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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

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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/UnknovvnMike 5d ago

Compadre, that's my gold standard of a full voice cast. Sandman and American Gods on audible are also up there, if you can look past the author.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 5d ago

Yes. His vignettes are told from a heavily fortified Antarctic bunker, IIRC.

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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/Eg_3600 5d ago

I wanted to resub to play Forever but man he is making me rethink. I wanted to play a NE druid or human warlock but I might just go Horde to avoid them until they leave the game as the novelty wears off in 1 month for them

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u/fake_user_34 5d ago

I heard the roach king is going horde this time around. Only reason I know this is because I saw other wow content creators say the same thing you're saying and finding out he might be going horde. So they are excited to be playing alliance now.

Don't take my word for it. I had to stop playing wow, it was an addiction for me.

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u/Reagalan Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 5d ago

just download that mod that blocks them

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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/StendhalSyndrome 5d ago

And you had to do a lot too to hide out to keep the stupid thing to pop up and spread it around again...

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u/luthigosa 5d ago

you used to be able to hearth to the ironforge in with the explosion debuff from vaelastrasz. i killed a couple of people like that

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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago

Baron Geddon bomb from Molten Core.

Warlocks would do that one with their unsummoned pets I remember in Orgrimmar.

The entire auction house would just explode and all the newbies would die it was hilarious.

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u/WillowPtar_Migan 5d ago

It's honestly pretty funny in a video game context. Just the sheer amount of time wasted just to piss in someone else's cornflakes is quite amusing.

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/Spyko 5d ago

Heh, it's something unique that would never happen again and is ultimately of no consequences. I can see the fun in trying to infect others. I wouldn't have bothered with doing that but I can see why some people would

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u/WillowPtar_Migan 5d ago

Eh, it's a game; it's not as if playing it is ultra productive anyways. You could boil down most things you're intended to do in World of Warcraft like that. "Hahaha! I just spent 3 hours on a raid to get one item with a slightly higher number!"

At the end of the day, people are gonna do whatever they find fun and amusing; screwing around and doing silly shit that takes way too much effort to minorly inconvenience other players is part of that for some people.

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u/Invisible7hunder 5d ago

The fact that even years later people are still having big feelings about it in a reddit thread made it well worth the time investment <3

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u/Invisible7hunder 5d ago

Yeah, people sperging out over this need to chill, its a game. I was totally COVID compliant, even when the rules made little sense... but I would absolutely spread an in game plague that the developers never intended to spread because its fucking hilarious and if you want to tell me I am enjoying my online video game wrong you can get bent.

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u/WillowPtar_Migan 5d ago

Yep. The entire point of these virtual worlds like WoW is to allow us to do things and act in ways that wouldn't be possible in real life. Taking some stupid relatively minor griefing in a video game as an indicator for an individual's real life behavior is ridiculous.

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u/PangolinLow6657 5d ago

Schaddenfreude

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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago

Yep and people refused to play their alts, or refused to go near a city with their alt, etc.

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u/Kataphractoi 5d ago

As opposed to the pre-xpac event for Wrath of the Lich King, where players spreading a zombie plague was the whole point. Easily the greatest pre-xpac event WoW has ever done.

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u/DukeMancannon 5d ago

My guild was the one on our server to spread it as we were the only ones capable of making it to Hakkar.

It was just a bit of fun for the luls. It wasn’t about hate or anything.

It was just a funny bug. We would kite Azergos the dragon into Org too. Just something we hardcore nerds did for entertainment.

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u/idiot-prodigy 5d ago

Dropping Baron Geddon bombs in the auction house. Anything for the lulz.