Curiosities about video games: The corrupt blood virus

This is the first section that I will open in my blog: Curiosities about video games, where I will talk about curious, epic or historical events that happened in videogames.

What started as a glitch soon became the biggest event in the history of the mmorpg. It was something unexpected and terrifying, nobody knew at the beginning what was happening and only after the incident was over could the entire disaster be reconstructed. There were no human losses, but no doubt the reaction of the players was as if it were real.

The incident began on September 13, 2005. The players of World of Warcraft took their adventures with ease. But in the vicinity of Zul 'Gurub the players began to fall dead, including the NPC. How was it possible? The Corrupted Blood was spreading at great speed.

Corrupt Blood is a spell that inflicts 200 points of damage every 2 seconds. Because of an error in the servers, this spell became a real epidemic that devastated all of Azeroth (The World of Warcraft).

Like every viral outbreak, it has an origin, a zero zone and that was Zul'Gurub. In this dungeon, the players faced Hakkar the Soulflayer, a powerful enemy who cast this spell.

The Corrupted Blood had to be eliminated after a short period of time and when leaving the dungeon. However, the "virus" continued and infected all nearby players. The effect could be supported if the player had a high level but would have to be cured continuously. In the players with a very low level it could be completely lethal, in a matter of seconds they would fall dead.

The epidemic lasted a week but it was enough for the cities to be completely empty and white with the bones of the dead. In a game that was constantly crammed with players, the scenarios became bleak. Before the advance of the Corrupted Blood, the weakest players took refuge in free zones, some of the strongest ones contributed to help to cure the affected ones with their magic while other daring ones took risks and explored the zones to report the advance of the epidemic and warn others about possible risks although many times players went to the infected areas to be witnesses, perhaps out of curiosity; but epidemiologists point to the resemblance to the activity of reporters who risk their lives for the news.

Not everything was complete altruism, there were many players who helped to spread the virus by complete malice. They could infect the callable pets, which could infect more users. They also misinformed about the free zones and even they were looking for them to spread the deadly pathogen. Another factor that helped the proliferation of Corrupted Blood was that NPCs could become infected but did not show any symptoms which made contagion practically invisible.

For many players this epidemic was the most exciting and perhaps the biggest event within the mmorpg, but for many others it was just annoying and Blizzard rained calls and messages with complaints about what happened. There was some disinformation because they did not know if Blizzard was responsible or not. The truth is that the programmers were equally surprised because it was an unexpected error. That is why they always sought to provide the possible assistance to the two affected servers. Seeing that they could not find solutions, the Blizzard team was forced to reset the servers and apply quick fixes.

The Corrupted Blood did not affect WoW users in the same way again but it certainly left an incredible legacy. The designers to see the good reception of the players devised a new event: The Great Zombie Plague of 2008. This event if it was controlled by the company and was quite well received but was very different from the previous outbreak. It just could not be repeated.

Years after the incident, several scientists and epidemiologists observed what happened and studied with increasing interest the behavior of players before the virtual epidemic. This helped them devise ways to test human reactions to possible outbreaks of disease. They pointed out with special importance what happened at the event and how this reflected the possible reactions a society would have to an epidemic. What made the incident unique was that within a virtual world, something completely unexpected happened just as it would happen in real life.
For example, in horror games you are aware that there is a zombie invasion, but in massive online games where the gameplay and the plot have nothing to do with this, when it happens it has the same repercussions as in reality because the individual is in a medium where he foresees what will happen and does not expect anything like that at all. On the other hand, they also consider pernicious contagion possible. In a certain way it already manifests itself in real life, where, for example, people infected with HIV consciously infect others just for causing harm to others. That is why a similar response is expected in the event of an epidemic and that people can devise quite intelligent ways to cause as much damage as possible.