C[omp]ute

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 07:06:28 -0400 (CLT)

As players explore the world, the characters they control become more
powerful as they complete quests, kill monsters and find magical items and
artefacts that boost abilities.

To give these powerful characters more of a challenge, Blizzard regularly
introduces new places to explore in the online world.

In the last week, it added the Zul'Gurub dungeon which gave players a
chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar - the god of Blood.

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection
that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity
of Hakkar's corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other
areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved
hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to
player.

- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4272418.stm

Register has a different explanation -
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/09/21/wow_virtual_plague/ - that sounds
more like a direct bug/feature (what's so cool about the BBC version is
that it's a result of "near real life" complexity producing the same
unexpected consequences).

Movie here -
http://files.filefront.com/WoW_plauge_divxavi/;4145249;;/fileinfo.html
(this is pretty interesting - never seen world of warcraft before!)

Andrew


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