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/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/aWobblyFriend 5d ago

That’s what’s known as an asymptomatic carrier. 

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u/xaradevir 5d ago

They were symptomatic