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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.
Why couldn't more events like this happen in MMO worlds? I have to say, this is much more interesting than your standard organized battles or the like.
My other sig is funny.
they're not saying this is a worrying precedent, that people might act like this in the real world some day. they have history books. this is exactly what happens during major plagues. I guess if you know you're going to die really soon, at least a few people will feel alright aboutn infecting others.
see AIDS for a more common everyday example of this in real life.
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