In 2005, a bug in World of Warcraft turned Azeroth into a virtual pandemic, and gave scientists a rare glimpse into human behavior during an outbreak.
So recently I started a page in a notebook where I jotted down article ideas. Older games with interesting stories to them. Just as a part of a series of retrospectives I’ve been writing. So far I have done:
- Seaman
- GoldenEye 007
- Star Fox 2
- EarthBound
- Dune II
- Uniracers
…and now, obviously, World of Warcraft. This one is a bit more brief than the others, but the story is fascinating to me. An unexpected bug caused so much drama, and it ended up being studied. It came back to focus when Covid hit, it was covered by regular ‘big’ news services, the whole thing is such an odd story to me.
Anyway, I had a great time writing this up, maybe you were ther when it happened? I’d love to hear a comment if so!
There was another actual event at the end of Burning Crusade with similar mechanics to this. Plagued grain barrels spawned in cities, and players who interacted with them would die and spawn as an infected zombie. They were able to attack other players and spread the infection in doing so. My memory is pretty hazy since it happened so long ago, but in Shattrath (a high level neutral city), the zombies weren’t able to be attacked (probably due to pvp flags being forced off within the city limits), but in the faction cities, they were. This led to mobs of zombies roving around in Shattrath, pouncing on any unfortunate player they could find, where players in the faction cities formed subjugation squads and would patrol around, exterminating any zombies in sight.
Something else interesting was zombies gained access to another language (Zombie), and since Shattrath accommodated both player factions, you were able to speak to zombified members of the opposing faction.
This is similar to something that happened in SWTOR with the Rhakghoul virus.
I dont know how well that mirrors. I knew when I died there I’d come back. So I just stood in org and shit helplessly healing panicked noobs before I died myself. I didnt do that in the real pandemic, I just wore a mask and had a tool for touching public surfaces like door handles.
There were other “healers” during the pandemic, like those who would 3d print face shields and such for emergency workers. I also remember seeing shitheads do things like spitting on and licking items in stores for the social media shock.
I remember seeing videos of people licking ice cream and putting the lid back on. I’m so glad I never ran into one of them in real life.
That was an especially good read. It reminds me of something akin to summoningsalt, but better researched. Have you considered turning these into video content?
Thank you!
Video is not for me. I’ve got a soft spot for writing content, since so few spaces even bother these days. And those that do are generally ad-filled, or just re-posting media releases from companies. I think what we’re doing is more unique, with longer-form articles on topics we love.
Gardiner did however record one of my articles as a podcast two days back, which is (as far as I can tell) the exact article but just in audio form. So that’s something new for us!
My focus is more developer interviews, as well as (recently) retro handheld reviews. I both know and am known by most of the developers in the Linux, gaming and emulation space. So being able to leverage my friendships into doing interviews with them and sharing the articles gives me joy!
@PerfectDark Oh wow. Somehow I never even heard about this. In its own crazy way it’s kind of fascinating.
I do actually kind of wish I had been there when that happened. I didn’t get to play WoW very much and not until much later.
