Online gaming is something that’s here to stay, and the fact that people spend a lot of time in a complex virtual world that basically has it’s own laws of virtuale nature can have some pretty fun and interesting results.
Take World of Warcraft for instance. A game played by millions of gamers around the globe recently got hit by the plague, virtually. Corpses all over the place, and the infection spread like a real world disease across the servers.
Funny stuff (if you are not infected I guess).
This BBC article gives a pretty good rundown of the events. But basically the plague was intended to stay inside a single dungeon until high level players found a way to transfer it onto a virtual pet, and unleash it into the wild. You gotta love dem haxx0rz!
You can read more about it all over the net but this video gives you an idea of how the plague manifests itself in game. People running and dying apparently, pretty much what would happen in real life I guess.
There are some more detailed screenshots over at flickr as well.
Too bad there isn’t a Monty Pythoneske character rinning it’s deathbell walking around rounding up corpses on his cart innit.
