Blizzard developers intended for players to defeat Hakkar by first weakening him with attacks and then exposing themselves to Corrupted Blood. One of Hakkar's healing mechanisms was to temporarily stun a raid party and drain their blood. The effects of Corrupted Blood were intended to last for 10 seconds, or until the players defeated Hakkar, whichever came first. After Hakkar cast Corrupted Blood on one player in a raid group, the debuff would be transmitted to other player characters in close proximity. The boss of this region was Hakkar the Soulflayer, who would cast a debuff on players called "Corrupted Blood". Incident Zul'Gurub raid and pandemic origins īlizzard released the first World of Warcraft raid on September 13, 2005, when the jungle region of Zul'Gurub was added to the game's open world. To retain their subscribers after players finished all the content that was available upon World of Warcraft 's release, Blizzard maintained a team of developers to regularly add new content such as raids. It was significantly more popular than other MMORPGs of the time: EverQuest II had approximately 500,000 subscribers in September 2005, while The Matrix Online struggled to acquire 50,000 subscribers within three months of its release. By the time of the Corrupted Blood incident, World of Warcraft had over four million subscribers, corresponding to a $700 million annual revenue stream. By March 2005, its subscriber base had reached 1.5 million individuals. World of Warcraft was immediately popular upon its release, with over 240,000 subscribers within 24 hours of its North American launch. Gaining experience levels, higher-level armor, and improved weaponry then allows player characters to participate in more difficult dungeon crawls. Player characters gain experience levels through the completion of quests and the defeat of non-player characters (NPCs) such as monsters or dragons. For larger dungeon crawls, players may create a raid group of up to 40 characters. After creating their character, the player begins a quest in the fantasy world of Azeroth, where they may fight monsters either alone or together with other players in parties. As a role-playing game, players create their player characters by choosing among various fantasy races, character classes, and allegiance to one of the game's in-universe factions. Epidemiologists, meanwhile, took interest in how MMORPGs, unlike mathematical models, could capture individual human responses to disease outbreaks rather than generating assumptions about behavior.īlizzard Entertainment released World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), on November 23, 2004, in North America and Australia, and a European release followed in February 2005. Blizzard developed intentional in-game pandemics in two expansion sets: Wrath of the Lich King in 2008 and Shadowlands in 2020. After several failed hotfixes, Blizzard ended the pandemic by performing a hard reset, and a later patch prevented companions from contracting Corrupted Blood entirely.Īlthough it was the result of a software bug, the Corrupted Blood incident gained attention from World of Warcraft players and disease researchers. Player reactions to the Corrupted Blood pandemic varied: some provided aid by healing players or warning them of outbreak zones, while griefers intentionally contracted the debuff to spread it across World of Warcraft. When those companions were reactivated, they still carried the debuff, becoming disease vectors, while non-player characters became asymptomatic carriers. Corrupted Blood soon spread beyond Zul'Gurub as players reacted to the infection with panic, either fast traveling to heavily-populated game regions or deactivating their animal companions. The boss of the region, Hakkar the Soulflayer, cast Corrupted Blood on raid participants the debuff's effects expired when players defeated Hakkar. World of Warcraft introduced the game region of Zul'Gurub on September 13. While developers intended to keep the effects of the debuff in the boss's game region, a programming oversight soon led to an in-game pandemic throughout the fictional world of Azeroth. When participating in a boss battle at the end of a raid, player characters would become infected with a debuff that was transmitted between characters in close proximity. The Corrupted Blood incident (also known as the World of Warcraft pandemic ) took place between September 13 and October 8, 2005, in World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The Corrupted Blood debuff being spread among characters in Ironforge, one of World of Warcraft's in-game cities.
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