11 Accidental Video Game Events That Cost THOUSANDS

On September 13th 2005 Blizzard introduced a new raid to World of Warcraft called Zul’Gurub. It was a difficult raid and the end boss had a few interesting abilities, one of these was known as corrupted blood. This was a debuff ability that drained the health of players. This debuff could also be passed from one player to the next. Now when you exited the raid you were cleared of this. Unfortunately, because of a programmer’s oversight, hunter and warlock pets that got de-summoned were not.

Players that came back into the populated areas and summoned their pets spread the disease to everyone nearby, and it killed low-level players almost instantly. It could also infect NPCs who would not die but act as a carrier. Blizzard employees said later in an interview that “it was really scary” and “we didn’t know what was happening”

Hundreds of bodies lay in the street as low-level characters constantly died, centres of population were abandoned and most rushed to the relative safety of the countryside. Some people would spread the disease to others, but some would try to help. Low-level players would direct people to safe zones and people with healing abilities tried to save those they could.

Eventually, after constant customer service issues, Blizzard had to complete a hard reset on the impacted servers and fix the event, costing them time and money. Interestingly though, this event has been used by scientists and authorities to see how people may react in real-world scenarios