcraft.

Good one, though. Feel free to email me and tell me how you got to be this funny.

[Don-Roberto]

I remember that infamous day like it was yesterday. There I was riding my Nightmare steed through The Drag of the Orc capitol "Orgrimmar" when some passerby gave me the disease. I promptly died. A truly sad day for my level 40 Undead Warlock.