In 2005, the largest epidemic in the history of online games accidentally occurred in World of Warcraft - it w

In 2005, the largest epidemic in the history of online games accidentally occurred in World of Warcraft - it was later even analyzed by real epidemiologists

In update 1.7, the developers rolled out a new raid called Zul'gurub.The final boss there, Hakkar the Soul Flayer, placed the Corrupted Blood debuff on the characters.The infected player quickly lost health and transmitted the infection to everyone who stood nearby.

According to Blizzard's plans, the disease should not have spread beyond the dungeon.But due to a technical bug, hunters and warlocks managed to recall infected pets and then summon them in large cities.As a result, several of these pets carried the debuff outside and started a massive infection.

Real chaos began in the cities, very similar to a real pandemic: 🟠Low-level characters died in droves; 🟠All the streets of large cities were littered with skeletons; 🟠Some of the players panicked and simply ran away; 🟠Some people even ignored the danger; 🟠Some pests specifically spread the infection; 🟠Curious players ran into dangerous areas just for fun; 🟠Some tried to treat others, but often only made things worse; 🟠Attempts to isolate the infected failed because no one followed the rules.

In the end, the developers had to reboot the servers and release an urgent update that fixed this bug.

Scientists were shocked by how realistically people behaved in the virtual world.It turned out that viruses spread not only by themselves, but also due to human actions.

Now this case from WoW is often cited as an example for analyzing the behavior of society during real epidemics. #game #Blizzard