I haven't seen any confirmation on this (and Blizzard's website doesn't mention it), but there's a report at ShackNews on a virtual plague spreading in the way-popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (spelling errors retained for the cinema verite, breaking-news feel):
Heres the skinny: 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).
GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarentine and infect other players.
The term "computer virus" comes full circle, I guess.
[via metafilter.com]
Posted by johndanseven at September 19, 2005 02:44 PM