Evan Butcher

February 12th, 2015

Digital Rhetoric
Critical Reflection 3
Game Worlds
In 2005 the spread of a new and deadly disease left millions dead, and entire cities
unoccupied. The disease lasted for about a week, and in response many people came together in
efforts to treat the disease, to isolate infected areas, and maintain zones where infection was not a
problem. Many fled the cities in favor of a more rural existence. Despite these heroic efforts, the
disease still claimed the lives of so many people. In some cases, it was spread intentionally by
biological terrorists. The episode I am referring to is now known as the Corrupted Blood
Incident.
You probably have never heard of this incident, because it did not occur in the real world,
but took place in the virtual world of Blizzard Entertainments World of Warcraft. The interesting
thing about the Corrupted Blood Incident was that it was a complete accident. In 2005, Blizzard
had released a new boss battle where the creature in question had the ability to infect players
with a deadly disease that had a 100% chance of spreading to other players in their vicinity.
However, players who were infected with the disease could not bring it back from their raids,
they would essentially be cured once the boss was beaten or if they left the raid. What Blizzard
missed however, was the fact that players pets could also catch the disease. When the players
left the boss battle, they would be cured, but their pets would still carry the disease. This allowed
it to spread from the boss realm, to the rest of the world.
The Corrupted Blood Incident is widely regarded as one of the most significant virtual
world events. It become a part of the history of the virtual world in a very real way. Its
significance comes from the fact that the virtual world responded almost exactly as the real
world would if faced with this kind of an epidemic. In fact the behavior of players in infected
servers has been studied by the CDC and Center of Terrorism and Intelligence Studies, in efforts
to understand how people would react to an outbreak in the real world.
Nayar does discuss game worlds, but in my opinion he does not spend nearly enough
time on the topic. He talks about role playing, but does so only in the context of the real world.
He argues that the virtual world remains recursively connect to the real. The character in the
game is thus configured at the interface of the real human player and the computer generated
figure on the screen and is not completely autonomous (Naya, pg.47). I agree with Nayar, that
the virtual is connected to the real world. He uses the example of Civ IV, where racial stereotypes
dictate the presentation of the virtual world. However, I believe that it is entirely possible for
virtual worlds to be autonomous. The Corrupted Blood Incident is a perfect example of that. In
this incident the virtual world, without much help from the real world, began to generate its own
events. Virtual worlds can create their own histories, and they can be autonomous.