With all the recent news stories about WoW ruining lives, destroying children, supporting terrorism, etc., it's nice to see the media reporting on the positive aspects of the game. But this WoW-positive article has a surprising source -- the prestigious Lancet medical journal.

As reported by the BBC, Nina Fefferman and Eric Lofgren, both from the Tufts University Inititiative for the Forecasting and Modeling of Infectious Disease, have published an article in the Lancet about how virtual worlds can provide models for human behavior in real-world epidemics. The duo specifically focused on the "Corrupted Blood" epidemic of fall 2005, which virtually wiped out Orgrimmar and Ironforge on many servers.

The BBC article states, "Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others." Fefferman added that since it's impossible/unethical to "cause" an epidemic in real life and see how human behavior influences its spread, virtual worlds may be the best model for this type of research.

However, she admitted that people are likely to take more risks with disease in-game than in real life, which sounds about right. Dying to tuberculosis is unlikely to cost you a mere five-minute corpse run, and I don't tend to see many people hiding incredibly infectious animals in bags and then pulling them out in the middle of a crowded shopping center, which is pretty much what happened with Corrupted Blood.

What do you think about this study? And, taking a broader view, does people's behavior in WoW accurately reflect their behavior in real life?

Those of you who weren't playing World of Warcraft back in September of 2005 have probably never seen this footage or heard the extremely entertaining story that goes along with it. That September, Blizzard rolled out the 1.7 patch, which included a brand new raid dungeon called Zul'Gurub. And the final boss of Zul'Gurub was Hakkar, the Blood God and the Soulflayer. (A very challenging fight, until you figure out the trick to it.) And when Hakkar died, he left raiders with a parting present -- a damage over time debuff called Corrupted Blood, which did a reasonable, though not entirely deadly, amount of damage to any players present.

As far as Blizzard's design was concerned, this should have been it.

However, Blizzard overlooked a minor issue -- pets could get Corrupted Blood. And pets could be dismissed while they had the debuff and then re-summoned into crowded areas. (The debuff was short-lived -- so even if a player hearthed while under its effect, they wouldn't make it before it wore off. But when pets were dismissed, the debuff's duration was conveniently paused until they were re-summoned.) And the really fun part is that Corrupted Blood would spread to any nearby players. So, by this method, a few days in mid-September were spoiled for many a player in Azeroth, as Hakkar's plague went through the land, repeatedly infecting and killing players in major cities, while GMs tried to quarantine infected players and Blizzard scrambled for a hotfix.

Previously on Moviewatch...