Researchers study World of Warcraft plague

MMO epidemic demonstrates parallels with real-life disease

August 22, 2007

In 2005, Blizzard released an update to its online RPG World of Warcraft that left feeling a little under the weather.

The update, which opened up new levels and high-level areas to players also featured a new gameplay element: disease. In one of the areas, a monster (or mob) named Hakkar was able to infect players with a disease, which behaved somewhat like a virus.

The disease, called "corrupted blood", was originally planned to be a factor for high-level players only, to add a new dimension to the gameplay. It was intended to provide an inconvenience for those infected, and initially players tried to avoid it.

But this didn't last. Eventually, some infected players returned to earlier areas in the game, where they infected lower-level players. Corrupted blood was a bigger problem for these weaker characters, who could potentially be killed by it. This unplanned event led to some interesting behaviour among players.

Now, researchers from Rutgers Univeristy and Tufts University have published a paper discussing the events that occured as a possible version of how people would behave in a real-life epidemic.

World of Warcraft, which is played by over 9 million subscribers, has in the past been used as a medium for research into social and economic issues.

The researchers explain that the spread of the disease was much like that of a real epidemic, as infected players arrived in urban centres of the game's enviornment and began to spread the virus.

The response from players was diverse. Some chose to flee the plague, running to other unaffected areas. Others stayed to help those affected, using their in-game abilities to keep their fellow players alive. And others still took a much more menacing approach to the situation and intentionally spread the corruped blood disease to others.

The study addresses the differences between this virtual example and a real-life epidemic by factoring in the triviality of a virtual life compared to a real one, but also shows how the data could be used as a model of the real thing. Combined with mathematical projections and statistical analysis, the data collected from the game bheaviours could be used to determine how society might deal with an actual epidemic. The paper discusses whether people might respect restrictions placed on them during an epidemic, such as quarantines and curfews.

If the corrupted blood incident is a true model for a real-life epidemic, the ending to this story is not inspiring. Blizzard eventually performed a complete restart of the World of Warcraft servers in order to purge the disease and restore order.

The researchers want to try it again, though. They hope that Blizzard will allow them to work with the game's developers to create another, planned outbreak and record all of the data for scientific purposes.