#virtual plague

Corrupted Blood started with a band of high-level players who took down an end-game boss with the ability to cast a blood-draining spell. While the players made sure they were free of the spell’s effect after the battle, they allegedly forgot to treat one of the pets. That pet was then able to carry the pathogen out of the dungeon as a result of a programming oversight, culminating in a full-blown pandemic.

Corrupted Blood quickly spread from city to city. Game developer Blizzard tried to quarantine some areas of the game in response, but to no avail. After a week, Blizzard only managed to put the kibosh on the mayhem with hard resets and patches.

Epidemiologists later found players exhibited some interesting behavior during this time. Some people volunteered to help, but wound up falling sick. Others “went to work” as usual (making money by dealing weapons) and infected others. And some got themselves infected out of curiosity.

“Some people tried to uphold law and order, some tried their best to help, others maliciously disseminated the virus,” one Weibo user wrote, recalling the Corrupted Blood incident. “In a game with anonymity, good and evil appear even more real than in real life.”

Epidemiologists have also compared the Corrupted Blood incident to China’s outbreak of Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome). Ran Balicer, Eric Lofgren and Nina Fefferman wrote several papers on the event, citing similarities to the previous coronavirus outbreak that also originated in animals.

Balicer pointed out that both the virtual and real epidemic faced failed attempts to quarantine infected people, and both cases demonstrated a high potential for rapid spread around the world. While the disease in WoW was spread by characters teleporting from city to city, Sars found its way to other countries by way of air travel.

“This plague bug in a video game really carries a lot of real-life meaning!” a Weibo influencer wrote.