As Plague Tears through WoW, we wonder: Can it happen here?

by Alphaville Herald on 20/09/05 at 9:41 am

For those of you who are hermetically sealed in your own little game, you may not have heard that there is a plauge tearing through Wow. As discussed on Alice, Clickable Culture, Terra Nova, and elsewhere, the facts as originally reported in Shacknews Forums, are these:

Blizzard adds in a new instance, Zul’Gurub. Inside is the god of blood, Hakkar. Well, when you fight him he has a debuff called Corrputed Blood. It does like 250-350 damage to palyers and affects nearby players. The amazing thing is SOME PLAYERS have brought this disease (and it is a disease) back to the towns, outside of the instance. It starts spreading amongst the genral population including npcs, who can out generate the damage. Some servers have gotten so bad that you can’t go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die). GM’s even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infecting other players.

All of which leads us to a question raised by Zero Grace. Given rumors that there are people in SL scripting viruses and given the “Red Wings” episode, should we be concerned? Does SL need a Center for Disease Control? Does it need a SLEMA? Who is in charge if there is an outbreak? If it happens will Philip save us or will he drop a Brownie on us like Bush did?

7 Responses to “As Plague Tears through WoW, we wonder: Can it happen here?”

  1. Cindy Claveau

    Sep 20th, 2005

    Spellcheckers. Don’t leave home without ‘em :)

  2. Urizenus

    Sep 20th, 2005

    lol, and notice that the outbreak of bad spelling from WoW even infected me. Witness “plauge’.

  3. Tony Walsh

    Sep 20th, 2005

    I find it hilarious that the WoW outbreak appears to be out of the control of the designers (at least until a patch is issued). There seem to be no zone-wide controls to purge characters of harmful effects. I’m going to log in now and see if I can get infected.

  4. Whatever

    Sep 20th, 2005

    I wouldn’t mind a brownie actually

  5. PetKa

    Sep 20th, 2005

    this is very stupid and pointless.. why the hell should we be afraid of this in SL? this is the SL HERALD remember that

  6. Muezza

    Sep 21st, 2005

    Glad to hear that Wow reflects reality :-) .
    Those infected should be glad Wow is just virtual.

    Word!

    Jan

  7. Urizenus

    Sep 21st, 2005

    PetKa, the Herald, much like your local newspaper, publishes national and international news as well. In important newspapers like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Second Life Herald, reporting events abroad is part of our mission — in particular, our beat at the Herald is the emerging metaverse.

    This having been said, it is entirely possible for viral attacks to be launched within SL. Imagine a cloud of invisible nano-bugs that attach to your avatar and lag you mercilessly. Imagine now that they can jump from person to person and replicate. Trust me, I’ve been attacked by all sorts of swarming objects that behave in just this way (and have been pecked to death by swarming chickens several times). It’s only a matter of time before someone in SL scripts a particularly virulent version of this. Will you be ready?

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