Online-Game Plague Could Help Scientists Track Real Epidemics <- WoW online game

[Prrkitty]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293920,00.html

Quote #1: "In the massively multiplayer online role-playing game called "World of Warcraft," created and supported by Blizzard Entertainment, an unexpected software error provided a ready-made scenario for studying the effects of an epidemic."

Quote #2: "It all happened by accident. In September 2005, what was intended as a minor hindrance for a small group of characters spiraled beyond the control of program-makers into a full-blown epidemic.

A new villain, a winged serpent called Hakkar the Soulflayer, originally designed as a "boss challenge" for only the strongest characters, started transmitting a spell called "Corrupted Blood" that knocked hundreds of life points of each player who confronted him.

Stronger players with thousands of points would survive, but weaker ones — not typically able to enter the dungeon of Zul'Gurub where Hakkar the Soulflayer resided — would die quickly.

The spell was designed to spread from player to player, but only within the Zul'Gurub dungeon. Due to a software flaw, however, it was transmitted by players' virtual pets into the wider "Warcraft" world, killing off weaker players en masse and turning entire cities into plague zones."

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So... a computer glitch cause an 'epidemic' to spread thru the game affecting players. Which in turn helped scientists understand a bit more how epidemics would work in a real world situation.

Who'd 'a thunk?

[deathbyhokie]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293920,00.html

Quote #1: "In the massively multiplayer online role-playing game called "World of Warcraft," created and supported by Blizzard Entertainment, an unexpected software error provided a ready-made scenario for studying the effects of an epidemic."

Quote #2: "It all happened by accident. In September 2005, what was intended as a minor hindrance for a small group of characters spiraled beyond the control of program-makers into a full-blown epidemic.

A new villain, a winged serpent called Hakkar the Soulflayer, originally designed as a "boss challenge" for only the strongest characters, started transmitting a spell called "Corrupted Blood" that knocked hundreds of life points of each player who confronted him.

Stronger players with thousands of points would survive, but weaker ones — not typically able to enter the dungeon of Zul'Gurub where Hakkar the Soulflayer resided — would die quickly.

The spell was designed to spread from player to player, but only within the Zul'Gurub dungeon. Due to a software flaw, however, it was transmitted by players' virtual pets into the wider "Warcraft" world, killing off weaker players en masse and turning entire cities into plague zones."

------

So... a computer glitch cause an 'epidemic' to spread thru the game affecting players. Which in turn helped scientists understand a bit more how epidemics would work in a real world situation.

Who'd 'a thunk?

a) This is a couple years old.
b) It doesn't follow a real "epidemic" model because of various asshole players (like myself) who were more than happy to purposefully trigger a massive wave of death in popular cities.

[Prrkitty]

But but but... the date on the article was Wednesday, August 22, 2007... I tried to make sure I posted an up to date article. I promise!

So it was YOU that helped spread the epidemic?! <lol>

[Beldaran]

b) It doesn't follow a real "epidemic" model because of various asshole players (like myself) who were more than happy to purposefully trigger a massive wave of death in popular cities.

lol I remember when this happened. My guy was really new and so I basically couldn't play because he'd just die instantly. :D

[bigjoe]

I wasn't around when it happened, and to be honest, I only played WoW for about a week before I gave up. But I did happen to read about this on a Wiki. I fail to see how his "epidemic" could provide any applicable data to scientists.

[Beldaran]

I fail to see how his "epidemic" could provide any applicable data to scientists.

Well, unless you are educated in biology and statistics, I don't think anyone expects you to get it. If some scientists claim there is statistical research value to the phenomenon, it hardly invalidates their suggestion because you, a well respected authority on...what again?... fails to see their point.

[AtmaWeapon]

A more tactful explanation is that scientists who study contagious diseases don't really get much of an opportunity to observe an outbreak from the first infection on; by the time they get there they have to trace backwards.

Someone in that community just figured out a way they could observe people's behaviors and how it affects infection vectors in a way that doesn't involve getting executed for releasing a bio-weapon. The people in WoW reacted probably about as close to real people faced with a terminal contagious illness as these researchers are going to get.

The main problem I see though is trying to convince Blizzard to implement something buggy like that again for science. Players won't like it, but really if the scientists made some kind of program where the intent was for people to react as they would normally it wouldn't work the same because people would (a) not have an attachment to the character and thus not do much to protect it and (b) know it was a simulation and therefore there were no consequences. In the WoW case, people were concerned they'd actually lose progress and therefore did their best to not contract the illness.

[Archibaldo]

I don't get it. How did the scientists not know that when a plague swarms a town the unhealthy and weak are the ones who die and those healthy and strong are able to live. I hardly call that something scientists discovered.

[Glenn the Great]

It doesn't follow a real "epidemic" model because of various asshole players (like myself) who were more than happy to purposefully trigger a massive wave of death in popular cities.


Well, if in real life I became infected with a contagious disease where death was certain, I'd be doing my fair share of intentionally spreading it before I succumbed to it.

[AtmaWeapon]

And if in a video game I became infected with a contagious disease you can bet your bottom dollar that I would do everything within my power (including exploits) to grief as many people as possible with it.

[bigjoe]

it hardly invalidates their suggestion because you, a well respected authority on...what again?... fails to see their point.

I never claimed to be the authority on anything. It's as easy as Common Sense. World of Warcraft could not possibly include every means of spreading disease. Now, I'm all open to the idea of an MMORPG called DiseaseTopia that actually DOES include that.

[Beldaran]

It's as easy as Common Sense.

If science were as easy as common sense, humans would have mastered classical mechanics and thought of special relativity in 600BC. Science requires research, education, context, and perspective. It often yields surprising, counter-intuitive (ie non-common sense) results and sometimes those truths can begin to be glimpsed in weird places like an online game.

[AtmaWeapon]

Also common sense is not exactly a hallmark of humanity. I'll illustrate with an anecdote that I've done no research to really prove, also using the term "speed" when I mean something more like "packet size" or "data rate" or some other technical term I'm too lazy to investigate because basically to the average guy it means "speed". I heard it from one of my professors and none of the nerds in class stood up to argue and it's dumb enough to be true but I'm sure one of you guys can disprove me so I make no claims as to its honesty.

For a long time, TCP had a problem that you probably encountered. When packets were dropped, the protocol interpreted this as congestion and cut its speed in an attempt to lower congestion and guarantee more packets could come through. If another packet was dropped, it'd cut its speed again. What happens when you connect via dialup and have a noisy phone line? You get to watch your download speed on largish files diminish slowly to almost nothing the longer you wait.

Computer Scientists struggled with the way to handle this problem for some time, until someone finally came up with the solution: what if, some time after a packet drops, the protocol tried to increase its speed by 25&#37;? Even on a noisy line, this causes a dramatic increase in performance for long downloads, since you tend to approach some ideal speed and hover around it.

The point is lots of specialists spent a lot of effort trying to find the solution and overlooked the simple fact that the algorithm always decreased speed and never increased it. I believe it was a Physicist who proposed the new algorithm, and it's one of many instances where a major contribution to Computer Science was made by someone who was not a computer scientist.

[Glenn the Great]

Even though World of Warcraft is not an accurate representation of real life, there are some aspects that get carried over, such that useful information can be gleaned that may pertain to real life.

The issue isn't really about the fact that the weak die, but it's also a great observation of the dynamic of panic's contribution to spread of disease.

This brings to mind something I was taught in my Humanities class a few months back when we were studying the Bubonic Plague of the 1300s. The plague originally only broke out in a single city in Italy. When healthy people saw people getting horrificly sick around themselves, they fled the city in panic and took refuge in surrounding cities.

All they did was spread the disease, because they carried the disease, but hadn't started to show symptoms. This action happened over and over again in a chain reaction until the Plague was all over Europe. We learned the value of quarantine from this experience.

[Aegix Drakan]

Wow. This is actually pretty cool. Being able to see the effects of an epidemic without anyone getting actually hurt.

We see the usual reactions and culprits.

The people who panic and spread it, A la black death.

The idiots who want to see what's going on , and infect themselves.

And the malcontents wo want to drag everyone down with them.


Yep, a perfect experiment. We've confimed that the human race is compsed mainly of idiots, and people who like to cause pain.

...Among other things, I hope.