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MMORPG Used to Model Real World Disease
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Aug 21, 2007 09:32 AM
from the zul-gurub-still-seeing-some-use-after-bc dept.
from the zul-gurub-still-seeing-some-use-after-bc dept.
Oxygen99 writes "The Times is reporting on a paper by researchers in the US who argue that the spread of 'corrupted blood' in World of Warcraft might provide clues to the way a real world population would cope with the prospect of a global pandemic. In the study, to be published in The Lancet next month, Professor Lofgren of Rutgers University and Professor Fefferman of Tufts University, suggest that: 'If, God forbid, a disease broke out in London, you could see what would happen if people were told immediately of the risk. Would there be panic and chaos, or would it allow them to psychologically accept the danger and act accordingly? What would happen if we made people feel too reassured? These are all things that have a great impact on the number of people who would be affected. They are also things we just don't know, so [virtual games] could be of great value in helping us understand what their true emotional responses would be.'"
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World of Warcraft is Infectious 91 comments
ringbarer writes "News is coming in that the lands of Azeroth have become infected with a deadly plague which the developers never intended to spread. Originating from the new Zul'Gurub instance, the plague has spread from player to player via town NPCs. Entire cities are being wiped out, yet players are finding this surprise content entertaining!" From the article: " 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 quarantine and infect other players." Commentary on Terra Nova.
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I remember that (Score:4, Interesting)
You could literally stand on top of the bank in Org and watch the disease spread. It was actually a bit terrifying.
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Now, a virus infecting your flight control systems in EVE, _that_ would be terrifying.
Re:I remember that (Score:4, Insightful)
Eve, as amazing of a game as it is (and it really is an amazing game) requires at least a few hours per sitting to really feel worth it (similar to everquest) It's designed with a different type of gamer in mind (whereas WoW serves to try to suck in both gamers and non-gamers alike, hence it's "dumbed-down" gameplay)
Parent
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Eve was the first MMORPG I found that had the kind of "pick up and play" where you could literally jump into some action for a few minutes, accomplish something, and be done with it. Doing a mission doesn't take more than an hour usually; camping a gate, mining for ore, shooting at NPCs can fill half an hour; checking market listings or changing skill training (which is done realtime, no grinding necessary to advance) can be done in minutes.
There are large scale f
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Beh, this was one of the major problems I had with Star Wars Galaxies...set up a macro to mine shit and just walk away...blech.
I don't like the idea of a game that I can play without actually being there to play it. I understand that with games that have that mechanism built-in, it's almost required in order to really get a good foothold on things...but still, I really don't like that. In my mind, it kinda de
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disclaimer: i've played EVE on and off for years
In my mind, *the* most important aspect of EVE's skill training system is that it pretty much destroys the ability of a 13 year old with no responsibilities in real life to powerlevel to the top of the game in a few days.
Make no mistake, macroing your way to resource acquisition ("macro mining" for example) is discouraged (and not-infrequently those engaged in the practice can be harassed and profited *from* -- by stealing their ill-gotten gains, for example
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Money is a different story. That you still have to *earn*
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Eve has the worst grinding of any MMO I have tried to date. I had to grind asteroids and missions for a month before I could even afford anything interesting. Then I went and lost my new-fangled cruiser the very next week to some griefer. At least you don't lose levels or gear in WoW...
But I guess that's what makes Eve unique. You can always be certain that your victim in PvP just lost weeks/months of progress, and I'm sure that appeals to hardcore ga
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First: Larger world. WoW is, at best, the equivalent of Japan in terms of size. Given the "islandy" nature of either, I think the comparison fits.
Second: No instant travel. Ok, jumpclones kinda make that possible now, but it's still a far call from the near instant travel and very short traveling distances in WoW. How many people do NOT have IF as their recall point?
But I'd really, really dread something like that in EvE. I can see peopl
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Re:I remember that (Score:5, Interesting)
cheers.
Parent
Hah (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, I've always wanted more stuff like this. I mean, 99% of the content never changes. Would it be too much to have more events that require significant numbers of players to actually dedicate their time to fixing the problem, pushing back the enemy, etc? Even the seasonal content in WoW is pretty static, and you don't have to participate.
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Re:I remember that (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Priest epic staff quest -- involves healing dozens of NPCs while defending them from harm
2) First Aid artisan quest -- involves performing triage on injured NPCs
It seems like 99% of the other quests in the game involve destroying things.
Parent
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First, there is no incubation period. There is no "unwitting carrier". If you have it, you know it, and you spread it either intentionally, or because you're an idiot. I carried it a few times for giggles (I nuked Org once by zerging the AH while infected), but for the most part, if I got it, I'd go hang out in a corner 'till I died.
Second, the transportation methods are completely unr
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Such people are called bug chasers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_chaser [wikipedia.org]
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This was a lot more like ebola than HIV, and you don't see anyone chasing ebola.
The best real-world analog would be terrorists who intentionally infect themselves with communicable diseases and then rushing to spread them as a kind of bioterrorism...The problem is, either the disease isn't communicable enough to be spread effectively (e.g. HIV), the disease isn't bad enough to be worth spreading (e.g the regular human Flu), or the disease is so bad
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You get it in IF, you hearth to SW, and poof, you've infected two population centers in a matter of moments
Good grief, is this English? I've always avoided MMORPGs, at this point I think I'd need a translator to get started.
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I know this was meant to be funny, but I'll respond because I'm a dork
IF = Ironforge, the dwarven capital
SW = Stormwind, the human capital
"to hearth" is slang for "to use a hearthstone" (not the bottom of a fireplace) - an item everybody has that is used to teleport from wherever they are in the world to wherever they decide to call home. Most people bind themselves to one of the two capitals.
Activism! (Score:4, Funny)
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Yeah, but... (Score:4, Funny)
In real life you can't run back from the graveyard (Score:5, Informative)
Or can we expect to see suicidal terrorists deliberately infecting themselves and moving into a population...
Re:In real life you can't run back from the gravey (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In real life you can't run back from the gravey (Score:3, Insightful)
Your 'terrorist' idea though, that is one scary idea. While I think the term has been beaten to deat
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I don't think this is terribly likely, as if the disease was bad enough to cause an epidemic, it would have had already, even without the terrorists. An epidemic probably needs the right disease: something with th
Dutch story about deliberate aids infection (Score:2)
It involved a group of homo-sexuals who would drug other homo-sexuals at gay parties and then inject them with blood, apparently blood known to be contaminated with the aids virus.
Neither is it first time but it was one of the most direct (blood injection is far sure then unprotected sex), deliberate and massive. But it is nothing new.
Aids has also been used as a threat before as in, "if you (don't) do X I will bite/scratch you".
Offcourse aids is nothing like the WoW disease, but the idea of people deli
Re:In real life you can't run back from the gravey (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In real life you can't run back from the gravey (Score:2)
Re:In real life you can't run back from the gravey (Score:2)
But honey, (Score:3, Funny)
BBC ran this a few days ago (Score:4, Informative)
The opinion seems to be while its just a video game it might provide a little insight into how people react to these situations which could be usefull for future modeling.
Morons with PhDs... (Score:2)
The answer (Score:2)
Not really. An in-game pandemic's "location" could be "anywhere in the game", so I wouldn't play the game until it blew over. In real life, a pandemic's "location" would also be "anywhere in the world", but I don't have the option of shutting down my bio functions until it blows over, so I'd h
WoW is no good way to tell (Score:2)
First: WoW is small compared to the world. Tiny, actually. At best, WoW is the equivalent of a rather small country, certainly no planet.
Second: High population density. Even Tokyo isn't as cramped as IF. Even the most remote corners of WoW are filled with people.
Third: Mandatory congregation points. Whi
Not quite the same... (Score:3, Interesting)
In WoW...
- The WoW disease killed. WoW has an "easy resurrection" system, so it didn't cost players more than a few minutes of inconvenience.
- The cause was immediately known, and the cure (death) while inconvenient, was also immediately known
- Detecting a carrier was easy.
- Being cured of the disease (dying) took little play time.
In ATITD...- The disease debilitated, eventually forcing a disconnect for a period of time (a coma, as it were).
- The cause had to be discovered by the player community. And even after theories were proven, there were still some cases that could not easily be explained.
- Much like real life, carriers often didn't know they had it until signs manifested... too late for those around them
- Discovering a cure was a separate (community) event, requiring much player time and involvement. Actually getting cured took a non-trivial amount of time and resources on the part of the "sick" player.
... and the character could get reinfected a short period after taking the cure. (A permanent cure was eventually discovered, which took MORE resources...)
Also unlike WoW, ATITD is very much a social game. Introduce, then, something that produces highly negative consequences to social interaction, and you getOn the other hand, I expect the reactions by the people who didn't leave were perhaps even closer to those in the real world than in WoW, because of its social aspects.
And for those of you who haven't heard of the game before, I should point out that the nature of the game (no combat) and the social ecology tends to select for cooperative behavior.
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Essentially it shows that concepts of personal space survive in online games, so the idea that WOW might be a useful insight into real world behaviour is valid.
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Re:No way.... (Score:5, Funny)
Awww Man... now I've got to call the cops, the coroner, and do you know how many forms I have to fill out?
Parent
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Also the infrastructures that exist in real-life that aren't in WoW that makes things more complicated, like water systems and sewer systems. Aside from instances (which don't exist in real life), there are no buildings that people can lock t
I doubt that it's that simple (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Other stuff is more like built on logical decisions, and (consciously or subconsciously) min-maxing rewards vs risks within the rules of the game, not within the rules of RL. The solution p
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For example, if I were told I had TB and that I had best not travel, I probably wouldn't, regardless of whether it was to protect themselves or not. There'd be that little voice saying TB is contagious, and I probably shouldn't run the risk...
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For example, just like in RL, it feels uncomfortable to stand too close to somebody. I talk about the same things, and behave nearly the same, with a few inhibitions.
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Not to mention you can have characters jump all the way across the world in seconds through World of Warcraft, I'd like to see that kind of transportation in real life.
On the time-scale of a RL disease, flying from the U.S. to Europe is virtually instantaneous transmission across the world. A virulent disease that is highly communicable but has an incubation period in which there is little or no outward sign of infection would go global pretty quickly with such a fast vector as air travel.
cheers.
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