WoW: Corrupted Blood bug subject of research into real-life pandemics |
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In case you're among the guys who had the misfortune of experiencing World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood plague of 2005, you'll be happy to know that your experience has gone into a research paper that's come into light.The paper, as strange as it may sound, delves into analyzing the unpredictable human factors that go into a real-life pandemics and is authored by Eric Lofgren of Rutgers University and Nina Fefferman of Tufts University.
For first-time readers not too familiar with the Corrupted Blood Plague, it's actually a debuff caused by Hakkar the Soulflayer, the final boss of the Zul'Gurub instance. The debuff could be passed on to other players who were standing close to the infected person.
While it was supposedly confined to the Zul'Gurub area, a then-existing bug allowed it to be spread to the outside population via hunter pets. As soon as hunters left their pets at the stables, the Corrupted Blood plague also infected the NPCs, who in turn infected everybody who passed by.
Lofgren and Fefferman's research paper examined how quickly the plague spread within the realms, and how players reacted to the resulting "outbreak".
Other realities that were reflected in WoW's plague were the issues of the failure of quarantine measures, and disease transmission by either the owner's pets, or immune carriers (in WoW's case, the NPCs). Professor Fefferman had this to say regarding the study:
If, God forbid, a disease broke out in London, you could see what would happen if people were told immediately of the risk. Would there be panic and chaos, or would it allow them to psychologically accept the danger and act accordingly? What would happen if we made people feel too reassured?
These are all things that have a great impact on the number of people who would be affected. They are also things we just donÂ’t know, so [virtual games] could be of great value in helping us understand what their true emotional responses would be.
The study is expected to be printed in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal for next month.
Via Times Online
1 Jumps Play World of Warcraft Offline
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That's pretty amazing