Author: Karl Smallwood / Source: Today I Found Out
In mid-2005 players logging on to play the popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft found themselves besieged by a virulent virtual plague nobody knew how to cure or effectively combat. For around a month the plague spread unchecked throughout the kingdom of Azeroth, killing tens of thousands of players’ characters and intriguing experts who’ve since used the plague as a model for real world bioterrorism and epidemic research.
Known as the Corrupted Blood Incident, the plague’s genesis can be traced to a September 13th World of Warcraft update that introduced a new dungeon and super-boss for high-level players to test their mettle against- an ancient blood god called Hakkar the Soulflayer.
While felling the powerful foe, any player who got too close to Hakkar while he was in the throes of death would be afflicted with potent debuff called Corrupted Blood which, in addition to considerably initial damage, would cause additional damage every 2 seconds for a total of 10 seconds.
As an idea of how dangerous this debuff was, it’s noted that this single attack could near instantly kill any low-level player. On top of all this, the debuff was also highly contagious and could be spread to any nearby player if they similarly got too close while a given player was still being affected by it.
Further, because of the way the debuff worked, a player who survived an initial infection could be re-infected by an ally and in turn, pass the debuff on to others, with this process potentially being repeated until the player either died or left the vicinity of Hakkar’s corpse or another who was infected.
Now the original intention on behalf of Blizzard (the makers of World of Warcraft) was for this debuff to be limited exclusively to the encounter with Hakkar and by extension the special high-level dungeon he resided in. However, as with many plagues, it turns out there was a very simple way to spread this to the wider world- animals. You see, players (and eventually Blizzard) realised that a character’s pet could similarly be infected with Corrupted Blood, and it didn’t take long for players to notice that this could be spread to other places if they dismissed their pet within a few seconds of it being infected. Why was this important? Because the player could then recall the still infected pet at any time, including, say, in the middle of a populated city.
Exactly who first noticed this isn’t clear and Blizzard themselves have since admitted they have no idea who the virtual patient zero was or if the initial spread was intentional or just by accident via recalling a pet the person didn’t know would still be infected.
Whoever it was, the first server known to be struck by the virtual plague was the Realm of Archimonde, which was devastated when an unknown player unleashed the Corrupted Blood on the city of Iron Forge. Because, as noted previously, those afflicted with Corrupted Blood would immediately receive significant damage, Corrupted Blood was potent enough to outright kill some low-level players while many higher level characters were killed by the resulting drip feed of damage caused by the debuff’s secondary effect and the ability to get it again from others around.
You might think that this would burn itself out quickly with no widespread damage, but here’s the thing- while NPCs (Non Player Characters) could be afflicted with Corrupted Blood, because they couldn’t die, they would act as carriers of the disease, facilitating the spread of the plague and ensuring that after everyone died and respawned, the reaping of life would begin anew.
For days after, the cities throughout Archimonde were littered with skeletons and news of the virulent, deadly plague sweeping across the server caused quite the commotion in the spheres of gaming and tech journalism. Initially, most assumed that the plague was an in-game event…
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