World of Warcraft, or when reality surpasses fiction

Leaving aside technical issues, today we want to tell you a videogame story but there are so many we would like to share that we don't know where to start.

After reviewing our life as a gamer in Homer's way, mmm...donuts..., we believe that the best way is to start with a historical bug in videogames that has a certain similarity with the current pandemic situation. I think that the most experienced gamers already know what we are talking about, we are indeed referring to the World of Warcraft bug of 2005.

Younger gamers may not know it, but WoW was a real revolution in the video game world. An online MMORPG type game with millions of players. Spectacular both in gameplay and graphics, it was also a world to find people passionate about video games like us. It required teamwork, skill and dedication to achieve victories, it was certainly not a simple game.

Having made the introduction, let's get to the point. On September 13, 2005, WoW was updated to version 1.7 and with it came the Zul'Gurub dungeon, a cursed place where the final boss was Hakkar himself, the Hunter of Souls.

One of Hakkar's spells was called Corrupted Blood and consisted of an infection that caused damage to infected players and also spread rapidly to those nearby. The theory was that it should spread within the dungeon until it killed the last player who dared to challenge Hakkar.

However, as has happened before, programmers underestimated the ingenuity of gamers. Human beings never cease to surprise us. In this case, we don't know if it happened by chance or by provocation, but the Corrupted Blood infection escaped from the dungeon and quickly spread through the cities of the horde and the alliance.

How? The most widespread theory is that the source of infection was the pets of the hunters and warlocks. Do you see any resemblance with the situation we have experienced with COVID-19? Some players discovered that these pets were also infected and that, if they were kept at the time and then released in the city, they continued to spread the infection.

Unsurprisingly, the epidemic worsened because the spell also affected NPCs. Although it did not cause them any harm, i.e. they were "asymptomatic", they did become new foci of contagion to which the players constantly went. Some players isolated themselves in open places to avoid the epidemic, others continued their daily routine in the game without paying too much attention, and the really curious thing was that the vast majority chose to dedicate themselves to infecting as many players as possible. Do these 3 types of behavior sound familiar in real life? For those who did not experience it, this was the result:

This bug and the behaviors it generated among players interested several institutions and was even material for sociological and psychological studies. It has also served for scientists as a basis for the construction of simulation models to study cases of virus propagation.

It is undoubtedly one of the most curious anecdotes of our gaming life and something we really wanted to share!