It’s the crack of dawn, and you’ve just
turned up at the headquarters of the Center
of Disease Control and Prevention.
On any other day, you’d still be in bed
right now, but this isn’t any other day.
An urgent meeting has been called to discuss
a mysterious pandemic sweeping the world,
and it’s down to people like you to stop
it in its tracks.
You were tossing and turning all of last night
trying to think of a solution, but you’ve
got nothing.
The situation feels absolutely hopeless.
You walk into a meeting room and there’s
a sea of worried faces.
These are some of the most intelligent and
hardworking professionals you know, but they
all have bags under their eyes and disheveled
hair.
You probably look ten times worse.
As the Director begins his address, everyone
sits in silence, transfixed on his every word.
He talks about how the outbreak most likely
traces back to a diseased animal transmitting
to a human: a simple accident with overwhelming
consequences.
It originated in a faraway nation but spread
like wildfire after officials failed to quarantine
those in the affected city quick enough, with
many contaminated people fleeing to other
cities or nations.
Now, it’s finally arrived here.
It’s weird.
Failed quarantines, rapid spreading, origins
in animals… it’s all sounding strangely
familiar, yet you can’t put your finger
on why.
It’s like you’ve lived through this before,
but you can’t have.
Sure, there have been a few outbreaks of diseases
in your lifetime, but that’s not what you’re
thinking of.
That’s when it hits you – you almost jump
up in the meeting with excitement.
You have lived through this before – only,
not in the real world.
In World of Warcraft.
Back in your awkward teenage years, when you
still had the time to devote to something
other than working for the CDC, you’d spend
endless hours on that game.
And you’d never forget the scenes that went
down when an unexpected plague broke out…
A new raid for highly-skilled players had
been launched, and you’re not embarrassed
to admit you were one of the first players
to give it a go.
It was only for users of a certain caliber,
but of course that included you.
And so, along with 19 other players, you headed
off to a dungeon called Zul’Gurub.
You ventured into the deepest realms of the
jungle, fighting off various trolls along
the way.
But you knew you were yet to meet your greatest
enemy.
After heading deeper and deeper, you finally
found the dungeon and your adversary: a giant
winged serpent called Hakkar the Soulflayer,
an ancient Blood God
Now, it was just between him and all of you.
Eyes on the prize, you were ready to give
everything you had into defeating this monster.
But as soon as you launched your attack against
you, you were struck by a spell that immediately
resulted in 300 points of damage.
A few seconds later, you lost another 300
hit points, and you noticed the same thing
happening to the other players.
This was more than just a spell – Hakkar
was spreading a plague called Corrupted Blood,
and it was one of the most virulent you’d
encountered.
To defeat Hakkar, speed was of the essence.
Although your total level was just over 4000
hit points, you’d be sure to die in just
a few minutes if the plague continued to sap
your points at this speed.
But as soon as you killed him, it would destroy
the plague and cure you all.
Even though it was just a game, you were determined
to win, and you barely blinked away from the
screen as you engaged in combat.
This was game on!
Yet you couldn’t help but notice something
strange happening.
Some of your fellow teammates were summoning
their pets.
Why?
Pets weren’t going to help win this fight.
It made no sense, and it was annoying they
weren’t trying as hard as you, but whatever.
Head in the game.
After just a minute or two of fighting, all
the players in your raid were losing their
hit points rapidly.
Everyone had caught the plague, either directly
from Hakkar or from each other.
You watched hopelessly from your swivel chair
as your character on-screen began to gush
blood.
But Hakkar was losing his strength too.
If only you could carry on for a few seconds
longer.
Finally, the serpent fell to the ground, and
you breathed a sigh of relief.
Hakkar was dead, and like magic, the Plague
had vanished.
You were still extremely weak and down to
your last few hundred hit points, but at least
now you could heal.
You began to make your way out of the dungeon.
Another quest done.
That was that!
At least, that’s what you thought…
You arrived in a nearby city expecting to
find life going on as normal, but instead
there was complete mayhem.
Throngs and throngs of players on screen were
bleeding and dropping to the floor, dying
before your eyes.
Skeletons were scattered all around . Straight
away, you suspected this was the Corrupted
Blood plague.
You had no idea how it had entered the city,
but you knew you didn’t want to run the
risk of catching it again, so you teleported
away without a second thought.
What was going on?
In 2005, the games developer Blizzard didn’t
think they were doing anything revolutionary
when they introduced a new dungeon raid into
the popular World of Warcraft game.
All they wanted to do was create a challenge
for high-level players, so they created a
plague – something that would aggressively
tear down the health of the players until
they defeated the character transmitting the
plague.
Because the opponent had to be defeated so
quickly, it added an extra layer of difficulty.
The spell should have resulted in one of two
possible outcomes: the players dying of the
plague or Hakkar being killed.
Simple, right?
Except it wasn’t.
Blizzard had missed one essential detail that
allowed the disease to spread outside of the
dungeon, creating the first virtual pandemic
known to man…
As well as the technical glitch, Blizzard
made another fatal error.
They assumed players wouldn’t want to spread
the disease.
A logical assumption – there was no rational
reason to spread the disease.
The problem is that humans aren’t always
rational.
The company had unwittingly created the perfect
environment to safely study a pandemic: a
complex virtual environment with millions
of real people making decisions.
The more you thought about it, the more similar
it seemed to what’s happening in the real
world, although now slightly more was at stake.
Maybe you could apply some of the lessons
learned…
You successfully escaped from the big city
into the countryside without contracting the
disease, and now you had some time to think.
If everyone really was dying from the Corrupted
Blood plague, how had it escaped from the
dungeon?
You messaged a few of your in-game friends,
knowing a few of them had also completed the
quest.
One of them replied immediately, explaining
that some of the people in his raid had been
purposely getting their pets out during the
fight until they caught the plague, and then
summoning them to the cities and joking about
it.
A few minutes later, another friend admitted
he’d tried the same trick himself, out of
curiosity for what would happen.
It turned out that pets could contract the
disease, and users had managed to spread it
because the effect of the plague went on pause
whilst the pet was dismissed, then returned
once it was summoned elsewhere.
Well, that explained why some of the players
on your quest were fiddling around with their
pets instead of focusing on defeating Hakkar.
But why had it even crossed their mind to
try and spread a disease around on purpose?
To be honest, it was pretty annoying – all
you wanted to do was get on with the game
like normal, but some utter pricks had tried
to be clever and ruined things for everyone
else.
Now, the same guy who had purposely spread
the disease from the dungeons into the city
was saying he wanted to go the center of the
mayhem to see what was going on for himself.
This guy had at least twice the number of
hit points you did, so he wasn’t too scared
of the plague and thought he might be able
to heal himself.
While he went ahead, your other friends teleported
to the countryside where you were, a safe
space from all the craziness.
A few minutes later, Blizzard sent a message
to all users announcing that a quarantine
was now taking place in the most infected
cities.
To prevent the disease spreading further,
nobody should leave those areas until they
were able to fix the problem.
Incredible – even the game developers were
struggling.
Surely they’d fix this soon.
Next thing you knew, your friend had appeared
in the countryside out of nowhere, saying
Blizzard hadn’t actually banned teleportation
out of the infected cities.
And a few seconds later, you started to lose
hit points.
Oh, great.
So your so-called friend had now infected
you all just for a joke, and there was probably
no way to get rid of the plague now.
Unsure of what to do, you logged out and hoped
for the best.
By allowing pets to get infected, Blizzard
had committed a fatal error.
There was no sensible reason for players to
summon their pets to different destinations
whilst they were in the quest, but like we’ve
already established, people aren’t always
rational.
Lots of the players were just looking for
a bit of mischief.
Once these pets arrived in the big cities,
they infected low-level players, who died
instantly from the plague due to their low
number of hit points.
Non-player-controlled players were infected
too – and because they couldn’t die themselves,
it allowed them to spread to even more users.
There was no cure for this horrible plague
that had swept across the virtual land.
Although many Healers had rushed to the aid
of dying players, the Corrupted Blood plague
was a typeless debuff, meaning it was almost
impossible to heal.
And by keeping those who were infected alive
for longer, the healers ended up doing more
harm than good.
Other players realized they could make themselves
immune by flagging themselves as being on
PvP mode.
But this was only a temporary solution, as
those who wished to spread the disease eventually
cottoned on and flagged themselves too, so
they could continue spreading.
The pandemic showed some interesting results
about the psychological reactions of humans.
Some people rushed to infect as many people
as possible, whilst others tried to help.
Many people chose to ignore the quarantine
that was imposed, thinking of themselves and
not the wider societal implications.
Maybe behavioral science is just as important
as the biological science and epidemiology.
You should probably mention that in the meeting.
But anyway, what became of the disease?
After searching through a few forums, you
finally accepted there was nothing you could
do to stop yourself from dying of that stupid
Corrupted Blood plague.
Your friend was also doomed to die of course,
but he didn’t seem to care.
You turned up in a graveyard as a ghost and
had to look for your dead body to resurrect
yourself.
This was why you hated dying.
By the time you’d resurrected yourself,
a few hours had passed, but the pandemic was
still spreading around like wildfire.
Feeling you couldn’t trust anyone, you looked
for another remote corner and decided to wait
it out without alerting anyone about your
whereabouts.
After browsing a few forums, you saw other
users posting screenshots of some of the towns
that had been quarantined, where the pavements
were white from the vast number of skeletons.
It seemed like everyone was still ignoring
the quarantines, too.
What was going to happen?
The Corrupted Blood incident affected around
four million players.
The main reason the disease had spread so
quickly was the reaction of the users.
Many people who had been in the big cities
at the time of the outbreak chose to ignore
the official advice and escape to safer areas,
but this had spread the disease further.
One tiny accident had snowballed beyond belief,
and it had done so extremely quickly.
The root cause of the plague had been animals,
but it had spread further because of humans.
That sounds very familiar, too…
Of course, the stakes are higher in real life.
Hopefully, not many people would try to spread
a disease on purpose just for a laugh – but
it only takes one crazy person to cause a
world of damage.
And almost as dangerous are those who ignore
official warnings and spread the disease unwittingly.
Come to think of it, the teleports in World
of Warcraft serve a pretty similar purpose
to real-life airplanes.
Eventually, Blizzard fixed the problem using
a simple solution: resetting the computers.
Maybe all those hours spent playing World
of Warcraft weren’t such a waste of time
after all.
People might have laughed at you once, but
now you’re one step ahead of them – you’ve
lived through this before.
Now, you’ve just got to figure out how to
switch off the computers…
Now for more about plagues check out why the
Spanish flu killed so many people or what
made the Black Death so deadly.
Click one now, before the global pandemic
gets us all!
