Thursday, September 22, 2005

An Unintentional Plague Kills Thousands in World of Warcraft

From the BBC:

Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online game in the world. Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players...

In the last week, World of Warcraft added the Zul'Gurub dungeon which gave players a chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar - the god of Blood.

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it...

Many online discussion sites were buzzing with reports from the disaster zones with some describing seeing "hundreds" of bodies lying in the virtual streets of the online towns and cities...

The "Corrupted Blood" plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in online worlds. In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig.

Update: Photos of the plague are here.

Technorati Tags: , ,

No comments: