September 26, 2005
World of Warcraft Virus
Wired has an interesting article about a virtual virus that killed numerous virtual characters in the World of Warcraft game made by blizzard. The virus started as a spell that was created for a new area of the virtual world and was created to spread to nearby players. However when the characters who visited this new area returned to the normal game map the spell hitched a ride and started to spread like a virus throughout the game until Blizzard released a counter-spell to remove the original spell.
This virtual computer virus does create for some very interesting thinking as it means that even virtual worlds have a type of balance that if tipped in the wrong direction can have serious repercussions. What happens if these virtual worlds become more real and we start to create the bridges between virtual and reality via some undefined hardware in the future. Will this be the complete downfall for the human race... got you thinking now.
Anyway World of Warcraft is still a really fun game and stories like these just make it even more interesting.
Links
Wired: World of Warcraft Virus
