Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Epidemiology and the World of Warcraft
An outbreak of a deadly disease in a virtual world can offer insights into real life epidemics, scientists suggest.
The "corrupted blood" disease spread rapidly within the popular online World of Warcraft game, killing off thousands of players in an uncontrolled plague.
The infection raged, wreaking social chaos, despite quarantine measures.
The experience provides essential clues to how people behave in such crises, Lancet Infectious Diseases reports.
In the game, there was a real diversity of response from the players to the threat of infection, similar to those seen in real life.
Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves.
Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves.
And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others.
Antibiotics and better sanitation have essentially eliminated infectious disease as a serious killer in the rich countries of the world. If, as some people fear, lethal infectious disease were to stage a comeback, I wonder if we understand how we would react. Would we we have the social, cultural, and legal wherewithal to respond quickly enough to prevent mass casualties? I have often thought that it is no coincidence that the full expression of individual legal rights has corresponded with the era of antibiotics.
2 Comments:
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Tue Aug 21, 06:29:00 PM:
This would explain why my dwarf Sterkfontein was bleeding from the eyeballs last week. I thought it was Horde blood. Sterk's swing tends to hook and slice.
The consequences of character death in a game setting are temporary. The consequences of your server suddenly crashing and you losing 1000 gold worth of items in the Auction House - this happened to some poor bastards earlier this year - are that you just wasted six months of real time farming the damn stuff for no reward (my wife would say you wasted six months regardless).
See the South Park WOW parody episode for another look at virual character death - and it's not just Kenny. Don't look for it anymore on YouTube, though. Death by Copywrite infringement is evidently permanent.
By 
, at
Wed Aug 22, 01:04:00 AM:
And the black wizard is reponsible for it all send in the white wizard and a few of his helpers
