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Role Playing (Games)

Studying the Plague in WoW 76

Posted by Zonk from the have-a-cup-of-death dept.
Nimrod writes 'NPR has a piece on studying the 'Plague' in the virtual world, World of Warcraft. From the piece: 'Spread of virus or disease has a lot to do with human behavior ... Hardest part about researching human behavior is that people often act differently in an emergency than they imagine they will... Peoples reaction to the plague in World of Warcraft were remarkable realistic... Some decided that once they were infected, I really don't care anymore about anyone else, I'm going to teleport in the game to a crowed urban center and infect as many people as I can.' We've discussed this before, but as it has been picked up by the major news outlets it appears to be accumulating commentary about how virtual behavior mimics societal trends. The NPR piece goes into more depth on the subject.
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Studying the Plague in WoW More

Studying the Plague in WoW

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  • Creativity is accidental (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grogdamighty ( 884570 ) on Thursday October 06, 2005 @03:35PM (#13733879) Homepage
    Why couldn't more events like this happen in MMO worlds? I have to say, this is much more interesting than your standard organized battles or the like.
    • MMORPGs seem like they're stuck in the same mold they've been in since they were created.

      In cases like this, I'd assume it doesn't happen often specifically because the design teams try their darndest to keep people from breaking the game.

      As far as creating content like this...well, isn't it easier to make a few battles than to do something as unique as an epidemic?

      • "well, isn't it easier to make a few battles than to do something as unique as an epidemic"

        Apparently not, seeing as the plague was accidental and caused by a bug. It didn't take any extra development time to create. All it took was some players realizing "hey cool I'm still infected, let's see if I can spread it!".
    • Why couldn't more events like this happen in MMO worlds?

      Because WoW has one of the weakest, newbie designed death systems in all MMOs. When you die, all you lose is durability in your equipment which can be repaired. No experience loss. No major monetary loss (unless you like die a lot and stop doing quests.) If you're extremely lucky, there isn't much time loss either.

      If a plague like this happened where there was XP loss for each death, there would be hell to pay given the sheer times low level players w

      • Your problem is the same as the developers: lack of creativity.

        I was a Dark Age of Camelot player some time ago, so I know nothing about WoW. But it's entirely possible to create "unique events" that don't grief players. For example, a plague could make players weaker, but allow them to find a cure through some sort of new quest. Yes, there are some diehard fans of this or that who would object to being involved, but that is why you have a "/epic event" switch which would allow them to choose to participat

        • Re:Creativity is accidental (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Taevin ( 850923 ) * on Friday October 07, 2005 @01:22PM (#13741389)
          What I would like to see is a team of developers that aren't afraid to 'grief' players every now and then. By that I don't mean camping spawn points with their level 9999999 character they programmed just for themselves (although that could be a fun experience too :-). I'm talking about random events like natural disasters that destroy a town or hinder resource flow. Or NPC enemy groups that wage war on players and player owned towns/castles/whatever. Just anything unexpected that totally messes up people's routines. Of course this should be balanced with good things occasionally as well.

          Mostly what I'm tired of is games forcing everyone to be equal so that it's "fair" to everyone. All that seems to have succeeded in doing is making the games incredibly boring after a certain point. Wow you mean my level 60 paladin is exactly the same as the other 400,000 level 60 paladins in the game... exciting. There should be elements in the game that distinguish individuals or groups. It's much more interesting to have competition for resources and locations than competing for raw number of kills that nets you some meaningless PvP title.

          I'd also like to see constant PvP return to mainstream games, and I'm hardly a hardcore PvP player. The constant threat of death (especially if death is meaningful in some way) adds an extra level of player interaction that I think helps to prevent games from becoming stale so easily. I used to play Asheron's Call on the Darktide server (PvP always) and until they added housing to the game, there was no truly safe place that you could escape being killed. Player created monarchies actually fought to defend and control the towns with the best locations/vendor rates. You just don't see that in many other games. In AC, I was constantly aware of my surroundings in the game and prepared to fight at any moment. When I play WoW, unless I'm specifically looking for a fight, I just don't care. There is almost no penalty for death so most of the time it's not worth the effort to quickly shift from idly watching my character run to town and into battle mode.

          I realize that it's not that simple. The people that play these games are notoriously whiny, and the developer's of a game do have to worry about keeping their customer base. What I see happen all too much though is a working system that is constantly tweaked in an effort to balance it or make things fair, at the behest of the most vocal group that feels that since their particular character/class is not the most powerful in their perception, there is something wrong with the game. Dueling weaknesses and strengths of different types of characters and player attitudes make an interesting environment that will stay enjoyable longer. Removing wood's weakness to fire and fire's weakness to water and so on just leaves a static system where nothing changes and it becomes boring very fast. I wish people would wake up and realize that it's not all about them, and I wish developers would stop screwing with their system that most are pleased with just to satisfy the least common denominator.
    • Why couldn't more events like this happen? Simple.

      This is a destructive event. That's why it became such a big deal. It had real repurcussions for the characters.

      If the company were to do this, the bitchfest that would ensue would be ENDLESS. People would be pissed that they pay lots of money for this, and spend lots of time on this only to have their hard work destroyed by something to randomly "enhance" the gaming experience.

      So while yes, it is more interesting, nobody wants it to happen to them, as y

  • Doing "evil" things in games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PhotoJim ( 813785 ) <jim AT photojim DOT ca> on Thursday October 06, 2005 @03:36PM (#13733883) Homepage
    Some people are going to misbehave like that precisely because they can. In real life they probably wouldn't, but they know it's a game and want to see how acting differently will change things. I don't think this behaviour while playing games is particularly worrisome. I played D&D but I haven't killed any evil elves yet in real life.

    • missed the point (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xilmaril ( 573709 ) on Thursday October 06, 2005 @03:53PM (#13734036)
      they're not saying this is a worrying precedent, that people might act like this in the real world some day. they have history books. this is exactly what happens during major plagues. I guess if you know you're going to die really soon, at least a few people will feel alright aboutn infecting others.

      see AIDS for a more common everyday example of this in real life.
      • The book And The Band Played On [amazon.com] is a perfect example of this in real life.

        The gay flight attendant who knew he was infected led a lot of people on a merry (Mary?) chase.

      • Yes and no, IMHO (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 )
        Yes, in that history does show that once someone doesn't care (any more) about what happens to them (e.g., because they're going to die anyway), there's nothing you can do to keep them in line. Most you can do is take them out of the game: e.g., lock them away in a prison or kill them.

        The same applies to games, and I wish more designers did learn that from history. (It would have prevented the UO fuckup, for a start.) Once someone doesn't give a damn about what happens to their character, nothing you can po

        • So, hey, there's an idea for designers: if learning from history is too much of a bother, at least learn from what was already discovered in other games. MUDs ran into most of the same problems ages ago.

          Learning about events that happened in other games earlier, especially "ages ago", is learning from history :).

          But, please tell me, did the MUDs also learn how to keep such assholes away ? And if yes, how ?

          Maybe the game should keep a score of persons deeds - lets call it karma - and reward people wi

  • Windows Media, RealPlayer required (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You might have wanted to mention that you're linking to an audio file, and one that requires either RealPlayer or Windows Media Player at that.

    Because without those, all the piece says is:

    A recent outbreak of a "plague" in a popular online game has scientists considering how the virtual world may provide clues to what people would do in real-world pandemics. In the role-playing game World of Warcraft, a "corrupted blood" spell killed characters and affected players in unexpected ways.

    Which is actually less

  • realistic? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Thursday October 06, 2005 @04:19PM (#13734320) Homepage Journal
    I'm sorry, I don't by it.

    There may be some social studies possible in MMORPG, but a plague is a serious RL issue which can not be adequatly represented.

    Well, it could, but it would mean after being infected, if you can't find a cure, your character is deleted. That would be fun from an observer's perspective.

    But even that doesn't come close. I mean, plagues KILL people like you and me. Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others unless they had premonitions of hurting them beforehand, and even if they did, the rest of the community would be acting to prevent such things, via quarantine.

    I play EQ2, which had a plague event back in June, and people didn't like the plague, but you did infect your friends for fun, as a joke, because you know it's not real.
    • No kidding.

      The warlock demon bomb follows the same mentality as this. Its not that you feel jelous of other people who are going to live while you die. Its just that killing people in an unexpected way is fun.

    • Re:realistic? (Score:2, Redundant)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 )
      True that in a game where death is a recurring event and not final, everyone will probably deliberately spread the plague until they get annoyed of it and want to get back to playing. In real life however, you do still have individuals who through their actions knowingly spread a disease. This was shown to have happened in the outbreak of AIDs, as people who knew they were infected still engaged in practices that spread the infection (unprotected sex, sharing needles). Some of these acts are those of people

    • Re:realistic? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) *

      I play EQ2, which had a plague event back in June, and people didn't like the plague, but you did infect your friends for fun, as a joke, because you know it's not real.

      Yeah, any time people know they are in an artificial situation, they will act differently than they would in real life. Online game? Check. Murder mystery dinner party? Check. Dreaming? Check. Sociological experiment? Check.

      I figure it comes down to consequences. If you know there won't be any, or if you know they depend on so

      • I figure it comes down to consequences. If you know there won't be any, or if you know they depend on something different than they would in the real situation, you'll try things you would never consider if you thought the situation was really happening.

        It's funny how the real world is becoming like this too. Most kids are brought up in a relatively consequence-free environment and are wreaking havoc (the little bastards).

        We could learn from this, but I bet we don't.

      • Re:realistic? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Surt ( 22457 )
        And another factor: when you have a real plague, it becomes somewhat more challenging to get out of bed and reach an urban population center.
    • Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others unless they had premonitions of hurting them beforehand, and even if they did, the rest of the community would be acting to prevent such things, via quarantine.

      There are people who have no empathy. IMHO online realities make it easier for everyone to not have empathy. You are not there when the person receives the bomb whether it be email, IM, or some fantasy online game.

      Researchers care about that 1% who could cause
    • There may be some social studies possible in MMORPG, but a plague is a serious RL issue which can not be adequatly represented.

      Well, it could, but it would mean after being infected, if you can't find a cure, your character is deleted. That would be fun from an observer's perspective.

      But even that doesn't come close. I mean, plagues KILL people like you and me.

      Yes, but in real life, death is a problem that takes more than 30 seconds to fix. Apples and oranges.

  • Barebacking. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06, 2005 @04:29PM (#13734421)
    Don't people already do this in real life with AIDS?

    • Re:Barebacking. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pclminion ( 145572 )
      Don't people already do this in real life with AIDS?

      Yes. There have been multiple cases, and people have gone to jail for it. But imagine what would happen if AIDS was much easier to spread (say, via ingestion instead of blood/blood contact). Spiteful individuals could infect literally thousands of other people. Among those thousands, there would surely be other psychotics who would also spread it. It would explode out of control.

      The problem with HIV is that it leaves you alive long enough to get pisse

      • Re:Barebacking. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Unordained ( 262962 )
        How does that work, law-wise? Is it unlawful to knowingly expose other individuals to a disease? If so, wouldn't that apply to people going in to work when they're sick, or even staying home (with kids, family, etc.) when sick? Is it only based on maliciously exposing them, as opposed to knowingly? Is it only some diseases? If so, which diseases, and who gets to decide and on what basis? Obviously, we can see how this ties in with, say, biological terror (or war) attacks. Using a disease as a means of aggre
        • Some jurisdictions wrote laws to cover intentional HIV transmission specifically. Dunno if they mentioned HIV, but that was what they had in mind when they wrote the laws.
        • Not sure, but I recall reading somewhere that deliberately infecting someone with a fatal, incurable disease has been considered by at least one court or jurisdiction to be "assault with a deadly weapon." I would expect that, as with many legal issues, intent is a key consideration, though I can imagine negligence ending up in the equation if someone just doesn't bother to tell his/her partner about the results of that test...

          Showing up at work with a cold? No problem, colds are rarely fatal (at least to

        • Re:Barebacking. (Score:2, Informative)

          by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 )
          I've seen it in the States as assualt with a deadly weapon and unlawful endangerment.

          Map of states with laws on it.
          http://tinyurl.com/9jsg6 [tinyurl.com]
        • usually law wise it doesn't become an issue unless it is considered a deadly disease. IE one like AIDS with pretty much assured fatality and no cure.

  • I hate to say this.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nsxdavid ( 254126 ) <.dw. .at. .play.net.> on Thursday October 06, 2005 @05:04PM (#13734787) Homepage
    I hate to say this, but I just have to laugh everytime I see something like this. Someone makes a "plague" that runs amok in WoW... wow! Revolutionary! First time that's been done in an MMO!

    Um, hardly. That's baby-step stuff. Just like most everything that is considered "new and revolutionary" in MMOs, is flippin old hat to those of us who've been doing online games for a zillion years now (read: zillion = 18+ years). I had a plague run amok in GemStone ][ some 14 odd years ago. And we've sure as heck done a lot more interesting things than that in the years since.

    This isn't news. It's just becoming more well known. I don't mind that, I just wish people had more MMO history in their brain pan.
    • Funny thing is, it wasn't intentional. The developers didn't expect it to spread outside of the dungeon in originated in.

      So no, it wasn't creative. It was an entertaining fuck-up.
    • Yep it's not new but it wasn't an intended plague. It was accidental. So they weren't even trying to copy other MMOs. Bascially they had a disease that a high level boss in one of the instanced dungeons gave you. This disease infected people near you but was supposed to go away when you left the dungeon. It didn't, and so infected people leaving the dungeon would pass it on to people in the main cities. Most lower level characters would die instantly, but the high level NPCs (vendors, quest givers etc.) wer
      • Why didn't blizzard just go into the database and blip this object away. I don't see why it was so hard to fix, given that they're god.

        I wonder if they didn't fix it because it was creating buzz.
        • There was a hotfix for this bug. I don't know what the current status is now, but I never even saw the plague on the server I play on.
          • The hotfix is that the debuff in question can no longer leave the instance you got it from, which is as good a solution as any (it doesn't help you fight the battle because you'll just get it again, but it prevents this kind of griefing). And in some ways it's better than the solution to the warlock "bomb" thing several months ago, which they fixed by making pets untargetable by the debuff in question, since that meant there was no drawback to using pets against Geddon.
      • I had a friend a long time ago who used to do some GM stuff for Gemstone (if I recall correctly). Gemstone had (has?) a lot of GM run events doesn't it?

        Yep, you're right. That's one of the things I loved about Gemstone. (haven't played in years, though) When there was a merchant... it was an actual person. To get something altered, you would actually have a conversation with the merchant...

        The buzz was always about when "the Juggie" (juggernaut, a merchant ship) would come... or other big groups of
    • "This isn't news. It's just becoming more well known. I don't mind that, I just wish people had more MMO history in their brain pan."

      Don't get me wrong, I play and enjoy MMORPGs, including WoW.

      That said, I wish people knew real history and nothing whatsoever about MMOs. It would make a fascinating twist to the game we call "real life".

      -Jeff
    • This is new to MMOs .. where the first M stands for massively, ie > 1000 simultaneous players. Gemstone II didn't have that 14 odd years ago. The dynamics of games become considerably more complex with every order of magnitude growth. Up to everquest, the magnitude had been pretty well stuck in the range of 100. With everquest and its gaming descendents we've moved clearly into 1000 player territory. With WOW they're starting to poke at seeing what might be possible in the 10k range.
    • ...and what you consider so clever and revolutionary in your MUD was done much more interestingly 10 years before in RPGs. And before that, some Greek dramatist invented the concept of "tragedy as entertainment" 2700 years ago.

      Face it, it WAS a novel thing to happen in a mass-market MMO. It is news because it reached and affected millions of people, as opposed to an event limited to the (at best) hundreds of computer wonks playing a MUD.

      I understand that your ego prefers the pretentious "yawn, I've been t
    • I had a plague run amok in GemStone ][ some 14 odd years ago.

      That was called "slowdowns", wasn't it?

      (I'm an old GS2'er, from the last month of beta through the end, but I don't remember a plague, probably because the slowdowns were so bad. As in you got a command run every couple of minutes while the monsters got their moves every 10 seconds on the clock. Good ol' Honeywell mainframes. But I do remember how Bardon was totally pissed when the dragon got killed.)

  • I wonder if in the future Blizzard will create special sections for just researchers to use. There, they can model any disease by attributing the disease with real-life characteristics such as contagiousness and deadliness. This, way, researchers will not need to create their own virtual world while WoW players will be immune from the next cyber-Ebola pandemic.
  • It's not at all realistic. If they wanted at least some semblance of realism, make people have to wait 10 mins to resurrect when they die with the plague, or res with forced res sickness. Allow people to attack people that have the plague, and once they attack be attacked in return. Or even better, make the plague infect you with 'res sickness' as well as some damage, so you cant be a 60 warrior/priest group combo and just mow down all of IF. There are so many cool possibilities. So when someone tries to ru
    • They didn't mean to spread the plague, it wasn't an intentional event. No one planned on it even comming into the cities from the instance. Since it wasn't designed to run through cities, it makes sense that it isn't going to:

      make people have to wait 10 mins to resurrect when they die with the plague, or res with forced res sickness. Allow people to attack people that have the plague, and once they attack be attacked in return. Or even better, make the plague infect you with 'res sickness' as well as s
      • No one planned on it even comming into the cities from the instance.

        Yes but anyone that is developing game content for blizzard, but didn't anticipate this is an idiot. It's not like it's hard to stone from instance back into a heavily populated city.
  • 1) Players low balled the plauges ability to spread. I'm sure most just thought it would hand on their characters for a short bit, then disappear. When's the last time we saw a status ailment in anygame behave like this? Players didn't know what they were doing.

    Well, save for some grievers who had the time of their pathedic virgin lives.

    A lot of times, these diseases spread becuase of human ignorance. The contaminated blood is no different.

    2) Containing and curing the epideminc. While transport i

  • MUDS (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Friday October 07, 2005 @01:10AM (#13737405) Journal
    I made an amusing object in a development MUD once, It's property was that if you saw it (in the environment, or by inspecting another player), it would copy itself into your inventory and delete itself before being listed, unless you were inspecting your own inventory, in which case it would copy itself into the environment and delete itself from your inventory.

    That is, normally an unlistable object would be impossible, because even if it returned no name, the MUD code would provide the name of the parent class (that is, if a 'Sword' name function returned an error, the player would see 'Unnamed Weapon') all the way up the 'Unnamed Object' base class, but by deleting itself, there was no parent class left.

    Unfortunetly, I made a typo in the self-deletion code and it would occasionally delete the next object in the players inventory. (when the player received another object after the moving object, but before the object moved out of his inventory) but it would still make the copy of itself.

    oops.

  • It's all just a game (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nimrod545 ( 921121 )
    ...but even with that, I think it's important to note that the human behavior in the game is based on real-life (because for some, the game is their life).

    Somewhere in the replies I read something along the lines of, "Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others". I find this comment laughable(Granted, it's slightly out of context). How many of you go to work sick? You know your sick but yet you still go. Why? Then, at work, the germ distribution system (HVAC) wor
    • Oh, and BTW, your all going down with me!!!
    • Somewhere in the replies I read something along the lines of, "Most people knowingly infected with a diesease would not purposefully act to hurt others". I find this comment laughable(Granted, it's slightly out of context). How many of you go to work sick? You know your sick but yet you still go.

      The difference is the intent. I go to work when sick so I can get my work done, not to purposely infect others. Although, at times, I am very tempted to direct my coughs into a specific office...

      Many of the

  • Most of you are missing the point. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by kinglink ( 195330 ) on Friday October 07, 2005 @08:00AM (#13738582)
    This isn't how people would react in the real life, we all should understand that of course, but in a game, people have wants and desires, just like real life. It could be Desire to gain levels (grow stronger), Desire to gain wealth(greed), Desire to hurt others (masochists), or desire to solve problems (care givers), but if you notice, while each of these things likely arn't the same as these people would do in real life, the actions do exist at least for others in the real world.

    I doubt that they meant to make it "if you do something with the plague it tells you about your real self." It is more it shows them a social system with people of varying desires and ideas after someone introduces a deadly virus. This is something that is almost impossible to study because most people would think someone studying this type of thing instead of helping is a ghoul, yet it should be studied because response systems obviously arn't doing it when everyone passes the buck.

    Now as people have meantioned this likely isn't real life, but notice that once you have the plague you're given a death sentance for the most part, what you do from that point changes everything. Those that run and try to harm others with their plague are actually a real thing. There are those with serious problems (Aids and other life threatening STDs) who will go around and try to infect others because they think there's no quality of life and just like hurting others. There are those who try to avoid this. But both of these reactions are seen in game as well as in the real world. The numbers are schewed but the reaction still exists.

    The point is that the study isn't saying people are acting like they would in real life (and if they were it wouldn't be interesting because of the people who would play these games arn't an accurate subsection of people, especially those who would sacrifice their lifes to hurt others) but they are studying the reactions of people in the game. The fact is while the percentage of certain reactions are different, those reactions are very similar to real life components.

    That all being said, I have to say KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS to Blizzard, because they have created a game I would be interested in and because of that I bought and played it. This plague alone has my interest peaked which makes it great.
  • But certainly, the dynamics of how the plague spreads, as well as how information on what the plague is and how to combat it are quite useful bits of information.

    The story of the plague isn't simply the griefers and pranksters running around doing this, but the interpretations of _what_ it is by the general population (malicious attack, divine punishment, or simple screwup), the speed with which your average gamer changes (drastically) playing style to cope with the new reality, and the attempts at fixes a
  • Come on people. I think a lot can be learned about human nature through mmorpgs, but a lot of the stuff I'm reading on here is bunk. Why are people in WoW so careless about spreading the plague? BECAUSE YOU RESPAWN. It's not a big deal. End of story.

    If we respawned in real life, putting a pipe bomb in your buddy's mailbox might move up a few rungs on the humor ladder.
  • The story was interesting to listen to, but I think that some of the scientists quoted in the story over-estimate how "real" most players view the game. Several talked about players' strong emotional attachments to their characters and how the game was a part of their lives. Howevever, I don't think all players have the same level of attachment - there's a scale between serious role playing and viewing it as "just a game" or "just a piece of software". I think many of the players who "infected" the majo
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • We should accept, with "thunderous applause", President Bush's proposal on using the military in domestic law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu.
  • At one point I was a faithful player of Sims Online (I was the owner of a trailer park wedding chaple). Now looking back on it, I would pay money to be able to spread chaos and rashes to my newly weds. Oh damn......... vengence. Its always way more fun to use your time for evil.

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