This is a fascinating story of emergence in the MMORPG World of Warcraft where the unintended consequence of adding in a new section to the game is plague:
Blizzard adds in a new instance, Zul'Gurub. Inside is the god of blood, Hakkar. Well, when you fight him he has a debuff called Corrputed Blood. It does like 250-350 damage to palyers and affects nearby players. The amazing thing is SOME PLAYERS have brought this disease (and it is a disease) back to the towns, outside of the instance. It starts spreading amongst the genral population including npcs, who can out generate the damage. Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die).
via Ars Technica
A computer virus?
There's a lot of jargon in that quote, but from what I gather, this is a new form of computer virus--but unlike the ones that affect our desktop, this one apparently has at least one positive function: It makes the game more realistic.
re: computer virus
I am not sure that I would call it a computer virus since it does not infect one's computer, but rather infects the inhabitants of the VR world. But then again, maybe this does represent an evolution of the computer virus. How many times have we seen a virus attack a user's online personna?
Warcraft Plague Runs Amok
More information about this plague on Wired Blogs.
1214 reads?
Geez, cel4145, this is one heckuva popular post! You totally pwned my reads score. :-P
google searches
I think it's the google searches that are making it popular (try the track button). Could also be because I just added a google site map in the last week or so.