Umbrella Corporation Unleashes Pathogen on WoW Community

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-09-22 12:29am

Players of Blizzard's incredibly popular World of Warcraft are reporting the outbreak of a virtual plague that is spreading across major cities in the virtual land of Azeroth, infecting player characters at an alarming rate.

The trouble started when Blizzard programmers added a new instance, which is a separate area connected to the outside world that players can enter and attempt unique quests. One of these instances, Zul'Grub, contained the god of blood, Hakkar. Hakkar was a powerful foe that could cast spells of his own, including a spell called Corrupted Blood. This spell did a large amount of damage to any player within the vicinity of the casting, and the effects lingered on after the spell was over.

What happened next was something Blizzard did not expect. Some of the players who had gone into the instance emerged back into the main world of Azeroth, and started spreading the Corrupted Blood disease to others who they came into close contact with. The infection soon spread into many of the cities and towns in the virtual world. Since the disease was intended to be a danger to powerful players, it tended to kill those less than level 50 almost instantly.

Game masters (GMs) tried to quarantine certain players from moving into new areas, but they kept escaping the quarantine and moving on to infect other people. A patch was issued to try and mitigate the damage, but it did not have the desired effect. According to a Blizzard poster on the WoW forums:

It appears that the hotfix remedy concocted to combat the recent Azerothian outbreak has not yielded desired results. At this time, our medical staff is continuing to develop an effective cure. We look forward to ensuring the health and vitality of the citizens of Azeroth in the near future.

The most interesting thing about this "outbreak" is perhaps the reaction it has provoked among WoW players. Instead of being angry about the deleterious effects of a bug, many are treating this as an exciting and unprecedented event in the WoW universe. It would be even more interesting if epidemiologists in the real world found that this event was worthy of studying as a kind of controlled experiment in disease propagation.

Source

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2005-09-22 12:49am

That's fricking AWESOME!

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-09-22 12:52am

Nice!

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2005-09-22 12:55am

I read about that awhile ago... I heard there were cults springing up dedicated to spreading the plague further xD

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2005-09-22 01:03am

There's a song, and a site

Tough cult, you'd have to be constantly healing. I hear tell it wiped out most of the Blackrock server in the initial outbreak.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2005-09-22 01:31am

CaptainChewbacca wrote:There's a song, and a site

1) The song is from Team America: World Police.

2) A ytmnd page is not a site... it's just that, a singular page.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-22 01:43am

Thats awesome, completly and utterly awesome.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » 2005-09-22 01:50am

Here's a video of the plague in action:

link

Ain't no joke.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2005-09-22 01:53am

Wheee! I want to join a Nihlistic Plague-Cult now! (watches video).

Manus Celer Dei · Post by **Manus Celer Dei** » 2005-09-22 02:01am

I wonder how many honour points Hakkar has now.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2005-09-22 02:10am

Nurgle is at work.

Cleanse, purge, kill!

Shame I can't play though...

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2005-09-22 02:55am

Anyone have that plague clip in non-avi form?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2005-09-22 03:29am

What's wrong with AVI?

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-09-22 05:43am

Power to the Horde! The Plague shall spread and rise as the foul undead

, the only cure is to burn the city and... Oh wait, wrong game, no wrong game in the series

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2005-09-22 10:55am

It's like .hack all over again.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2005-09-22 12:59pm

Sadly, Mannoroth never got hit with the Plague, and it's now been hotfixed to be zonelocked to Zul'Gurub. Once we get to Hakkar, I'll let you lot know what it's like.

NeoGoomba · Post by **NeoGoomba** » 2005-09-22 01:31pm

That is so cooooooool hah. I'd love to see Old Town in Stormwind be turned into a leper quarter

Darth Fanboy · Post by **Darth Fanboy** » 2005-09-22 01:50pm

Only the blood of the Omega Man can heal this nefarious pestilence.

NeoGoomba · Post by **NeoGoomba** » 2005-09-22 02:24pm

Darth Fanboy wrote:Only the blood of the Omega Man can heal this nefarious pestilence.

He's too busy working for a monkeyless future

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2005-09-22 03:05pm

Ah, even the virtual worlds can have their own bioterrorists, even more interesting they're the nihilist "purge humanity from the planet!" type.

Maybe Umbrella, Inc. could make cash off this digital malady... or you could maybe bribe people for the vaccine (if you made one).

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2005-09-22 03:13pm

I got to see this shit first hand.

I bring love! Gack! Cough! Thud!

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-09-22 04:03pm

Absolutely amazing. Absolutely amazing. That's great. I especially like how the players handled it so well, and are treating it in much the way that regular people treat real-life epidemics.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2005-09-22 07:02pm

Real people don't treat real life epidemics by going "Holy shit, this is so AWSOME!!!!" Insead, they go "Run away! Don't go near sick! Repent, God's Wrath is upon us!" You know, that kind of stuff.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2005-09-22 07:12pm

I so wish I had a WoW account that was high enough level to 'shake off' the plague.

I would SO change my name to 'Prior' and log onto servers with the line 'Hallowed are the Ori'

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2005-09-22 07:15pm

Adrian Laguna wrote:Real people don't treat real life by going "Holy shit, this is so AWSOME!!!!" Insead, they go "Run away! Don't go near sick! Repent, God's Wrath is upon us!" You know, that kind of stuff.

I think he's talking more like how the DMs went to the trouble of trying to quarantine infected characters. Otherwise, this is pure bad-assness.