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below is a News article (one of many) that tells of the plague that has hit the realms of World of Warcraft. While this is a virtual plaigue, game developers are having a very difficult time eradicating it. What does this have to do with preparedness? Well, this could very well happen in real life. The ironic thing is that this plaigue was perpetrated by "Griefers" basically WOW Terrorists. What they did is deliberately infect themselves by attacking and killing this online demon who throws this curse, a self propagating program plaigue called "Corrupted Blood" designed to kill the player characters who kill this Demon by turning those infected into zombies who then go and infect others, the amazing thing is that the players retain control over the Zombie and can fight against their own party members, thus infecting them. The Griefers/WoW terrorists intentionally contracted this curse and then teleported themselves into major cities such as Stormwind and Ironforge. They then infected massive amounts of other player characters and Non Player characters who then spread it further...and so on...and so on... The result is that major cities are becoming dead zones where anyone who enters gets infected. Those characters who are too low in level die instantly but anyone over level 50 is able to live for quite a while. Long enough to spread this plague...which is contagious even before its symptoms become apparent. I know this for a fact as my character was infected and I infected half a raid party before they killed me.
Now heres where real life takes hold: THIS COULD BE US! Just by reading what I wrote above, any thinking person can see how someone could, either intentionally or unintentionally do the same thing with something like smallpox, Ebola,Bubonic plague or any other natural or man made disease and pretty much take out every major city in the US.
This is a very scary disaster scenario that can happen and has in the past. Something to think about..
Anyway here is the article...and like the CDC and the government would do in a real situation, Blizzard Entertainment is telling one big lie in it to quell peoples fears...they say Blizzard has it under control as of a couple of days ago...Im here to tell you "Corrupted Blood" Is alive and well and WORSE than it was before...and continuing to spread.
Deadly plague hits Warcraft world
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
Players get the chance to be heroes in World of Warcraft
A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft.
Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands.
Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added to the Warcraft game.
However, it now appears that players kicked off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.
Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world.
Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players.
Last rites
Wow is an online game that gives players the chance to adventure in the fantasy world of Azeroth that is populated by the usual mixture of humans, elves, orcs and other fantastic beasts.
As players explore the world, the characters they control become more powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and artefacts that boost abilities.
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
The Warcraft world is a familiar fantasy setting
To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly introduces new places to explore in the online world.
In the last week, it 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.
This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.
Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as "carriers" and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.
Body count
The first server, or "realm" as Blizzard calls them, affected by the plague was Archimonde; but it is known to have spread to at least two others.
The spread of the disease could have been limited by the fact that Hakkar is difficult to kill, so some realms may not yet have got round to killing him and unleashing his parting shot.
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
In World of Warcraft players can be orcs, humans or other fantastic creatures
The digital disease instantly killed lower level characters and did not take much longer to kill even powerful characters.
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 debate amongst players now is if it really was intentional although due to the effects of the problem it seems unlikely," Paul Younger, an editor on the unofficial worldofwar.net site, told the BBC News website.
"It's giving players something to talk about and could possibly be considered the first proper 'world event'", he said.
Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected.
Blizzard tried to control the plague by staging rolling re-starts of all the servers supporting the Warcraft realms and applying quick fixes.
However, there are reports that this has not solved all the problems and that isolated pockets of plague are breaking out again.
The "Corrupted Blood" plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in game 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.
Now heres where real life takes hold: THIS COULD BE US! Just by reading what I wrote above, any thinking person can see how someone could, either intentionally or unintentionally do the same thing with something like smallpox, Ebola,Bubonic plague or any other natural or man made disease and pretty much take out every major city in the US.
This is a very scary disaster scenario that can happen and has in the past. Something to think about..
Anyway here is the article...and like the CDC and the government would do in a real situation, Blizzard Entertainment is telling one big lie in it to quell peoples fears...they say Blizzard has it under control as of a couple of days ago...Im here to tell you "Corrupted Blood" Is alive and well and WORSE than it was before...and continuing to spread.
Deadly plague hits Warcraft world
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
Players get the chance to be heroes in World of Warcraft
A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft.
Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands.
Originally it was thought that the deadly digital disease was the result of a programming bug in a location only recently added to the Warcraft game.
However, it now appears that players kicked off the plague and then kept it spreading after the first outbreak.
Since its launch in November 2004, World of Warcraft (Wow) has become the most widely played massively multiplayer online (MMO) game in the world.
Its creator, Blizzard, claims that now more than four million people are regular players.
Last rites
Wow is an online game that gives players the chance to adventure in the fantasy world of Azeroth that is populated by the usual mixture of humans, elves, orcs and other fantastic beasts.
As players explore the world, the characters they control become more powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and artefacts that boost abilities.
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
The Warcraft world is a familiar fantasy setting
To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly introduces new places to explore in the online world.
In the last week, it 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.
This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.
Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as "carriers" and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.
Body count
The first server, or "realm" as Blizzard calls them, affected by the plague was Archimonde; but it is known to have spread to at least two others.
The spread of the disease could have been limited by the fact that Hakkar is difficult to kill, so some realms may not yet have got round to killing him and unleashing his parting shot.
Artwork for World of Warcraft, Blizzard
In World of Warcraft players can be orcs, humans or other fantastic creatures
The digital disease instantly killed lower level characters and did not take much longer to kill even powerful characters.
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 debate amongst players now is if it really was intentional although due to the effects of the problem it seems unlikely," Paul Younger, an editor on the unofficial worldofwar.net site, told the BBC News website.
"It's giving players something to talk about and could possibly be considered the first proper 'world event'", he said.
Luckily the death of a character in World of Warcraft is not final so all those killed were soon resurrected.
Blizzard tried to control the plague by staging rolling re-starts of all the servers supporting the Warcraft realms and applying quick fixes.
However, there are reports that this has not solved all the problems and that isolated pockets of plague are breaking out again.
The "Corrupted Blood" plague is not the first virtual disease to break out in game 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.
