That Time an Accidental Plague Nearly Killed Everyone in World of Warcraft

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In mid-2005 players logging on to play the popular online multiplayer game World of Warcraft found themselves besieged by a virulent virtual plague nobody knew how to cure or effectively combat. For around a month the plague spread unchecked throughout the kingdom of Azeroth, killing tens of thousands of players’ characters and intriguing experts who’ve since used the plague as a model for real world bioterrorism and epidemic research.

Sources:

[CocoCrispy_]

The fact that the players reacted like that is crazy. Higher levels looking for clues, lower levels standing guard, and healers being doctors. Never played this game but that seems cool af

[rebellorebellion]

Players: wow what a cool world event
Blizzard: oh god oh god oh god everyone's

[IBradFrazer]

I played when this happened and what made this so crazy is that nobody knew wtf was going on lol. YouTube and other forms of social media weren't a thing back then, so the lack of information is what made this so much worse. I was told to NOT login by a guildmate because "death was here." This just peaked my curiosity and I asked him to explain, and him being a role player, he role played the shit out of it by saying, "my time is short, I am already infected. Stay away from the major cities. Raid night is cancelled until the cleansing takes place." Within seconds of logging in I got infected... and died. There were players trying to revive as many as possible and dispel the debuff and telling them where the "safe zones" were located. Enemies from the other faction were tasked with finding and killing infected players to curve the infection rate. High level players were boosting groups of lower levels to stop them from hitting a progression wall and to keep the flow of the game going. At the time it wasn't anything special, but looking back... it was crazy to see strangers in a video game handle a pandemic better than people 15 years into the future.

[Error-]

I like how the players adapted to this so well, literally quarantining themselves, the powerful ventering out to gather clues.

[BRD]

Dark Souls: "Our bosses kill the most players"

WoW: Blood God: "Hold my plague"

[gypsyjr]

When I logged in, my guild immediately told me in guild chat where to go to avoid the plague. It was in the large cities, and some smaller ones too. I ended up camping at the edge of the "world" on a mountain peak, and stayed there until they patched the game. Which is a whole story on its own.

[danortiz]

I remember this, I remember a Tauren shaman and a undead priest trying to keep us alive and removing the debuff in a small area. And telling us to head to Stranglethorn or desolace to avoid the plague

[Lavapurg]

"High level players went into cities to try and find clues while healers healed others with the plague and low levels staid out of the city warning others not to enter"
I'm so proud of this community

[diegokiwi]

Corrupted Blood: Hey Covid-19, wanna do this in the real world?
Covid-19: yeah sure

[Bonified]

I vaguely remember this. If I remember my Alliance Hunter barely survived when I approached both Goldshire and Stormwind and someone shouted for me to leave immediately. From a distance you could see a red mist from the groups of infected people of all races huddled together trying to keep from infecting other people while every now and then youd find some jackass sprinting at unafflicted people attempting to spread it. It was absolutely mental.

[KronosGreek]

Dude, people actually helped other players quarantine. Thats cool, because it doesn't always happen on online games. To all World Of Warcraft players who did this, thank you for the kindness.

[nickbristol]

The fact that a bunch of gamers had a better pandemic response than major world governments is baffling

[juanchavez]

I’m just impressed that the healing characters set up a triage and quarantine zone.

[ChakatNightspark]

I remember this. I would be one of those lower level ppl standing guard outside a City telling ppl to stay away. We actually had a Script to read from that Higher Level players created to tell the ppl to stay away. We even got paid later on. not with Gold. but with Help leveling up and help with gear and weapon stats to find the best type of gear.

[LifeInPink]

4:15 that moment when people do volunteering to save lives putting in danger their own ... in a videogame.
Then again it's kinda interesting as a social experiment.

[TheOutsider]

As a WoW player since Vanilla, I'm familiar with this event but the second half of this video is all news to me. Kudos for finding more information than just "there was a plague, the end."

[skipper]

Patient zero was almost certainly Leroy.

[Patchwork_Dragon]

I was really little (2 years old) when this happened but I still clearly remember my dad logging in to WoW and having his character immediately *die* while he sat there and had a pure look of "what the heck just happened" on his face.

[sebastiaanhummel]

When you accidentally make a more historically accurate game than EA or Activision can

[AEOU]

That was kinda cool how the community set out to warn others as well as sending in some high level players to investigate the cause of the plague