[Rodney King]

Personally, I find it interesting the way these online worlds develop so far beyond the imaginations of their creators. I used to play Diablo online a lot, but I am not familiar with World of Warcraft.

[bannie]

A virtual plague for virtual lives.

ach!

[Crazieman]

I've seen this plague on my primary server Tichondrius.

Its funny as hell.

[Prime Choice]

In a bizarre way, this may actually be of some interest to researchers. Sure, this is in no way hard science here, but it could yield interesting insights into additional real world modeling of a species-jumping viral outbreak.

[Yossarian]

Well, the good news is that 4 million nerds around the world now have one less excuse to stay living in their parent's basement!

Uh, hold it - I just remembered I make part of my living designing CPUs for videogames..... WE MUST FIND A CURE TO THIS DREADED VIRTUAL BLOOD VIRUS!!!!

[spetznaz]

Beautiful.

I've never played WOW, but I know a number of people who live and swear by it. This is simply amazing .....beautiful even. And no, I don't mean the destruction of the characters by the plague. What is amazing is how a virtual plague, a disease that is being transmitted from one character to another, plus disease vectors, has arisen in a cyber-world. Basically an online form of syphillis, passing from character to character, and possessing all the symptoms and spread-behaviors of a real-world epidemic. This is a first, and a major step in evolution.

And this is not a mimic of disease, as computer virii are. Unlike a computer virus, which mimics a disease as it jumps from computer to computer, the plague of blood phenomena in WOW is, in essence, a true disease. The only difference from actual pathogens is that it is totally in the cyberworld.

Quite interesting.

[kenth]

My theory: Virtual Clinton showed up.

[MCH]

Very interesting. I was just about to stop reading posts here and play WoW when I saw this.

Yep - seen the results of this plague. Tons of dead bodies lying around the Auction House (in-game version of eBay) in Ironforge on the Silvermoon server on at least a couple occasions. If you see this, RUN! If you get far enough away fast enough, you won't die.

BTW, I know I sound like a major nerd (I'm in my 40's), but I'm actually a responsible adult with a good paying job, wife, and 3 teen/20ish kids, and this game really does rock. I've been playing various video games off & on since the early 80's, when time permits, and this is the best that's come along so far. Highly entertaining, extremely realistic, HUGE in scale/complexity & versatile in the kinds of things you can do. Something for everyone, unless you're one of those holier-than-thou types that turns their noses up at computer games and makes fun of others who find them entertaining.

[Decepticon]

I find this intensly interesting, the first digital plague killing online gamers, LOL! The lines between life and cyberspace reality have just come closer. Thanks for the post.

[Ragnorak]

Great Story.

The only MMO I dabbled in was Star Wars Galaxies which was a blast until it became a grind. Some friends of mine showed me Everquest when it first came out, but it struck me as awfully lame. The technology behind it was amazing but playing it was the opposite of fun. It was like a virtual world that embodied every aspect of work that makes people hate their job.

I've heard nothing but great things about World of Warcraft and this is just one more example. We've come quite a long since Pong.

[badpacifist]

I guess neither my Paladin or Priest will save me from this. I do play this game with my son. We have all our computers in the living room. My wife is in the same room deep in study for her BS RadTech. It gives us something to do together without interrupting her. For those who have teenagers one way to keep em out of the porn is a new GeForce videocard and computers in sight of the whole family. Of course the Church is a big part of our family. Maybe it won't work for you but it has for me. How do I know this? Its called a keystroke logger.

[RippleFire]

bump

[Smedley]

A deadly virtual plague has broken out in the online game World of Warcraft. Although limited to only a few of the game's servers the numbers of characters that have fallen victim is thought to be in the thousands.

its Bush's fault

[mudwench]

Have any of you that play World of Warcraft ever read the forums there, especially the Off Topic one? For the most part it's a vast wasteland of stupidity but sometimes a political topic will be posted and among the mandatory Bush Sucks comments someone will actually say something intelligent. So fess up, which of you are trying to plant a seed of conservatism in the minds of those uninformed kids?

[sharktrager]

In May 2000 many players of The Sims were outraged when their game characters died because of an infection contracted from a dirty virtual guinea pig.

They should have heeded these words of wisdom:
"You can love your pets, but you can't loooooove your pets."

[LongElegantLegs]