Jesse
2015-01-23 18:37:20 UTC
Interesting, never heard about this before.
Never been much into gaming, I do like RTS base building games.
```````````````````````````````````````````````
Corrupted Blood incident
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about a virtual plague. For the legal concept
"corruption of blood", see Attainder.
The Corrupted Blood debuff being spread among characters in Ironforge,
one of World of Warcraft’s in-game cities.
The Corrupted Blood incident was a video game glitch and virtual plague
in the MMORPG World of Warcraft that began on September 13, 2005 and
lasted for one week.[1] The epidemic began with the introduction of the
new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar The Soulflayer. When
confronted and attacked, Hakkar would cast a hit point draining and
highly-contagious debuff spell called Corrupted Blood on players.
The spell, intended to last only seconds and function only within the
new area of Zul'Gurub, soon spread across the virtual world by way of a
bug that allowed pets and minions to take the affliction out of its
intended confines. By both accidental and purposeful intent, a pandemic
ensued that quickly killed lower-level characters and annoyed
higher-leveled ones, drastically changing normal gameplay, as players
did what they could to avoid infection. Despite measures such as
programmer-imposed quarantines, and the players' abandoning of densely
populated cities (or even just not playing the game), the epidemic was
finally controlled with a combination of patches and resets of the
virtual world.
The conditions and reactions of the event attracted the attention of
epidemiologists for its implications of how human populations could
react to a real-world epidemic. Anti-terrorism officials also took
notice of the event, noting the implications of some players planning
and perpetrating a virtual biological attack.
History
The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new
raid called Zul'Gurub into the game as part of a new update. Its end
boss, Hakkar, could affect players by using a debuff called Corrupted
Blood, a disease that damages players over time, this one specifically
doing significant damage. The disease could be passed on between any
nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few
seconds, while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It
would disappear as time passed or when the character died. Due to a
programming error, players' pets and minions carried the disease out of
the raid.
Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic
to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game's
servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited
the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing
hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths
in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected
shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to
the player's character and incurs inconvenience.[4]
During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses
varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing
abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who
could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some
characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted
to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the
disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard
Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the
disease, but it failed, as some players didn't take it seriously, while
others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security
measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable
pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard
resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]
The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set
in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the
countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses, and
the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead.[7]
Reaction
At the time, World of Warcraft had more than two million players all
over the world.[8] Before Blizzard Entertainment commented on the
outbreak, there was debate whether it was intentional or a glitch.[3] On
Blizzard's forums, posters were commenting about how it was a fantastic
world event, and calling it "the day the plague wiped out Ironforge."[9]
It was described as the first proper world event by an editor of a World
of Warcraft fan site.[3] After the incident began, Blizzard received
calls from angry customers complaining about how they just died.[9] Some
players abandoned the game altogether until the problem was fixed.[10]
The hard resets were described as a "blunt ending" by Gamasutra.[2]
The people who spread the disease out of malice were described by
Security Focus editor Robert Lemos as terrorists of World of
Warcraft.[1] He commented (incorrectly[11]) that this might be the first
time a disease passed from player to player in a game.[1] Mark Ward, an
editor for the BBC's web site, brought up an incident years earlier in
the computer game The Sims, where many players' characters died of a
curable disease originating from a dirty guinea pig, though there was no
way for the disease to spread to a different player's character.[3]
Jeffrey Kaplan—a game designer for World of Warcraft—commented that it
gave them ideas for possible real events in the future.[9] Brian
Martin—independent security consultant for World of Warcraft—commented
that it presented an in-game dynamic that was not expected by players or
Blizzard developers and that it reminds people that even in controlled
online atmospheres, unexpected consequences can occur. He also compared
it to a computer virus, stating that while it is not as serious, it also
reminds people of the impact computer code can have on them, and they're
not always safe, regardless of the precautions they take.[1]
Great Zombie Plague of '08
During one week of October 2008, a zombie plague was spread to promote
the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, before
its release. Unlike Corrupted Blood, this plague was intentional and was
dubbed by an authorized representative of Blizzard Entertainment as the
"Great Zombie Plague of '08".[12] It was compared to Corrupted Blood by
The Sunday Times, which described the zombie plague as being more
true-to-life. The plague was contagious, but in contrast to Corrupted
Blood, which had 100% transmission to nearby characters, being in the
vicinity of a character infected with the zombie plague represented only
a small risk of transmission. This meant that encountering a lone zombie
was not as dangerous as encountering a large mass of infected.[13] The
event—which Blizzard ended on 28 October—earned the company both praise
and criticism from its fans.[14]
Models for real-world research
Model for epidemic research
In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the
Ben-Gurion University in Israel, published an article in the journal
Epidemiology that described the similarities between this outbreak and
the recent SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Dr Balicer suggested that
role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the
dissemination of infectious diseases.[15] In a follow-up article in the
journal Science, the game Second Life was suggested as another possible
platform for these studies.[16] The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention contacted Blizzard Entertainment and requested statistics on
this event for research on epidemics but was told that it was a glitch.[9]
The Corrupted Blood incident was described as a fascinating yet
accidental case study of modeling disease origins and control at the
Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland by Gamasutra.[2] They
compared it to a real-life epidemic, in that it originated in a remote,
uninhabited region and was carried by travelers to larger regions; hosts
were both human and animal, comparing it to the avian flu; was passed
through close contact; and there were people, in this case non-playable
characters, who could contract it but were asymptomatic.[2] However,
there were elements that differed from a real-world epidemic, including
an indicator for carriers that they have the disease and how much risk
they are at, which cannot be done in the real world.[2] One aspect of
the epidemic that was not considered by epidemiologists in their models
was curiosity, describing how players would rush into infected areas to
witness the infection and then rush out. This was paralleled to
real-world behavior, specifically with how journalists would rush toward
a problem to cover it, and then rush back out.[2]
In August 2007, Nina Fefferman—a Tufts University assistant research
professor of public health and family medicine—called for research on
this incident, citing the resemblances with biological plagues. Some
scientists want to study how people would react to environmental
pathogens, by using the virtual counterpart as a point of
reference.[17][18] Subsequently, she co-authored a paper in Lancet
Infectious Disease discussing the epidemiological and disease modeling
implications of the outbreak, along with Eric Lofgren, a University of
North Carolina graduate student.[19] She spoke at the 2008 Games for
Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland and the 2011 Game Developers
Conference about the incident and how massively multiplayer online
populations could solve the problems inherent with more traditional
models of epidemics.[2][20]
Fefferman added that the three base models have their strengths and
weaknesses, but make significant behavioral assumptions. She also
compared Corrupted Blood to a drug trial with mice—"a real good first
step." She stated, "These are my mice [and] I want this to be my new
experiment setup." She expressed an interest in designing new diseases,
perhaps non-fatal ones, to be introduced to the game so she could study
how risk is viewed, how rumors would spread, and how public health
notices are handled. She added that Blizzard made such notices in the
original outbreak, but kept changing its position as it could not
effectively deal with the problem. She commented that she did not
believe it would ruin gameplay, as World of Warcraft dealt with health
challenges in combat, and that games set in medieval times had such
health risk. She argued that if researchers and developers worked
together, it could be fun. While Blizzard was initially excited about
the proposition, it became less outwardly excited over time, though
never rejected it. She has been in contact with other developers, hoping
to conduct the simulation in similar games to World of Warcraft.[2]
She thought that this was the only way to accomplish such a study, as
epidemiologists were limited to observational and retrospective studies,
because it would be immoral to release an infectious disease into the
population. She added that a computer model would be insufficient as
well, as it uses mathematical rules to approximate human behavior.
Doctor Gary Smith, professor of Population Biology and Epidemiology at
the University of Pennsylvania, commented that very few mathematical
models of disease transmission take host behavior into account, but also
questioned how representative of real life a virtual model could be. He
stated that while the characteristics of the disease could be defined
beforehand, the study is just as observational as one conducted on a
real-life disease outbreak. However, he added that one could argue that
the proposal could give an opportunity for a study that epidemiologists
may never have.[5] Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for
Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College, London, felt
skeptical of the idea, commenting that such a study could not properly
mimic genuine behavior. Using the zombie plague used to promote World of
Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King before its release as an example,
players would intentionally become infected to gain zombie powers. He
added that characters could also regenerate, meaning there was low risk
in becoming infected. He felt that while online games such as World of
Warcraft could be set up to help scientists study epidemics, it will
always be limited as their primary use is for entertainment.[14]
Model for terrorism research
In an analysis of the Corrupted Blood incident, Charles Blair, deputy
director of the Center of Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, said that
World of Warcraft could provide a powerful new way to study how
terrorist cells form and operate. While his organization already uses
computer models to study terrorists' tactics, Blair explained that
because World of Warcraft involves real people making real decisions in
a world with controllable bounds, which could provide a more realistic
models for military intelligence analysts. For example, one
self-confessed virtual bioterrorist in World of Warcraft commented about
how quickly people got smart about doing the most damage to the largest
number of people.[6]
Yale University terrorism expert Stuart Gottlieb admitted that while the
outbreak was interesting and relevant to the times, he would not base a
counter-terrorism strategy on a video game. Gottlieb expressed
skepticism that analyzing the incident could shed light on the complex
underlying causes of terrorism in the real world, as the stakes for both
terrorists and civilians are lowered in a virtual setting. However, as
commented by the editor of the article, "the biggest weakness for using
a game as an analytical tool is that death in World of Warcraft is a
nuisance at most." [6]
Blizzard has maintained a position that World of Warcraft is first and
foremost a game, and that it was never designed to mirror reality or
anything in the real world.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
Never been much into gaming, I do like RTS base building games.
```````````````````````````````````````````````
Corrupted Blood incident
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about a virtual plague. For the legal concept
"corruption of blood", see Attainder.
The Corrupted Blood debuff being spread among characters in Ironforge,
one of World of Warcraft’s in-game cities.
The Corrupted Blood incident was a video game glitch and virtual plague
in the MMORPG World of Warcraft that began on September 13, 2005 and
lasted for one week.[1] The epidemic began with the introduction of the
new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar The Soulflayer. When
confronted and attacked, Hakkar would cast a hit point draining and
highly-contagious debuff spell called Corrupted Blood on players.
The spell, intended to last only seconds and function only within the
new area of Zul'Gurub, soon spread across the virtual world by way of a
bug that allowed pets and minions to take the affliction out of its
intended confines. By both accidental and purposeful intent, a pandemic
ensued that quickly killed lower-level characters and annoyed
higher-leveled ones, drastically changing normal gameplay, as players
did what they could to avoid infection. Despite measures such as
programmer-imposed quarantines, and the players' abandoning of densely
populated cities (or even just not playing the game), the epidemic was
finally controlled with a combination of patches and resets of the
virtual world.
The conditions and reactions of the event attracted the attention of
epidemiologists for its implications of how human populations could
react to a real-world epidemic. Anti-terrorism officials also took
notice of the event, noting the implications of some players planning
and perpetrating a virtual biological attack.
History
The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new
raid called Zul'Gurub into the game as part of a new update. Its end
boss, Hakkar, could affect players by using a debuff called Corrupted
Blood, a disease that damages players over time, this one specifically
doing significant damage. The disease could be passed on between any
nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few
seconds, while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It
would disappear as time passed or when the character died. Due to a
programming error, players' pets and minions carried the disease out of
the raid.
Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic
to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game's
servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited
the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing
hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths
in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected
shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to
the player's character and incurs inconvenience.[4]
During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses
varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing
abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who
could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some
characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted
to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the
disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard
Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the
disease, but it failed, as some players didn't take it seriously, while
others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security
measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable
pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard
resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]
The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set
in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the
countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses, and
the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead.[7]
Reaction
At the time, World of Warcraft had more than two million players all
over the world.[8] Before Blizzard Entertainment commented on the
outbreak, there was debate whether it was intentional or a glitch.[3] On
Blizzard's forums, posters were commenting about how it was a fantastic
world event, and calling it "the day the plague wiped out Ironforge."[9]
It was described as the first proper world event by an editor of a World
of Warcraft fan site.[3] After the incident began, Blizzard received
calls from angry customers complaining about how they just died.[9] Some
players abandoned the game altogether until the problem was fixed.[10]
The hard resets were described as a "blunt ending" by Gamasutra.[2]
The people who spread the disease out of malice were described by
Security Focus editor Robert Lemos as terrorists of World of
Warcraft.[1] He commented (incorrectly[11]) that this might be the first
time a disease passed from player to player in a game.[1] Mark Ward, an
editor for the BBC's web site, brought up an incident years earlier in
the computer game The Sims, where many players' characters died of a
curable disease originating from a dirty guinea pig, though there was no
way for the disease to spread to a different player's character.[3]
Jeffrey Kaplan—a game designer for World of Warcraft—commented that it
gave them ideas for possible real events in the future.[9] Brian
Martin—independent security consultant for World of Warcraft—commented
that it presented an in-game dynamic that was not expected by players or
Blizzard developers and that it reminds people that even in controlled
online atmospheres, unexpected consequences can occur. He also compared
it to a computer virus, stating that while it is not as serious, it also
reminds people of the impact computer code can have on them, and they're
not always safe, regardless of the precautions they take.[1]
Great Zombie Plague of '08
During one week of October 2008, a zombie plague was spread to promote
the second World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, before
its release. Unlike Corrupted Blood, this plague was intentional and was
dubbed by an authorized representative of Blizzard Entertainment as the
"Great Zombie Plague of '08".[12] It was compared to Corrupted Blood by
The Sunday Times, which described the zombie plague as being more
true-to-life. The plague was contagious, but in contrast to Corrupted
Blood, which had 100% transmission to nearby characters, being in the
vicinity of a character infected with the zombie plague represented only
a small risk of transmission. This meant that encountering a lone zombie
was not as dangerous as encountering a large mass of infected.[13] The
event—which Blizzard ended on 28 October—earned the company both praise
and criticism from its fans.[14]
Models for real-world research
Model for epidemic research
In March 2007, Ran D Balicer, an epidemiologist physician at the
Ben-Gurion University in Israel, published an article in the journal
Epidemiology that described the similarities between this outbreak and
the recent SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. Dr Balicer suggested that
role-playing games could serve as an advanced platform for modeling the
dissemination of infectious diseases.[15] In a follow-up article in the
journal Science, the game Second Life was suggested as another possible
platform for these studies.[16] The Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention contacted Blizzard Entertainment and requested statistics on
this event for research on epidemics but was told that it was a glitch.[9]
The Corrupted Blood incident was described as a fascinating yet
accidental case study of modeling disease origins and control at the
Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland by Gamasutra.[2] They
compared it to a real-life epidemic, in that it originated in a remote,
uninhabited region and was carried by travelers to larger regions; hosts
were both human and animal, comparing it to the avian flu; was passed
through close contact; and there were people, in this case non-playable
characters, who could contract it but were asymptomatic.[2] However,
there were elements that differed from a real-world epidemic, including
an indicator for carriers that they have the disease and how much risk
they are at, which cannot be done in the real world.[2] One aspect of
the epidemic that was not considered by epidemiologists in their models
was curiosity, describing how players would rush into infected areas to
witness the infection and then rush out. This was paralleled to
real-world behavior, specifically with how journalists would rush toward
a problem to cover it, and then rush back out.[2]
In August 2007, Nina Fefferman—a Tufts University assistant research
professor of public health and family medicine—called for research on
this incident, citing the resemblances with biological plagues. Some
scientists want to study how people would react to environmental
pathogens, by using the virtual counterpart as a point of
reference.[17][18] Subsequently, she co-authored a paper in Lancet
Infectious Disease discussing the epidemiological and disease modeling
implications of the outbreak, along with Eric Lofgren, a University of
North Carolina graduate student.[19] She spoke at the 2008 Games for
Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland and the 2011 Game Developers
Conference about the incident and how massively multiplayer online
populations could solve the problems inherent with more traditional
models of epidemics.[2][20]
Fefferman added that the three base models have their strengths and
weaknesses, but make significant behavioral assumptions. She also
compared Corrupted Blood to a drug trial with mice—"a real good first
step." She stated, "These are my mice [and] I want this to be my new
experiment setup." She expressed an interest in designing new diseases,
perhaps non-fatal ones, to be introduced to the game so she could study
how risk is viewed, how rumors would spread, and how public health
notices are handled. She added that Blizzard made such notices in the
original outbreak, but kept changing its position as it could not
effectively deal with the problem. She commented that she did not
believe it would ruin gameplay, as World of Warcraft dealt with health
challenges in combat, and that games set in medieval times had such
health risk. She argued that if researchers and developers worked
together, it could be fun. While Blizzard was initially excited about
the proposition, it became less outwardly excited over time, though
never rejected it. She has been in contact with other developers, hoping
to conduct the simulation in similar games to World of Warcraft.[2]
She thought that this was the only way to accomplish such a study, as
epidemiologists were limited to observational and retrospective studies,
because it would be immoral to release an infectious disease into the
population. She added that a computer model would be insufficient as
well, as it uses mathematical rules to approximate human behavior.
Doctor Gary Smith, professor of Population Biology and Epidemiology at
the University of Pennsylvania, commented that very few mathematical
models of disease transmission take host behavior into account, but also
questioned how representative of real life a virtual model could be. He
stated that while the characteristics of the disease could be defined
beforehand, the study is just as observational as one conducted on a
real-life disease outbreak. However, he added that one could argue that
the proposal could give an opportunity for a study that epidemiologists
may never have.[5] Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for
Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College, London, felt
skeptical of the idea, commenting that such a study could not properly
mimic genuine behavior. Using the zombie plague used to promote World of
Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King before its release as an example,
players would intentionally become infected to gain zombie powers. He
added that characters could also regenerate, meaning there was low risk
in becoming infected. He felt that while online games such as World of
Warcraft could be set up to help scientists study epidemics, it will
always be limited as their primary use is for entertainment.[14]
Model for terrorism research
In an analysis of the Corrupted Blood incident, Charles Blair, deputy
director of the Center of Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, said that
World of Warcraft could provide a powerful new way to study how
terrorist cells form and operate. While his organization already uses
computer models to study terrorists' tactics, Blair explained that
because World of Warcraft involves real people making real decisions in
a world with controllable bounds, which could provide a more realistic
models for military intelligence analysts. For example, one
self-confessed virtual bioterrorist in World of Warcraft commented about
how quickly people got smart about doing the most damage to the largest
number of people.[6]
Yale University terrorism expert Stuart Gottlieb admitted that while the
outbreak was interesting and relevant to the times, he would not base a
counter-terrorism strategy on a video game. Gottlieb expressed
skepticism that analyzing the incident could shed light on the complex
underlying causes of terrorism in the real world, as the stakes for both
terrorists and civilians are lowered in a virtual setting. However, as
commented by the editor of the article, "the biggest weakness for using
a game as an analytical tool is that death in World of Warcraft is a
nuisance at most." [6]
Blizzard has maintained a position that World of Warcraft is first and
foremost a game, and that it was never designed to mirror reality or
anything in the real world.[6]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident