"Accidentally" riiiight. Wasn't just a drunk dev :P
Cool share Kayadine <3
"Accidentally" riiiight. Wasn't just a drunk dev :P
Cool share Kayadine <3
Thanks man! I figured it was something that a lot of people within the gaming community might find intriguing, considering current events
So... how did it end?
I need to know if I should start heading into the mountains or if I can ride this baby out.
Posted By Hieronymus at 1:23 PM - Mon Mar 16 2020
So... how did it end?
I need to know if I should start heading into the mountains or if I can ride this baby out.
They reset the affected servers
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/that-time-world-of-warcraft-helped-epidemiologists-model-an-outbreak/
That article (plus the comments) provides a very interesting insight into that event
Expecting to set up as a mayor in one of the three "two town" counties in Bridgespider (Angelica server, Kingdom of Tyria). I'm hoping to end up with a city by the end of exposition for lawmaking ability, assuming I can keep the city sustainable. You will know it's me by the city name Raven's Roost
Friend code: 23F484.
I actually studied this a while after it happened in school.
The epidemic began with the introduction of the new raid Zul'Gurub and its end boss Hakkar the Soulflayer.
A lot happened that was really intense. There was a slight bug that allowed pets to carry the plague outside of desired locations. Quickly enough, large cities would have infected killing low level players quickly and leaving high level characters alive long enough to move on and spread it.
Players fled to the smaller cities which just spread the disease even further. Funny enough, NPC characters could catch it and not die so anytime someone went to start a new quest the plague started back up again.
People would go through self isolation, some would not play at all, and still others intentionally spread it to try and kill people.
The dev's tried to impose quarantines first but only patches and world reset after a week stopped the plague.
I remember walking around and thinking wow, I've never seen Orgirmar so barren.. wondered what all these bones are doing littering the ground...
remembered even the NPC's are gone, wonder if its an event.
checked out the shadow clef thinking maybe they moved the portals... no they are still working.
and - dead.
Little did I know I had a little debuff which was killing everyone.
Posted By Sir Zyr at 5:55 PM - Mon Mar 16 2020
Posted By Hieronymus at 1:23 PM - Mon Mar 16 2020
So... how did it end?
I need to know if I should start heading into the mountains or if I can ride this baby out.
They reset the affected servers
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/that-time-world-of-warcraft-helped-epidemiologists-model-an-outbreak/
That article (plus the comments) provides a very interesting insight into that event
That's a really good link! Thank you!
It's kind of cool to see a more current article discussing the impact a gaming event like this had on the current situation.
Posted By Kayadine at
Prior to those incidents this was one of the only sources of verifiable data related to how viruses spread and affect areas of varying populations.
That's completely untrue. Several pandemics were rather well documented. Comes to mind the one from the 1918 influenza and the one in 1953. Other epidemics all over the world have been used to hone those models.
Clearly wrong information.
Edit : check the following epidemiology primer, an excerpt from a leading manuak ubn the field, as shared by the CDC : https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson1/section2.html
As we can see, several case studies with much larger N and more representative of actual human population in RL settings, as opposed to gamers in a pre-made world.
While the WoW epidemic example is interesting, it's rather anecdotal to the science of epidemiology.