The Corrupted Blood incident was a World of Warcraft glitch that was implemented on 2005 September 13 and patched on 2005 October 8. Corrupted Blood itself was a status effect that dealt up to 300 damage once every few seconds and can spread from players to other nearby players. It was meant to exist only in a specific dungeon for high level players, but a glitch caused it to leak in several different servers. Once leaked, the Corrupted Blood was similar to a real disease in several ways. NPCs were able to transmit the debuff without being visibly infected, thus acting like asymptomatic carriers. And because the damage didn’t scale, players with lower levels or less HP died much more easily, like immunocompromised people. Blizzard’s hotfixes cured many players, but they were unable to stop outbreaks from restarting. This had a non-zero amount of consequences:
Crowded cities were hit hardest by the incident, and many players fled to smaller towns.
Players using fast travel also made the infection spread faster.
Players with healing abilities tried to keep others alive, but these players were more likely to catch and transmit the infection. Only one class was able to completely cure the debuff.
Some players traveled toward the cities, whether they were looking for “treatment” or just curious about the incident.
A few players tried to use forums and the in-game chat to inform people about recent developments and stop them from entering cities.
Server admins attempted to set up quarantines, but some people always broke them.
Some players spread false rumors about items that could prevent the infection and made a lot of money selling those items.
A few players intentionally caught the infection to spread it to other people.
Because World of Warcraft players are real humans (at least according to Wikipedia), many of their actions were more realistic than the simulations that epidemiologists were using at the time. (even the griefing is real, though I do hope that’s less common in real life than WoW) The epidemiologists, including some from the United States’ Center for Disease Control, asked Blizzard to let them study player data from the incident. They have pointed out that because most human viruses require contact to spread, the ways people interact with each other and respond to information are often more important than the diseases themselves.
This and the Falador Massacre on RuneScape are probably the most famous MMO bug stories.
AdOnly5876 on
Fuck… 20 years already. Time really flies when I don’t leave my room.
Pesec1 on
That model is fundamentally flawed since there were griefing players.
Everybody knows that during a real epidemic everyone will take it seriously, act rationally and won’t be offended by the very notion of basic safety measures.
4 Comments
The Corrupted Blood incident was a World of Warcraft glitch that was implemented on 2005 September 13 and patched on 2005 October 8. Corrupted Blood itself was a status effect that dealt up to 300 damage once every few seconds and can spread from players to other nearby players. It was meant to exist only in a specific dungeon for high level players, but a glitch caused it to leak in several different servers. Once leaked, the Corrupted Blood was similar to a real disease in several ways. NPCs were able to transmit the debuff without being visibly infected, thus acting like asymptomatic carriers. And because the damage didn’t scale, players with lower levels or less HP died much more easily, like immunocompromised people. Blizzard’s hotfixes cured many players, but they were unable to stop outbreaks from restarting. This had a non-zero amount of consequences:
Crowded cities were hit hardest by the incident, and many players fled to smaller towns.
Players using fast travel also made the infection spread faster.
Players with healing abilities tried to keep others alive, but these players were more likely to catch and transmit the infection. Only one class was able to completely cure the debuff.
Some players traveled toward the cities, whether they were looking for “treatment” or just curious about the incident.
A few players tried to use forums and the in-game chat to inform people about recent developments and stop them from entering cities.
Server admins attempted to set up quarantines, but some people always broke them.
Some players spread false rumors about items that could prevent the infection and made a lot of money selling those items.
A few players intentionally caught the infection to spread it to other people.
Because World of Warcraft players are real humans (at least according to Wikipedia), many of their actions were more realistic than the simulations that epidemiologists were using at the time. (even the griefing is real, though I do hope that’s less common in real life than WoW) The epidemiologists, including some from the United States’ Center for Disease Control, asked Blizzard to let them study player data from the incident. They have pointed out that because most human viruses require contact to spread, the ways people interact with each other and respond to information are often more important than the diseases themselves.
Sources:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTGHSpgp5mc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTGHSpgp5mc) (yes this is Game Theorists)
Video game history is the only history I know. I also made a [Mercy version of the meme](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TUNeH_p02UcdxDhkQzOBRAftvtx_fUzo/), not sure if that one is better than the Mario version.
This and the Falador Massacre on RuneScape are probably the most famous MMO bug stories.
Fuck… 20 years already. Time really flies when I don’t leave my room.
That model is fundamentally flawed since there were griefing players.
Everybody knows that during a real epidemic everyone will take it seriously, act rationally and won’t be offended by the very notion of basic safety measures.