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Studying the Plague in WoW

Posted by Zonk on from the have-a-cup-of-death dept.

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.

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. realistic? by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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)
  2. I hate to say this.... by nsxdavid · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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