Thread by @phanikishan

As I was speaking to a friend on the coronavirus "pandemic", we recalled a very interesting incident from an online multiplayer game (Word of Warcraft) which effectively simulated human reaction in pandemics due to a bug in gameplay called "the corrupted blood incident"

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For those not in the know World of Warcraft is an MMORPG - effectively an online lan game where people control their online avatars and indulge in fighting other characters, completing quests and in general exploring the world of Warcraft.

Read more: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_…

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As part of gameplay, people fight characters to upskill themselves and "level" up. Higher levels indicate greater skill, better powers etc.

WoW in 2005 introduced a new character in a campaign who would cast a spell called the "corrupted blood" on players who fight him

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The "corrupted blood" not just weakened the player immediately but also caused their hit points / health to drain as they fought him.

Further, this was "contagious" in the sense that any other player with close proximity to an affected player would also be affected by this.

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Given this was an end boss, any low level player was immediately killed by the spell while higher level players could survive.

The most important thing was this spell would only take effect in a specific enclosure where the boss resided.

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So any player not in the enclosure would not be impacted by the corrupted blood. This was a means by which WoW wanted to contain the "virus".

However, this had a bug which led to a global pandemic in the world of Warcraft universe.

The bug? Pets / animals.

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In WoW players could have pets which could be summoned or dismissed by a player.

While the corrupted blood was only applicable within the enclosure for humans, a bug basically made pets on to be "carriers" outside the enclosure as well.

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While people aren't really sure who the first "incident" outside the enclosure is the contagious nature of the spell snowballed into a global pandemic that resulted in tens of thousands of low level players being killed & a lot more being infected without understanding why

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WoW initially released a warning to players to quarantine themselves as they debugged the issue but most people ignored it to begin with leading to the pandemic. Entire towns and cities were waylaid and filled with the corpses of the dead as the virus kept spreading

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Once players realized the severity of the virus, they started taking preventive actions.

Many of them self-quarantined or in some cases stopped playing. Some players (high level) went to investigate and see if they could help by guiding players away.

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"Healers" (players with healing powers) tried to save those who were infected.

Some nefarious elements willingly spread the infection to unsuspecting players!

It is widely believed players reacted in-game as to how they would in real life

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It took WoW almost a month to find & fix the bug by which time it spread far and wide.

The "corrupted blood" incident was later studied by epidemiologists on human behaviour in light of global pandemics. It effectively had all characteristics of one

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It started out in a fairly remote part of the world & moved to larger populaces. It was spread through transmission by animals / humans through close contact. There were some players who were asymptomatic but were infected. And a good number of people ignored all warnings

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In light of the coronavirus, this feels all the more real given the reactions of different people. Some wilfully ignoring travel warnings, some folks hoarding up on supplies, some docs / medics going out of their way to help patients recover etc

Very fascinating!

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Please note that I haven't actually ever played the game but only came across it a few years ago in a conversation with a friend. So if I've gotten some of the nuances of the game wrong, kindly forgive! 😊

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If you want to read more about the incident, read here:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted…