Connecting the disjointed World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular online video game, with over 9 million monthly subscribers actively playing the game currently. In 2005 with the addition of new content there was an unintended consequence. One piece of new content was a new disease called corrupted blood. This disease was intended only to be a hindrance for top level players and was only designed to be accessible in the new areas, separate from the rest of the world. The disease was placed on a single target during a boss encounter and was designed to spread from one player to any character within a certain radius. However, due to player teleportation the disease was able to escape its quarantined region and spread into densely populated regions of the game. This resulted in a massive epidemic breaking out wiping out a substantial number of the 4 million players. Many weaker players were highly susceptible to the disease killing them. The disease also spread to non-player characters who were designed to be incredibly strong, so they served as hosts who experienced no symptoms yet continued to spread the disease. Due to these factors the disease continued to spread long after every player who had contracted the disease was either cured or died. This experience was taken note of at the CDC and other agencies to look for adequate models of epidemic disease models in the real world.
The original host of the disease is the origination point and should serve as the center of the network as node A. With the arrival into densely populated cities the disease spread from the host to many loiterers (a common occurrence in the game) and quickly spread out of control. However, within the game there are many clusters from where players like to spend time, evenly spread through the city. Some players never interact with others directly due to the size of the game. Yet nearly every player in the game experienced the disease at least once. The clusters of players at certain locations (the inn, mailbox, auction house, transportation centers, and other popular areas) oftentimes stay within these areas for much of the game, creating separate networks. However certain players took it upon themselves to directly or inadvertently spread the disease to these separate clusters. These players served as local bridges facilitating the widespread outbreak of the disease. In addition the non-player characters who served as hosts were also major nodes, with countless lines of transmission spreading from them. This disease was one of the, if the not, first event to fully unite to different clusters (guilds and players in different capital cities) into a fully unified network connected by transmission of the disease.
http://terranova.blogs.com/s14733099077021283.pdf
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