World of Warcraft Could Have Helped Fight COVID-19
On September 13, 2005, the Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft introduced a new dungeon mission for high level players to test their skill, a 20 person team raid ending in a climactic battle against the ancient blood god, Hakkar the Soulflayer. During the battle, Hakkar could inflict players with a debuff called Corrupted Blood, an attack that would inflict initial damage upon contracting it, as well as deal additional damage over time every 2 seconds for a total of 10 seconds. But most importantly, this debuff was highly contagious and could be spread to nearby players if they were within a certain distance while it was active. And due to a programming oversight, over the next month, the world of World of Warcraft would become decimated as millions of skeletons blanketed the land from what is now known as The Corrupted Blood Incident.
There Will Be Blood
The intent was for Corrupted Blood to be limited exclusively to the dungeon, with players returning to normal upon exiting, which was true. However, what the game didn’t account for was non-player characters (NPC’s) exiting the dungeon, as only player controlled characters were wiped of the debuff. Just like many real world diseases, Corrupted Blood can be classified as a zoonotic virus, a virus that originates in animals.
In World of Warcraft, certain characters are able to utilize tamed pets in combat. In the battle with Hakkar the Soulflayer, these pets could also become infected with Corrupted Blood, and as NPC’s, these pets would not be rid the disease upon exiting the dungeon. On top of this, if a player were to dismiss their pet while infected, the pet would remain infected while it was inactive, and then the player could recall their still infected pet at any time, for example, in a populated city. It didn’t take long for entire cities to become mass graves, and in less populated towns where the disease didn’t spread, rumors of it did. In 2005, social media was still in its infancy, so when players heard the news, they felt they had to see it for themselves.
Now it’s important to note that Hakkar the Soulflayer was a high level boss in a high level dungeon, so the affects of Corrupted Blood were very potent. So much so, that the initial damage received from contracting the debuff was often more than enough to instantly kill low level players, while medium to higher level players were killed by the secondary damage over time. For many, they were dead before they knew anything was wrong.
While conventional wisdom and basic video game knowledge would lead to the belief that the disease would burn itself out once everyone was dead and there was no one left to infect, at which point players could spawn back in with fresh characters, and virtual life would return to normal. However, the NPC problem had unknowingly gotten even worse. Not only could NPC’s become infected, but NPC’s can’t die, and because they have no health stats, they showed no outward signs of infection, meaning that thousands of NPC’s around the world became asymptomatic carriers of the disease. So, when players spawned back in, the cycle began anew.
First Responders
Frustrated with a lack of communication from Blizzard, hundreds of dedicated players decided to take matters into the own hands. Players began setting up their own quarantines around major populated centers in order to halt the spread of the disease. High level players who were able to survive the affects of Corrupted Blood would venture into cities to look for clues as to what was going on. Meanwhile, lower level players who couldn’t resist the affects would stand guard outside to warn approaching players not to enter the infected area. In addition, players who specialized in healing magic would work in shifts to heal infected players, attempting to keep them alive until the debuff wore off. But in another parallel to real life, these first responders would often become infected with the very disease they were trying to stop.
The best part about this is that nobody told players to do this, they did it of their own volition. By the time Blizzard released an official statement asking players to self-quarantine while they fixed the problem, they had already done so.
Bioterrorism
Blizzards first few attempts to eradicate the infection failed, thanks to a small subsection of players intent on continuing the spread of the disease for their own amusement. Groups of players would hide in the mountains, periodically returning to cities to break quarantine and ensure that NPC’s remained infected, as well as hoping between realms in order to avoid cyber purges.
Deputy Director of the Center of Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, Charles Blair, said that World of Warcraft could provide a powerful new way to study how terrorist cells form and operate. While they already use computer models to study terrorists' tactics, Blair explained that because World of Warcraft involves real people making real decisions in a world with controllable bounds, it could provide a more realistic model for military intelligence analysts.
COVID-19
When the World Health Organization (WHO) were developing a strategic response to Covid-19, they wanted to use existing models of past events. But the last time there was a worldwide pandemic was the Spanish Flu of 1918. Needless to say, society is very different from what it was a hundred years ago. And any modern outbreaks, such as SARS or the Bird Flu, were more localized and they didn’t know how those protocols would translate on a global scale.
The only case study available on how to handle a pandemic on a global scale in the modern world was the Corrupted Blood Incident of World of Warcraft.
While the WHO would study everything Blizzard did in order to stop the spread of the disease, more importantly, they observed how the public responded to the warnings and how many players didn’t take the warnings seriously. They warned that people would not change their daily routines if they don’t think the situation is serious, and would often refer back to World of Warcraft when advising governments that it would not be enough to just set restrictions, the restrictions needed to be enforced.
All across the medical industry, the Corrupted Blood Incident of World of Warcraft became the #1 case study on how to fight Covid-19. Even back in 2005, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) actually contacted World of Warcraft Producer, Shane Dabiri, asking if they could study the simulation data in order to help them prepare for a real-world situation.
Unfortunately, Blizzard refused, stating it was just a glitch and maintained the position that, “World of Warcraft is first and foremost a game, and was never designed to mirror reality or anything in the real world.”
