Released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2004, MMORPG World of Warcraft is the fourth entry in the franchises fantasy universe, but, arguably, the first to leave such an indelible mark in mainstream pop culture. By 2009, the game had garnered nearly 10 million players and, just five years later, it boasted over one hundred million registered accounts. Needless to say, WoW took the world by storm, even though the game itself was almost overtaken.

On September 13, 2005, a plague later referred to as the Corrupted Blood Incident took hold of WoW. It resulted from an unintended side-effect of a new raid, ZulGurub, in which the end boss, Hakkar the Soulflayer, could drain players blood to heal himself. Tactical players intentionally poisoned their own blood using the Corrupted Blood debuff and, while this debuff dealt the user damage over time, it also infected the blood-draining Hakkar. While Corrupted Blood made it easy to take down Hakkar, it also had a nasty habit of sticking around.

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The Corrupted Blood Incident has stuck around not just in the legacy of WoW, but in the world of epidemiology as well. Malicious Life by Cybereason, a podcast that investigates the history of cybersecurity, likened the WoW plague to accidental malware, or, in technical terms, a bug. But for epidemiologists, who study the spread of disease, it was a chance to study how people might react to a real-world epidemic.

The Corrupted Blood debuff strategy used in ZulGurub was not intended to affect gameplay outside of the raid, but the health-draining bug could be passed on when characters were in close proximity. Additionally, when players dismissed their pets, the pets would retain the debuff when summoned again. And, to make matters even more complicated (and too real), NPCs could contract the Corrupted Blood debuff and, although they were not at risk of dying, they did become asymptomatic vectors (or disease carriers). While high-level players, namely those who would have faced off against Hakkar anyway, were able to outlast the health-draining plague, low-level players, who were unknowingly infected, died quickly.

Soon enough, the epidemic turned into a pandemic, spreading across Azeroth and affecting at least three of the games servers. According to BBC News, 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, which players soon abandoned for the alleged safety of less densely-populated areas. In short, panic set in. For their part, Blizzard recommended social distancing (though it was not called that at the time) and eventually attempted to organize a voluntary self-quarantine amongst WoWs then four million players. As expected, it did not go well.

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As we are currently experiencing in the wake of the growing COVID-19 pandemic, people respond to social distancing and self-quarantining directives in different ways. In WoW, some players didnt take the quarantine seriously, purposefully (and accidentally) spreading the infection, while others found ways to exploit the panic for their gain. However, it wasnt all doom and gloom: Characters with healing abilities volunteered to help, while some good-hearted players helped steer others away from infected regions.

Comedic medical podcast Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, which is hosted by wife-husband host duo, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy, devoted an entire episode to the virtual pandemic. Dr. McElroy noted that [A lot] of people reacted as if this was a real disease as if their life was actually at risk in such an intense way that kind of transcended the idea of a game. For researchers, the high-profile WoW pandemic became a model for studying human behavior. Epidemiologist Ran D. Balicer wrote an article comparing the transmission of the Corrupted Blood debuff to the spread of SARS and avian influenza.

At the 2008 Games for Health Conference, Dr. Nina Fefferman expressed that the current models used to study disease control -- compartmental models, network models, and agent-based models -- make assumptions about human behavior. Meanwhile, an MMORPG like WoW allows researchers to study irrationalor unexpected decisions, accounting for the more human element in the otherwise data-driven field.

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MMORPGs also account for factors like class, race, gender, commerce, seniority and more as they are built into the game. For example, players with healing abilities put themselves at risk of exposure, much like healthcare workers or caretakers. Like real-world journalists, gaming journalists logged onto WoW, heading straight into the outbreak to report on it. Players legitimately cared even though WoW doesnt operate on a permadeath system.As a simulation of society, WoW emphasizes a player-character connection and, as Dr. McElroy puts it, [that] investment that players have in their character [is what] makes it a good model, perhaps even better than traditional ones.

The plague officially ended on October 8, 2005, when Blizzard was forced to institute hard resets and render pets unable to contract the Corrupted Blood debuff. In the wake of the virtual pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reached out to Blizzard, requesting statistics on the event for research on epidemics, though the publisher maintained that it was just a glitch in a game. Of course, comparisons between Corrupted Blood and real-world pandemics, like COVID-19, arent one-to-one. As Dr. McElroy concludes, something like human behavior [cant be easily mapped out] with algorithms, [so] seeing these kinds of things play out can be very instructive. While the WoW analog didnt provide us with a step-by-step guide on how to mitigate the spread of disease, it did reveal how games can help us learn about and prepare for real-world situations.

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Kate is a writer, gamer and former Blitzball player living in the Bay Area. She holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published work literary magazines such as the Portland Review, Exposition Review and Lambda Literary's Emerge anthology. Kate currently writes about gaming, TV and pop culture for sites like CBR and Ask.

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World of Warcraft: What the Game Taught Us About Pandemics 15 Years Ago - CBR - Comic Book Resources