Some days ago the Terra Nova blog reported on the curious case of a plague that is killing thousands of players in the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. Apparently, players that killed a new super-boss enemy were infected with a strange disease that started killing characters in the near vicinity. The reports are not clear on the details, but it seems like the goal of the disease was to affect only those who killed this boss. Ingenious players found a way to unleash it on near-by cities, so the plague spread, killing thousands of characters.
What is interesting is that there is no clue as to whether this was a planned event within the game, or if it was actually a random disease that exploited a bug in the system and allowed for the first documented online plague. It is also interesting that the story has been picked up by the BBC Technology news, which gives some clues as to the popularity of MMORPGs.
Bio-terrorism online?
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