10 Times Players Broke MMORPGs

It was World of Warcraft’s first ever raid boss that caused one of the game’s most renowned and most interesting stories.

Hakaar the Soulflayer who could infect players with 'corrupted blood'. The disease was designed to cause high damage over time but disappear after 10 seconds. Most importantly, it could spread to any player in close proximity.

Unfortunately, Blizzard hadn’t accounted for player pets which could contract the disease, be dismissed and then when the player called them out again they would still have the corrupted blood.

It wasn’t long before entire cities of Azeroth were infected with the virus which had no cure and killed all that contracted it. Except NPCs who could become infected but couldn’t die and therefore would spread corrupted blood constantly.

Entire areas of the map became unsafe to inhabit, and players had to work together to avoid major populated areas. Some become town criers, updating others on the plight, and some established quarantine spaces to heal the unwell.

This went on for days before Blizzard finally wrote a suitable fix and reset the game world.

What makes this story more remarkable than anything else is how its players reacted. The real life Centre for Disease Control requested data to study from Blizzard, and the ‘Corrupted Blood Incident’ has been studied as a prime example of how humans may behave in a real pandemic.