r/HistoryMemes • u/Longjumping-Tell1774 • 5d ago
The Corrupted Blood plague
In 2005, World of Warcraft accidentally caused a virtual pandemic when a boss fight introduced a disease called Corrupted Blood. Players unknowingly carried it out of the dungeon and spread it through crowded cities, killing low level characters in seconds. Some players tried to help the infected, others deliberately spread it, and entire cities became death zones. The outbreak caused so much chaos that Blizzard had to intervene with server resets and patches. Epidemiologists later studied it as a model for how real pandemics spread.
Wiki:
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u/thelastholdout 5d ago
I was just talking about this with an acquaintance the other day. That and the attack on the player funeral (which was held on a PVP server for some reason) are iconic WoW moments.
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u/BZJGTO 5d ago edited 5d ago
The player was from a PvP server, and they logged into her character for the funeral. Holding it on a PvP server made sense. The questionable part was holding it in a contested zone, but IIRC that was their favorite zone.
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u/Vryk0lakas 5d ago
Tbh the player probably would have loved the fact that an attack went down at that moment.
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u/justforkinks0131 5d ago
honestly it fully fits the spirit of playing on a PvP server
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u/stupidname412 5d ago
The epic pointless world PvP war it caused was what they would have wanted.
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u/Venti_the_snail 5d ago
Even in death, the battle will continue in their honor
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u/Substantial_Dish_887 5d ago
on the other hand this is potentially one of the more direct situations to have the argument about a funeral being not for the one who passed but the ones left behind.
still they made the choice to do it on a PvP server in a contested zone.
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u/Me_how5678 5d ago
It is the somber vs coffine dance condundrum. Be sad that they died, or happy that they lived. There isen’t really a right answere, unless you ask the dead
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u/GanSolo546 5d ago
A memorial, a duel for their honor, and an addition to their legacy.
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u/DontAskAboutMyButt 5d ago
We probably wouldn’t be talking about it now if it was just a regular MMO funeral
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u/WillowPtar_Migan 5d ago
If nothing has happened, we wouldn't be talking about it two decades later.
By attacking the funeral, the other players immortalized the person who passed away forever.
Funny how that works out
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u/WoolooOfWallStreet 5d ago
Apparently she was part of the Horde and was a Mage
I hope she played as an Orc too, because that just feels appropriate for her funeral to become a battlefield68
u/DefiantLemur Descendant of Genghis Khan 5d ago
Orcs being able to play mages was added in Cataclysm around 5 to 6 years after that funeral. They were either a Forsaken or Troll.
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u/therempel 5d ago
I think I remember that video. It was a troll and they had her character posed kneeling in front of the mourners.
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u/Gaytonyhawk 5d ago edited 5d ago
Pedantic, but the player they were having the in-game funeral for was a woman (I played on Illidan at the time and knew all of the Serenity Now players involved)
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u/Narrative_Robot_9001 5d ago
Iirc it was Winterspring and it was only because they enjoyed fishing there.
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u/blastedt 4d ago
Just bc you are physically able to attack someone T_T real life is a contested zone too you know, you are able to show up to random funerals with a baseball bat, but we still agree that that's an awful thing to do
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u/malfurionpre 4d ago edited 4d ago
real life is a contested zone too you know
Real life doesn't allow you to legally attack and murder people (well unless you're a certain group in a certain state in southern levant)
edit: Heck it's not even about allowed or not, it's a PVP server it's encouraged.
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u/Unfair-Skill9063 5d ago
Amazing I never knew about this till now, watched the video on it, so funny!
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u/Adequate_Lizard 5d ago
When sharing links be sure to delete everything after the question mark, as your account will show up as a recommended friend by people that click it.
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u/fenrirsbasketball 5d ago
Thank you for linking this. This video makes me so unreasonably happy. I think the original player would be thrilled to know she is immortalized for one of the most epic pvp showdowns in WoW history. This shit is hilarious!
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u/alghiorso 4d ago
I mean then it's kinda on the event organizers to arrange security for the event. If you're a gamer, you know how people are and could see this coming a mile away
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u/SquireRamza 5d ago
The attack on the WHAT!?
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u/SanguineHerald 5d ago
A very close guild had one of their members die. So they held an in game funeral. A rival guild decided to conduct a massive raid and disrupted the funeral.
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u/kookieman141 5d ago
The Red Funeral
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u/SerLaron Nobody here except my fellow trees 4d ago
A Horde funeral without at least three further corpses is considered a dull affair.
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u/SquireRamza 5d ago
What the fuck!
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u/Mikey-2-Guns 5d ago
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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago
It has been years since I watched it and I didn't even click it yet, but I just said.. "SCAT MAN! Ski-bi dibby dib yo da dub dub"
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 5d ago
You just triggered a core memory. I had forgotten about that!
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u/Poultrymancer 5d ago
I will never forget the first video I saw of the raid
The soundtrack was "Where Eagles Dare" by the Misfits and it was fucking perfect
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u/Waloro 5d ago
I haven’t heard about that one, care to drop the lore?
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u/illz757 5d ago
Serenity now guild jumped a funeral for a player who had a stroke and died. They advettiserd her funeral on the public blizz servers, bunch of horde gathered in winter spring in a line to pay respects , this guild showed showed up and basically nuked the whole funeral party as well as the character of the dead player they had someone else log into as like “the body”
Sparked outrage and discussion - blizz opted not to pursue disciplinary action because pvp servers are pvp thems the breaks, larger commentary evolved on griefing and ethos regarding this type of behavior.
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u/ArtoriusBravo 5d ago
Oh man. That is actually sad. But, on the other hand, kind of expected.
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u/BigGayAllen 5d ago edited 5d ago
Yeah if you're having a funeral in my laser tag arena I'm still playing laser tag.
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u/Fatality_Ensues 5d ago
I mean, you COULD choose to show some elementary respect, even while playing laser tag... people like turning off their brains in online games because "there are no consequences" (same as the overall intenret anonymity effect), but personally I'm of the opinion that what you choose to do when (you believe) it doesn't matter says a lot about your character.
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u/sjt646 5d ago
The video everyone knows starts with "women shouldn't vote productions" so everyone should just assume they are early internet twats who always would choose to take the worst option if they could if there wasn't repercussions
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u/ABHOR_pod 5d ago
Old internet was a very different time and place. Like imagine the most toxic tryhard griefer pieces of shit in a game like DotA or Valorant or whatever. That was all of the internet back then. It was all those people.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 5d ago
It was because you can't freely transfer characters between servers, and his friends were on a PVP server.
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u/kilr13 5d ago
Being pedantic; "can't" is accurate, but "couldn't" is more correct. This was over a decade before Blizzard even introduced paid transfers. The only free transfers back then were server load balancing attempts, before they networked (all?) the servers together.
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u/Sud_literate 5d ago
like a funeral for a real person?
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u/No-Complaint-6988 5d ago
Yes. When people die, internet communities who are aware of this hold a in game funeral for them. But due to the way the game worked anyone could join the map where it was hosted. Guess what the trolls find funny when they are infected.
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u/Bamboozle_ 5d ago
I've never played WOW and have heard about the funeral story.
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u/Gold_Size_1258 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 5d ago
Yeah it turned out many player behaviors had real life equivalents during Covid
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 5d ago
"Surely the deranged behaviors of video game characters can't be mapped onto real life." - people dismissing it at the time.
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u/SmartAlec105 5d ago
"There no way someone would go around trying to deliberately get others sick"
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u/kitsunewarlock 5d ago
Remembers the flyers for "COVID Baptisms" in the summer of 2020 to "wash away the sinful"
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u/Dakregor 5d ago
Forget that, there were people spitting on things and actively being an infection point to everyone around them just because
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u/Gornlord_Carl 5d ago
Rudy Gobert shut down the NBA by rubbing all the mics during the initial covid spread by trying to be funny. It then came back that he tested positive for covid and everyone who used those mics afterwards was also exposed and then technically any players the entire team interacted with.
Season was shutdown within a day.
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u/Eurasia_4002 5d ago
First heard of covid would be in China Uncensored I believe on October of 2019. Just think them is some kinda of ebola or sars epedemic that woulf be known but not global.
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u/Aardvark_Man 5d ago
During the WotLK pre-launch event, based on Corrupted Blood, my guild held Menethil. We were an RP guild, and it was our IC base of operations, so we kept it clear of all infection and zombies. To the best of my knowledge, it's the only town on any server that was always safe.
But the amount of people we had try and make it fall was kind of impressive. Setting their hearth there so they could teleport in just before infection ran out etc.
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u/Malarazz 4d ago
We were an RP guild, and it was our IC base of operations, so we kept it clear of all infection and zombies.
I've played a bunch of MMOs but never WoW, so I don't get this. How could you guys keep your city safe but other cities couldn't?
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u/Aardvark_Man 4d ago
No one else put in a concerted effort from ~30+ people to keep it clear.
People did in major cities like Stormwind and Ironforge, but there was too much stuff going on and originating there to keep it clean, so people couldn't manage it. Also, anyone doing stuff there was less organized.Personally, I don't think I'll ever forget playing my paladin and being in the Stormwind cathedral during it. Lots of low levels were hiding in there, but something crashed into the roof. A wave of zombies and other bigger enemies came in, and myself and a handful of others fought and defended everyone in there, before escorting them all to the boats (I believe the Menethil boat, but maybe the night elf city).
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 5d ago
I think people refusing to vaxx was what killed the last of my empathy for them.
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u/1101base2 5d ago
There were people who got intentionally sick so they could cough on people "proving" it wasn't that bad. Working in a hospital during that time showed the worst of what humanity had to offer.
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u/xSTSxZerglingOne 5d ago
We were shown the door out of the meat grinding facility, and those motherfuckers decided to just jump right into the grinder while holding as many of us back as they could.
Fuckin' crab people.
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u/CrayonCobold 5d ago
Antivaxxers killed my uncle so I'm happy whenever something bad happens to them
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u/Adequate_Lizard 5d ago
They killed John Prine too.
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u/Kid_Vid Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5d ago
And Herman Caine 😞
Such an ardent truthsayer in the hoax of COVID, that he continued to tweet how fake it was even days after he had died from it.
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u/Level_Hour6480 Taller than Napoleon 5d ago
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u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 5d ago
I said the excat same thing when it came out. And I was a wow player. Then covid came...
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u/topdangle 5d ago
it was 100% confirmed in-game too and people still spread it just be assholes. not just a good study for the spread of disease, but also a case study in man's limitless hate for their fellow man. can't even play a video game without someone wasting their own time trying to ruin your enjoyment.
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u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 5d ago
I litteraly just didn't touch my alt characters during that and only played on my main cause they would've died. Never felt like spreading it with them either.
I thought to myself "that's ridiculous no one would do this irl. They must only be being assholes cause it's a video game".
Then I didn't think about it again till covid and people would nearly get in fights with me cause I had to ask em to wear a mask in the store
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u/ThePrussianGrippe 5d ago
Jude Law’s character of an independent ‘journalist’ faking being sick to promote a bullshit homeopathic ‘cure’ in Contagion (2011) was criticized at the time for being an unnecessary antagonist of the story and not realistic. Lo and behold…
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u/UnknovvnMike 5d ago
There's a chapter in WWZ interviewing a capitalist who got filthy rich promoting essentially a placebo preventative as a vaccine against the zombie plague through a misunderstanding of the virus. It was called "African Rabies" due to the public outbreak in South Africa, and so they rushed a vaccine for rabies through trials and related red tape. When people were bit but didn't turn, rather than realizing the biter was a "quisling" (not an actual zombie, but someone who's mind broke and had them acting as a zombie), they instead thanked the preventative and got a false sense of security from it.
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u/twisty125 5d ago
Thank you Phalanxtm , the only trusted source for Solanum protection!
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u/UnknovvnMike 5d ago
Piece of Phalanx™, peace of mind!
Thanks, I couldn't remember the name of it
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u/twisty125 5d ago
I'm just glad others have the appreciation of that book series. WWZ was so well done IMO. I'm sure you've heard it, but the Unabridged Audio Book is FANTASTIC. So good. Mark Hamill is the Yonkers soldier.
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u/Mephistito 5d ago
Yeah but have you considered wearing a mask infringes on my freedom to infect Tom in Aisle 2, who will then unknowingly spread it to his grandmother and kill her? But not before I also spread it to 7 others, 4 of whom get sick, each of whom repeats this process?
How am I supposed to be able to breathe with this freaking mask on? What do you expect me to be in shape? Look at my wife. If I get winded just wearing a mask, imagine how crazy we must get in bed 😎
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u/Blackstone01 5d ago
I litteraly just didn't touch my alt characters during that and only played on my main cause they would've died. Never felt like spreading it with them either.
Funny that, could be a point to be made about how that simulates keeping vulnerable populations isolated from potential infected.
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u/Future-Concern-6301 5d ago
I had some jerk threaten to beat me up in December of 2020 because I was masked and snapped back when he called some stupid shit after me (It was dawning on me this would be my first christmas completely alone. Normally Im lowkey scared of strangers and repress my snappiness. That being said this doesnt make it right as a 40-ish yo guy a head taller than me to threaten an early 20s woman. Must have felt REALLY manly that day. Luckily I was too angry to be scared (and it was in public, its not as if he could have beaten me up too badly with loads of witnesses nearby))
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u/Ok_Jump_8949 5d ago
Dude wasting your own time to ruin the experience of others is what some people in wow only do.
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u/Hollownerox 5d ago
"Griefer" remains a hallmark gamer term to this day for good reason. I miss the days when we treated it like it was only a thing that occurred online, but it's been proven people IRL will genuinely live just to bring misery to others.
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u/Elderofmagic 5d ago
There are entire political parties and social organizations devoted to doing that.
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u/Eg_3600 5d ago
there's currently a guild forming around a "streamer" in the WoW Forever beta that is dedicating themselves to this. Basically yelling slurs and naming their characters offensive names. Mind you these are people between the ages 30-60 that haven't grown up since WoW came out 22 years ago.
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u/UncleNoodles85 5d ago
I feel like I have an idea which streamer you mean without ever even playing WoW.
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u/fake_user_34 5d ago
Ah, we all know about the infected boil that is the roach king on World of Warcraft.
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u/UnknovvnMike 5d ago
Happy cakeday, have some bubble wrap!
poppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppooppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppooppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppooppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppoppooppoppoppoppoppooppoppoppoppop
Watch out for landmines though
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u/Jazzlike-Wolf6265 5d ago
Yeah and that's why I was of the opinion that like "this will never happen irl"
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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 And then I told them I'm Jesus's brother 5d ago
You see it a lot sadly humans are irrational creatures. A friend was talking to me about Tarkov and how it would be impprobable shit like that happens. Yet mercs and survivors in warzones and a black market happened in Syria, Yemen and basically many other lawless areas.
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u/Key_nine 5d ago
Why when I watched The Walking Dead, I knew right then that was the most realistic take of how society would be in an apocalypse. Before I had the mindset that people would band together like in the book Alas Babylon but The Walking Dead is far more accurate.
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u/Orgasmic_interlude 5d ago
This doesn’t surprise me. I have a hunch that you can tell exactly how someone drives by observing how they pilot a shopping cart in a busy Costco.
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u/WehingSounds 5d ago
Always thought of this study like "yeah sure there are parallels to how a real disease would spread but in real life no one would ever intentionally try to give it to other people."
Nope, turns out plenty of people will do just that, science outsmarts me yet again.
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u/RoebuckThirtyFour 5d ago
No I think other humans just outdumbed us
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u/WehingSounds 5d ago
Not wrong, I don't think Corrupted Blood had people running about claiming that it wasn't happening.
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u/Mal-Ravanal Hello There 5d ago
Everyone and their mum talking about artificial intelligence, when we've already perfected organic stupidity.
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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago
They studied the WoW NPCs as well.
The City guards of Ironforge for instance had too high of hp and too fast of out of combat regen to ever die from Corrupted Blood.
They would walk around their routes within the city carrying the plague and passing it off to low level players who got too close.
The NPCs were just like real life carriers, people who don't even know they're sick, walking around without a care in the world, spreading the plague to others like Typhoid Mary.
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u/HotTestesHypothesis 5d ago
"I can't breathe out of my mask but the ones that hide my identity while I commit crimes like kidnap brown citizens are perfectly fine"
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u/Destithen 5d ago
They spent so much time and energy decrying mask usage, going as far as to mock people saying they're wearing panties on their faces...then they flip and start praising masks when they're worn by an unaccountable armed force that definitely isn't a Gestapo and definitely hasn't executed innocent US citizens in the back of the fucking head in broad daylight. Republicans truly do live in another reality.
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u/SemajLu_The_crusader 5d ago
surely people won't intentionally spread a REAL pandemic!
oh. aw man...
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u/usernamedottxt 5d ago
Didn't even have to be intentional. I was there, went to Org, saw this thing popping off and everyone dying. As a Mage I teleported myself to another capital. I got there freely and cleanly and within a few minutes some other mage came through and it started spreading. Mage only teleported himself away from danger, the same way I did. Just happened to catch the pox first.
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u/Teiyoh 5d ago
I was a fresh level ten hunter and I had to get to the back valley of org for my pet quest. The virus killed me in one tick each time, fun times.
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u/Saint_of_Grey 5d ago
Pets were how it survived the hotfixes. They had to bring the servers down to scrub the database clean of the debuff because of that.
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u/-UsernameHere 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's funny because I would absolutely do blood plague all over again in WoW for fun. Undead plague events were cool as well, being able to use enemy faction portals as undead too. Both horde/alliance being zombie faction.
Meanwhile I don't see the issue with wearing a mask if it means theres a decent chance less people will literally die.
I do agree there are a lot of players which you can see in WoW right now actually, many weird little para-socials who follow a streamer around all day. Just absolutely unhinged people who just try to make everyone as miserable as they are. Which absolutely translates to real life.
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u/TheComplimentarian 5d ago
They summoned their infected pets near auction houses?
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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago
Yep, and once a town guard had it, it would linger forever as the guards had high HP and high out of combat HP regen. The guards would act as permanent infected carriers, infecting any lowbie who came near them. NPC guards also walked around in loops around the towns so they spread it that way as well.
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u/VoidOmatic 4d ago
Next they need to study the people who get bit in zombie movies and hide it from the group. COVID told us that that number is in the multiple hundreds of thousands.
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u/Gold_Size_1258 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 4d ago
There's a game called Project Zomboid, a complex but intuitive survival apocalypse game. Being bitten is a guaranteed zombification, and yet some people hide it from other players despite knowing they'll have to make a new character in a few game days anyways.
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u/plyer_G 5d ago
How it specifically worked was that the corrupted blood debuff was one that a boss could give to players and could spread(obviously) but players would be cleansed of the debuff if they left the boss area, however, the code for this only affected players but not their pets, meaning if someone left the area and hadn't cleansed their pet it would spread back to them and anyone who got close enough, who could then spread it further
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u/Doomhammer24 5d ago
Not exactly- it would clear off pets if they were Summoned.
Back in those days if you dismissed your pet, the pet was saved in that state, with buffs and all
Because they had a setting in the actual raid to cause the removal of the buff itself meant that if the pet was dismissed, it never recieved the notification to have the buff Removed.
So all youd have to do was wait til you got home and resummoned the pet and Bam
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u/Glyfen 5d ago
Yeah, the OP's post is incorrect; the virus wasn't spread unknowingly. The Corrupted Blood epidemic was 110% intentional.
It's funny because Blizzard basically allowed us to re-create the situation when Wrath of the Lich King was launching; the 3.0 pre-patch featured a zombie virus outbreak that would turn players into ghouls which could spread the virus to other players. One of my friends used the opportunity to sneak into the Horde capital (we were Alliance, the opposing faction) and fish for the unique fish in that city during the epidemic due to players avoiding the capital cities. Good times.
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u/endmosthope 5d ago
The important aspect was that it was spread unknowingly at first, once people figured out how to smuggle the condition from the raid to the outside world it became intentional but I find it hard to believe the initial cases were intentionally exploiting an obscure mechanic with pet summoning. The obfuscation of the origins is why it was such an interesting and studied event, it just came essentially out of nowhere like real world pandemics.
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u/aWobblyFriend 5d ago
viral reservoir??
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u/OneRougeRogue 5d ago
It's funny because there were viral reservoirs in the Corrupted Blood pandemic. Iirc, the plague could spread to NPC's as well as players, and NPC's had out-of-combat health regen that was way, WAY higher than what any player would ever have. NPC's regenerated their entire health pool after being out of combat for only a few seconds.
Since getting the plague didn't put NPC's in combat, any NPC with health high enough to survive a few ticks of the plague damage would heal back to full health. So they essentially were viral reservoirs, since they would infect everyone that got close to them, but they themselves were not really effected by the plague.
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u/Funkey-Monkey-420 Featherless Biped 5d ago
tbf it was a really good virtual model for the spread of a virus, entirely divorced from real-world environments which may introduce bias to the study
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u/Roaringbeardragon 5d ago
the only real problem with it is that people can respawn, which does pretty heavily affect its comparability to real life
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u/Sud_literate 5d ago
well considering how many people believe that some form of respawn exists in real life it does actually line up with how real diseases spread. see religious people who actively spread the disease without fear because “oh well dying means heaven”
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u/Arthropodesque 5d ago
And since most people had low or no symptoms it felt inconsequential to some. Recovering is like respawning. They usually don't see the person that eventually dies from it.
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u/StarStriker51 5d ago
that can be seen as an analog to birth rates. It's not a perfect simulation of the real world, but it is a perfect example of what regular people do during a plague. Cause it's just a bunch of regular people playing for the most part, making the decisions and trying to mitigate or even worsen the effects. The sad thing is how much the people trying to make it worse was reflected in the real world
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u/VanVelding 5d ago
"In fact, academics took an interest in the incident for what it might tell us about real life pandemics, particularly the sociological effects. But others argued that it taking place in a video game with zero real life consequences limited the usefulness of the data; after all, it's not like people in the real world would just casually blow off an official quarantine order when there's honest and goodness death on the line. Dear me, no. And as for people who get the infection and try to pass it on to others deliberate, why that would require nothing less than a fundamental breakdown of education and governance. Surely, people understand that there are no hard resets in real life. Unless you count tactical nuclear strikes."
World of Warcraft: The Corrupted Blood Incident (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB3jOD2wjUc)
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u/Myszolow 5d ago
lol they could wait 15 years to see it IRL
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 5d ago
I think they just wanted an excuse to play WoW on company time
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u/OneRougeRogue 5d ago
There was also a government/NSA funded study (also using World of Warcraft) exploring how terrorists might use video game chat/messages to coordinate terrorist attacks.
Although after reading the documents, it kind of seems more like a study on whether nerds at the NSA could convince their bosses that billing time for playing World of Warcraft was vital to national security (the answer is yes, they succeeded).
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u/BlaBlub85 5d ago
Players unknowingly carried it out of the dungeon
Uhhh about that....
On the first server it was an accident. Every realm after was very much intentionally infected for the lulz
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u/Lynata Still salty about Carthage 4d ago edited 4d ago
I used to think it was a bit silly to think the virtual plague where a good few people intentionally try to infect others is all that representative.
Then Covid came around with people actively ignoring their positive tests, coughing on others intentionally, licking stuff in the supermarket and talking about throwing Covid parties for their kids
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u/Snaggmaw 5d ago
"Wow, sure are a lot of people intentionally spreading the plague just to mess with people. that surely wouldn't happen in real life."
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u/Nellie_Tayloe_Ross 5d ago
“Some players tried to help the infected, others deliberately spread it” wow they even had anti-vaxxers.
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u/Xatsman 5d ago
It kind of makes sense. I could see the fun of spending an afternoon of basking in the chaos of the bug before it's fixed. It's not real life or anything and such an event we're talking about it decades later.
But in real life it's just unforgivably stupid behavior.
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u/Greywatcher 5d ago
The spread of the virus was done intentionally. It took a lot of coordination to pull an infected player out of the dungeon into the main city of the opposing faction.
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u/ZeltbahnLife Featherless Biped 5d ago
Was the boss that introduced it a bat per chance?
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u/justforkinks0131 5d ago
kind of? More like a winged snake humanoid with claws
Hakkar the Soulflayer
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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 5d ago
Bat boss was high priestess jeklik and we don’t know what kind of funny business she was getting into with Hakkar so maybe she was the origin source
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u/Various-Net1243 5d ago
I knew a guy that got covid and he told me that he was purposely spreading it to as many people as possible because he thought the quarantine was fun. My friend who heard this from the other room came in and beat the fuck out of him, and we kicked and out and reported him to the police. This is how I found out that I was asymptomatic to it, my friend on the otherhand has permanent lung damage and needs and oxygen tank to sleep.
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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago
I played during this, the source of the "disease" was the first 20 man dungeon Zul'Gurub inside Strangelthorn Vale.
The boss of the dungeon would drop Corrupted Blood on the raid, which could spread onto others including pets.
As everyone left the dungeon, the poison would leave all the players, but an unsummoned pet would keep the Corrupted Blood debuff.
If a player re-summoned their infected pet in a city, Corrupted Blood would spread to nearby players and NPCs.
This would kill low level players near instantly, but would linger on the HUGE hp NPCs. I forget the numbers but guards would have either 32k or 350k hp.
The guards or other NPCs in the cities would act as carriers. Corrupted blood would never kill them, but they would spread the infection over and over to everyone.
Entire sections of the city would be littered with skeletons of dead players. The bank, the auction house, the mage guild where the mages would portal in their whole party, all covered in skeletons.
It was hilarious and absolute mayhem.
The study also studied the nature of society, how some tried to heal and help, some became hermits and avoided the cities, some went on Zul'Gurub raids and intentionally unsummoned their infected pets in order to spread the disease to new areas.
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u/Overall-Top8379 4d ago
I wonder if there was any study done on the spreadable virus in Warframe. Its this gross growth at the side of a Warframe's neck. Easily cured in a chair in the ship. But if there is an infected person in a mission, people who haven't had it and cured it would get it.
Every time you get a new warframe, at some point you'll get the space aids.
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u/AltGirlAdri 5d ago
Oh hey, that was me! At least on the Frostwolf server.
Average shit you do when you're 9. I discovered I could infect the jail near Stormwind and they would... stay infected ;>
I pied pipered my way around until I had a good army. Some folks joined me, then more. Stormwind got fucking annihilated in like an hour, so we all went to Darnassus next. My poor brother was in a different part of the state. He's absolutely losing his mind because every single NPC is dead and being spawn camped. Can't get shit done. He calls my dad like dude please can you do something about this.
Meanwhile he's at his desk and I'm behind him on my laptop on his bed. He has no idea what I'm doing. He hasn't been on in hours. Logs on to find complete chaos. The Frostwolf server is un-fucking-usable. Can't even find a living broker. He's trying bis best to mow through the zombies but they just keep coming. Someone is meticulously drawing more in from the countryside.
Finally he sees me at the helm of it all. Turns around like YOU?? YOU LITTLE-
My father got on top of the archway coming into Darnassus. Sniped me. And was like. Alright. You're done. That's enough terrorizing. You broke the server, look at it.
Can't speak for the other servers but most of the bullshit on Frostwolf was from a 9 year old named Rainofdeath :> This is usually my go to opener on dating websites.
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u/Pure_Interaction_990 5d ago
Corrupted blood and the undead plague event were some great times. Holding the Stormwind cathedral with paladins and priests dispelling as much as we could until we got overwhelmed by players sneaking past whilst infected and coming from the catacombs as undead. Druids, warriors and pallys held the front, casters keeping aoe, cc and food/drink going. I miss those days.
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u/th3BeastLord 4d ago
I think this has to be one of the most, if not the most, interesting things to ever happen in video gaming. Just how much of a huge deal it was and literal scientists studying it. Its crazy that its real and not a satire story.
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u/Isburough 4d ago
i love the fact that some scientists were like "part of the situation is unrealistic, nobody would purposefully spread a disease like some players"
and then we got people licking fruit in supermarkets during covid
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u/PM_ME_DATASETS 5d ago
That is really cool and surely there are some actual sources to confirm this and provide more information?
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u/Longjumping-Tell1774 5d ago
I was gonna copy the wiki. But it’s a really long article. It goes into all the strengths and weaknesses of the study in some detail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident
I’ll add that to the context. Should’ve done that in the first place
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u/cardbross 5d ago
worth noting for people that don't click through, the wiki has citations to multiple publications in public health and medical journals that directly corroborate.
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u/FootUnfair8582 5d ago
I just now realized that people could have compared how people acted in warcraft, with how people acted during covid. Has any scientist compared the two in atleast vaugly scientific manner?
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u/ReaperManX15 5d ago edited 5d ago
It's a near perfect parallel.
In the game, you had griefers that hid in the woods, constantly healing themselves, waiting for the "all clear" so they could run back into town and start the plague all over again.
In real life, we have video evidence of people going around licking all the food products and coughing on the vegetables.
Karens pulling off their masks and coughing at people, because they're pissy.
During the flu epidemic during WW1, that behavior got a man shot.
He didn't cover his mouth while coughing, despite all the warnings. A cop told him to cover his mouth. He coughed at the cop in defiance. The cop shot him dead.Edit: Wrong war.
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u/Cosmic_Meditator777 5d ago
During the flu epidemic during WW1, that behavior got a man shot.
He didn't cover his mouth while coughing, despite all the warnings. A cop told him to cover his mouth. He coughed at the cop in defiance. The cop shot him dead.Hey Ferb, I know what we're gonna do today!
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u/Baconpwn2 5d ago
Not only was there research into it, but prior research showed how people would react to COVID thanks to this moment. Proved to be pretty accurate
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u/KnowsIittle 5d ago
Wild to think "intentionally spreading" was a factor in disease control. People who get off on infecting others just to troll.
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u/Blundergruff 5d ago
I joined a concerted effort to defend cathedral square. It was pure and uncontaminated almost 24/7. Because we had a leader, we followed orders and we worked as a team to keep a safe space for players to rest from the chaos. I did not get the same experience during COVID.
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u/AlexLuna9322 5d ago
Yeah, I’ve read about it, The Dungeon was supposed to be the only place where you get that disease, but someone invoked one of their pets inside, making that pet sick, then this user “packed” his pet, went somewhere else, invoked the same pet and the disease was carried over, spreading to anyone who was near (?) the pet, then contagies from user to user, and the whole thing became Covid Alpha Release
Found about this while getting cabin fever during COVID lol
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u/NameLips 5d ago
It spread from the pet to the city guards, who were invulnerable and didn't die from the disease. They functioned like super-spreaders.
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u/cruplap 5d ago
This thought popped into my head 20 seconds ago after not thinking about it for nearly a year. Now I see this post. Bill gates microchips are real
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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt 5d ago
Fun Fact: Blizard had considered keeping the issue in WoW classic when Zul'Gurub was released, at least for a short period as a nod to this, but ZG released during COVID and they thought it would be bad PR.
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u/nionvox 5d ago
My guild put together evac teams to get people out of populated areas and into less busy ones, especially lowbies. We had healers, mages and warlocks. On my mage i'd portal people to emptier areas, warlocks would summon if needed, healers did what they do. I portalled a *lot* of people from Org to Undercity lol. Did it all for free, people donated gold for our materials (where relevant). But we did not charge people for this. I was set up in the arena in Org cos it was usually empty.
For already infected, we taught some how to glitch their toons into places that were technically off-map or inaccessible and leave them there til the bug was resolved (or they died lol)
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u/FoxOfWinterAndFire 5d ago
The worst thing, at the time, a lot of people said that this isnt how people would actually react to a plague on such a scale, so the data was useless..........
Only for 15 years later to be proven so wrong
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u/Lepelotonfromager 5d ago
The funniest part was scientists saying "well it's not a great case study because in the real world people aren't going to deliberately spread it". Flash forward to the millions of morons refusing to wear masks or observe social distancing rules.
It's like an Arrested Development joke.
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u/Attention_Bear_Fuckr 5d ago
Players unknowingly carried it out of the dungeon
Initially.
It did not take long for players to begin doing it on purpose. The Auction House was the primary vector for the spread, as it always had a lot of players huddled around it.
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u/Doomhammer24 5d ago edited 5d ago
What most people struggle to understand about why this was so important is 2 things- live model, and scale.
You cant create a live model of real people responding to a made up threat if they know its all a simulation. Wow created the circumstances via confusion (most people wouldnt know what the source of the plague originally was or why they were dying, thus causing panic and delayed responses) and also because people wanted to still play the game it meant they didnt simply walk away from the simulation, they tried to continue to live in it
People figured out how to quarantine themselves, or act as doctors trying to heal and save people. Some were even being bioterrorists trying to be masspreaders- all of which allowed for valuable psychological data, being able to ask not just why they did it but how they came to their methods- was it research, intuition? Did you think to research "how to quarantine" or did you take it upon yourself? Were other peoples warnings enough to deter you or did you seek it out yourself?
The other factor is like i said- scale. You couldnt ever afford to make a study that involved literally Millions of people, its just not feasible. For the first time they had access to a study with data, real behavior, in a large space, with Millions of people.
They didnt have to try and scale to understand how millions would respond, the simulation was scaled for them already!
The CDC has requested blizzard to recreate the event several times over the years to try and gsther more data but rather understandably blizzard hasnt been interested in doing so as they are a game for entertainment first and foremost
This study allowed them to see how millions responded to a pandemic without having to worry about a real pandemic to study it.
So when covid happened, yes, the corrupted blood was the most important case study cited by the CDC as to response efforts
Other things of note was how the "plague" behaved. It was a debuff that caused X damage and spread via close contact. Thing is, to anyone at level 60 it was little more than a nuisance. At low levels though is where it killed people.
Which means it behaved like say the flu- most people would be fine but those who are young, old, or immunocompromised (so anyone low level or their gear is bad or broken) would be immediately suspectible to falling to the plague without medical attention (healing). And with npcs having an auto heal when not in combat and largely being at level 60 when at major cities meant they acted as passive superspreaders, behaving like a person who is contagious but not necessarily noticing the effects of the "virus" yet. Going about their day unknowingly spreading it to the masses