World Of Warcraft Bug Helps Track Real Life Disease

One of the world's leading medical journals, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, reports how a 2005 bug in World of Warcraft could help in understanding how best to deal with the spread of real world diseases.

Here's how The Lancet describes it, "In a recent incident in the virtual world of online gaming, the accidental inclusion of a disease-like phenomenon provided an excellent example of the potential of such systems to alleviate these modelling constraints. We discuss this incident and how appropriate exploitation of these gaming systems could greatly advance the capabilities of applied simulation modelling in infectious disease research."

The less dry version is that in September 2005 a dragon (or 'winged serpent' if you will) by the name of Hakkar, was introduced to the game in order to give players with the most experience a bit of a challenge. But then things "went horribly wrong" as the Hakar code managed to infect other beasties all the way down to players' pets - who then turned rogue in a plot line that would have made Stephen King proud.

This proved to be ideal material for scientists Eric Lofgren, of Rutgers University, New Jersey, and Nina Fefferman, of Tufts University, Boston to observe as a virtual representation of how people might deal with an epidemic in the real world. As the Hakar 'virus' spread throughout the world the boffins were able to see how players responded, how fast the virus spread, and even how apparently immune carriers appeared.

The Times reports Professor Fefferman's comment on the value of the research, “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.”

So, yet again the 'cock-up' theory of history (this time virtual history) reins supreme over the 'conspiracy' theory. Who says World of Warcraft is no use other than to give nerds an excuse to stay out of the light? Not SPOnG!

^{Source: The Times}