Video games tend to be viewed as a fun departure from reality by those who play them and a total waste of time by many who don’t.
It might be that neither of those perspectives is very close to the truth, as illustrated by the way a 15-year-old event in a 16-year-old video game is relevant to the coronovirus epidemic.
At its peak, the game World of Warcraft boasted more than 12 million subscribers who banded together to complete quests, raid dungeons and outfit their characters with rare and powerful gear. In 2005, Blizzard Entertainment released a new adventure for the massively multiplayer online game, the troll city Zul’Gurub. At its heart was a malignant entity for players to conquer, Hakkar the Soulflayer.
When they fought him, Hakkar infected players with a plague called Corrupted Blood, which ate away their health until they died if not counteracted. It wasn’t intended to leave the troll city. But it did.
It got into population centers, where it chewed through players’ characters, leaving scores of dead and grinding the digital world to a standstill. Sound familiar?
Public health experts have looked into the incident, trying to gain insights into how people react to epidemics in the real world. Turns out, the response isn’t as dissimilar as you might guess.
Some players did their best to stay away from infected areas and stay healthy. Some ignored quarantine warnings. Some even spread the virus intentionally.
Others tried to go about their business as if everything were normal, frustrated that many of the goods and services they had come to expect weren’t available amid the crisis.
The developer toiled to put an end to the problem, and the frustration of its players. It asked players to comply with quarantines. It fixed the bug that allowed the disease to spread in the first place. It reset servers.
But first, gamers and epidemiologists got a glimpse of the future.
