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Virtual plague decimated inhabitants in virtual world
By Gearhead, NetworkWorld.com, 09/23/05
If, like us, computer games just don't get your blood pounding you will probably not have heard of the hugely successful, massively multi-player online game (MMPOG) called World of Warcraft run by Blizzard Entertainment.
WoW is a fantasy environment -- the world of Azeroth -- in which "Players from across the globe can leave the real world behind and undertake grand quests and heroic exploits in a land of fantastic adventure."
WoW is incredibly detailed and functionally rich. It has even developed its own complex zeitgeist which results in speech such as "Are you curious who has been buying out all of the silk in the Auction House,
zerging your base, or creating far too many "cow" games?"
Anyway, the underlying complexity of the programming has created a system with emergent properties that not only can't be predicted but are apparently next to impossible to control. This was wonderfully demonstrated recently when Blizzard created a new world Zul'Gurub with a deity named Hakker, "the god of blood." Stick with us here, we're not making this up and it gets even better …
So, if you fought Hakker he would respond with a spell, a disease called "Corrupted Blood" that damages the attacking player and any players nearby. Here's where it gets interesting: The players who were infected by the spell but survived returned to their own worlds took the disease back with them!
Players who hadn't attained a high enough level in the game succumbed quickly and virtually died. According to a posting on a WoW community chat board: "Some servers [that host different worlds] have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague".
Apparently the game's managers "even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the [quarantine] and [infecting] other players."
This is an amazing story for several reasons. First, the fact that the system has emergent properties that can't be predicted or controlled is fascinating. Could one of these MMPOG games develop into something with intelliget attributes that were not designed in or planned?
Second, the fact that players willfully escaped quarantine as well as the characteristics of the epidemic and its relationship to real world epidemics is a PhD thesis waiting to be written.
Third, comments from many players suggested that they generally liked the problem - it seems that it provides a more realistic environment because of the unpredictability and the obvious limited control of the game's managers.
We understand that the plague is now over but we'd put cold, hard cash on a similar event in the not too distant future. Once you find the first bug you can never be sure there isn't another.
For more on this topic see the Ars Technica article "Virtual plague spreading like wildfire in World of Warcraft"] and the "News of the Plague" discussion.
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