# Corrupted Blood Incident The Corrupted Blood Incident was an accidental virtual plague inside World of Warcraft during September 2005, when a raid boss debuff meant for one dungeon leaked out into the wider game and killed thousands of low level characters over roughly a week. The outbreak later became a serious case study for epidemiologists modeling how real people behave during pandemics. ## Overview The Corrupted Blood Incident was an unintentional in-game plague that swept through Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft starting September 13th, 2005[2]. A boss mechanic that was supposed to stay inside one raid dungeon escaped into the game's crowded capital cities, killed weaker player characters within seconds, and forced Blizzard to fight the outbreak with hotfixes and server resets over roughly a week[1]. Scientists later took the whole thing seriously as a natural experiment for how real people behave during an epidemic[3]. ## How It Spread Low level characters often died in a single tick while high level players survived long enough to keep spreading the debuff as unwitting carriers[1]. Blizzard first asked for a voluntary quarantine, but it broke down within hours as griefers sprinted infected pets straight into busy trade districts on purpose[3]. Rushed patches and server resets ended the outbreak about a week after it started, and in October 2008 Blizzard nodded back to the incident with a scripted zombie infection event ahead of the Wrath of the Lich King launch[1]. On May 20th, 2008, Gamasutra ran a piece titled "The Real Life Lessons Of WoW's Corrupted Blood," reporting that epidemiologist Nina Fefferman used the incident as data on human behavior during an epidemic[1]. On February 26th, 2011, YouTuber Christiaan008 posted a lecture called "Modelling Infectious Diseases in Virtual Realities" walking through the Corrupted Blood case[4]. The story kept surfacing on Reddit years after Blizzard patched the exploit, most visibly when a Wikipedia writeup on the incident was shared to r/gaming for the eleventh anniversary in September 2016[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Corrupted Blood Incident? An accidental plague inside World of Warcraft in September 2005, when a raid boss debuff called Corrupted Blood escaped its intended dungeon and killed thousands of characters across the game's servers[1]. ### Where did Corrupted Blood Incident come from? It began in patch 1.7 on September 13th, 2005, when the Zul'Gurub raid introduced a boss whose contagious debuff was carried out of the dungeon by hunter pets and released into major cities[1]. ### What does Corrupted Blood Incident mean? The name refers to a scripted disease effect that Blizzard used in a boss encounter, which players unintentionally turned into a server wide outbreak lasting about a week[1]. ### How do you use Corrupted Blood Incident? It is not a meme template. People reference the incident when comparing MMO player behavior to real world pandemic response or when listing famous video game bugs[4]. ### Is Corrupted Blood Incident still popular? It is still cited in gaming press and academic writing on virtual disease modeling, though the original event was patched roughly two decades ago[4]. ## References 1. [https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/109522/GFH_The_Real_Life_Lessons_Of_WoWs_Corrupted_Blood.php]() 2. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/corrupted-blood-incident]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAEhyHiNdrA]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/corrupted-blood-incident Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library