Slashdot Mirror
Studying the Plague in WoW
Nimrod writes 'NPR has a piece on studying the 'Plague' in the virtual world, World of Warcraft. From the piece: 'Spread of virus or disease has a lot to do with human behavior ... Hardest part about researching human behavior is that people often act differently in an emergency than they imagine they will... Peoples reaction to the plague in World of Warcraft were remarkable realistic... Some decided that once they were infected, I really don't care anymore about anyone else, I'm going to teleport in the game to a crowed urban center and infect as many people as I can.' We've discussed this before, but as it has been picked up by the major news outlets it appears to be accumulating commentary about how virtual behavior mimics societal trends. The NPR piece goes into more depth on the subject.
Some people are going to misbehave like that precisely because they can. In real life they probably wouldn't, but they know it's a game and want to see how acting differently will change things. I don't think this behaviour while playing games is particularly worrisome. I played D&D but I haven't killed any evil elves yet in real life.
I'm sorry, I don't by it.
There may be some social studies possible in MMORPG, but a plague is a serious RL issue which can not be adequatly represented.
Well, it could, but it would mean after being infected, if you can't find a cure, your character is deleted. That would be fun from an observer's perspective.
But even that doesn't come close. I mean, plagues KILL people like you and me. Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others unless they had premonitions of hurting them beforehand, and even if they did, the rest of the community would be acting to prevent such things, via quarantine.
I play EQ2, which had a plague event back in June, and people didn't like the plague, but you did infect your friends for fun, as a joke, because you know it's not real.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Don't people already do this in real life with AIDS?
I hate to say this, but I just have to laugh everytime I see something like this. Someone makes a "plague" that runs amok in WoW... wow! Revolutionary! First time that's been done in an MMO!
Um, hardly. That's baby-step stuff. Just like most everything that is considered "new and revolutionary" in MMOs, is flippin old hat to those of us who've been doing online games for a zillion years now (read: zillion = 18+ years). I had a plague run amok in GemStone ][ some 14 odd years ago. And we've sure as heck done a lot more interesting things than that in the years since.
This isn't news. It's just becoming more well known. I don't mind that, I just wish people had more MMO history in their brain pan.
David Whatley
I wonder if in the future Blizzard will create special sections for just researchers to use. There, they can model any disease by attributing the disease with real-life characteristics such as contagiousness and deadliness. This, way, researchers will not need to create their own virtual world while WoW players will be immune from the next cyber-Ebola pandemic.
...but even with that, I think it's important to note that the human behavior in the game is based on real-life (because for some, the game is their life).
Somewhere in the replies I read something along the lines of, "Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others". I find this comment laughable(Granted, it's slightly out of context). How many of you go to work sick? You know your sick but yet you still go. Why? Then, at work, the germ distribution system (HVAC) works to it's fullest to help insure that as many co-workers (and in turn, their families) get infected as possible. This is compounded even further when you work in an office building that contains multiple companies.
You and I might not go running around purposely infecting people with some deadly disease, but then again, I don't think we would go stealing TVs after a natural disaster or run into a subway and blow ourselves up. Are you that naive to think that there's not one person in your city that has penchant for destruction? A person who might feel it's unfair that they have been infected with a deadly disease or may not understand that they are a carrier of a disease (Typhod Mary). There are many sick minds out there ( I happen to be one of them, so I know). I would disregard the news blurb, just because I wouldn't do it.
Pandemics occur both on purpose and by accident.
Sorry for any indiscretions from my original post. It was my first on slashdot. I was giddy as a school girl to have something that no one else has yet posted that I rushed to be first. I'm so happy. My life is now complete. It didn't occur to me to mention the audio file until after I posted the thread. I just started playing WOW, so I didn't know about an expansion...
This isn't how people would react in the real life, we all should understand that of course, but in a game, people have wants and desires, just like real life. It could be Desire to gain levels (grow stronger), Desire to gain wealth(greed), Desire to hurt others (masochists), or desire to solve problems (care givers), but if you notice, while each of these things likely arn't the same as these people would do in real life, the actions do exist at least for others in the real world.
I doubt that they meant to make it "if you do something with the plague it tells you about your real self." It is more it shows them a social system with people of varying desires and ideas after someone introduces a deadly virus. This is something that is almost impossible to study because most people would think someone studying this type of thing instead of helping is a ghoul, yet it should be studied because response systems obviously arn't doing it when everyone passes the buck.
Now as people have meantioned this likely isn't real life, but notice that once you have the plague you're given a death sentance for the most part, what you do from that point changes everything. Those that run and try to harm others with their plague are actually a real thing. There are those with serious problems (Aids and other life threatening STDs) who will go around and try to infect others because they think there's no quality of life and just like hurting others. There are those who try to avoid this. But both of these reactions are seen in game as well as in the real world. The numbers are schewed but the reaction still exists.
The point is that the study isn't saying people are acting like they would in real life (and if they were it wouldn't be interesting because of the people who would play these games arn't an accurate subsection of people, especially those who would sacrifice their lifes to hurt others) but they are studying the reactions of people in the game. The fact is while the percentage of certain reactions are different, those reactions are very similar to real life components.
That all being said, I have to say KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS to Blizzard, because they have created a game I would be interested in and because of that I bought and played it. This plague alone has my interest peaked which makes it great.