Virtual plague

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A virtual plague or virtual virus is an infection that can be transferred between the characters of players in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Just as a disease can spread in the real world, virtual world diseases can spread between characters in these games.

[edit] The "Guinea Pig Virus"

In May 2000 the creators of The Sims came under fire from gamers after numerous characters became infected after guinea pig bites. The contagious disease killed many characters and angered the players. Maxis, the game's creators, changed the result of the bite to be a lot less virulent. ^[1]

[edit] The "Corrupted Blood" Plague

Main article: Corrupted Blood

In September 2005, the Zul'Gurub dungeon was introduced into World of Warcraft, bringing in Hakkar, the god of blood. When this character was defeated, characters present were affected by a spell called "Corrupted Blood", which caused 250-300 points of damage for every second the character was infected, and would spread to infect any nearby characters. The infection would only last for five seconds, but characters could become re-infected.

The Corrupted Blood Plague was believed to have begun when a party of players discovered that pets and NPCs could be infected. Infecting a pet, they released it within one of the cities within the game. Low-level characters and NPCs were infected, the former dying almost immediately while the latter became a carrier and were considered a key reason for the plague's rapid spread.

After a few days, Corrupted Blood became World of Warcraft's version of the Black Plague, rendering entire cities uninhabitable and causing players to avoid large clusters of other players, and in many cases, stop playing altogether. It is widely suspected that, due to the curse's peculiar behavior, it was never meant to leave Zul'Gurub - the ability to infect pets and NPCs a side effect unconsidered by the programmers. Blizzard Entertainment tried several times to fix the problem, including imposing quarantine on certain places, eventually finding a 'cure'.^[2]