Plague (honestly!) on World of Warcraft

A report on Ars Technica today discusses a virtual plague spreading across World of Warcraft servers. Essentially a new high-level area was introduced in which a new in-game magic spell can infect players with a 'disease'. This disease can spread from infected players to nearby players. However when infected players returned to the population centers the disease started spreading like wildfire. Unfortunately since the disease was meant to do moderate damage to high-level players it started indiscriminately wiping out low-level players. Even computer-controlled characters in the cities have caught it - but they regenerate fast enough to not die from it, thereby perpetuating the disease.


Ars cite a discussion on ShackNews as the source:

Heres the skinny: Blizzard adds in a new instance, Zul'Gurub. Inside is the god of blood, Hakkar. Well, when you fight him he has a debuff called Corrputed Blood. It does like 250-350 damage to palyers and affects nearby players. 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).

Funnily enough most World of Warcraft players are fairly blasé about the whole epidemic, regarding it as not merely a programming foul up, but as a hazard of virtual life and something to celebrate! Rightly so, in my opinion! This is fantastic stuff, how can anyone not love it?

Update: Someone made a video.

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