Remembering the Corrupted Blood incident: That time WoW was overrun by a virtual plague now referenced by Covid-19 researchers

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As World of Warcraft turns 20 years old, we’ve been looking back at how the influential MMOchanged the DNA of videogames as a whole, as well as remembering specific moments like the timeadding playable dragonfolk brought a decade-old loot system to its knees. One incident stands out in terms of reaching beyond the world of videogames though, and that’s the Corrupted Blood plague.

In 2005, a bug allowed a damage-over-time effect from a raid event to spread outside the confines of the boss fight it was designed for. The Corrupted Blood debuff was created to affect players as they fought Hakkar the Blood God, lowering their health and splashing from player to player if they stood too close. When it first escaped containment, nobody knew where it came from—they just logged on to find streets full of skeletons in the cities of Azeroth.

At the time, it was surprising that researchers could use the Corrupted Blood incident as the basis for a paper aboutthe untapped potential of virtual game worlds to shed light on real world pandemics. But looking back with Covid-19 fresh on our minds, it makes a lot of sense. The epidemiologists who wrote that paper eventually used it as thebasis for actual Covid-19 research, as social factors in the real pandemic resembled those of the digital one. People weren’t deliberately infecting themselves to grief their neighbors in real life, but early in the pandemic, Dr. Eric Lofgren saw a parallel in refusals to quarantine.

“You start to see people [say] like, ‘Oh this isn’t a big deal, I’m not going to change my behavior. I’m going to the concert and then going to see my elderly grandma anyway,'” said Dr. Lofgren in 2020. “Maybe don’t do that. That’s a big takeaway. Epidemics are a social problem… Minimizing the seriousness of something is sort of real-world griefing.”

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The Blood Plague That Ravaged World of Warcraft | Tales From The Hard Drive | PC Gamer - YouTubeWatch On

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