Corrupted Blood, Warcraft, and Science

So, there has been a lot of talk in the media lately about Corrupted Blood, a debuff in Warcraft and how this will be so useful in modeling diseases and outbreaks in the real world. A debuff is just a status change in a player that has a set duration. Let me say at this point, that I play warcraft, I was there when this outbreak happened, and I have a degree in microbiology.

Media likes to make things up. This effect can only be spread by people intentionally really, since it only lasts 5 seconds. In addition, people were using their pets to spread the debuff, which would be unlikely in an actual biological outbreak.

NPR is saying that we can use it to model how people react in an outbreak scenario. I accept that it’s more plausible to learn about social psychology from MMORPGs than biology, however I can assure you that when there is no penalty for death, and people are faced with a novel situation (the “disease”) they will not react similarly to, say, a smallpox epidemic.

Here is a timeline of what happened from someone not involved in initiating the outbreak.

1. Outbreak becomes obvious at main population center
2. Everyone is informed via in game chat almost immediately by friends etc
3. Everyone who can, rushes to said population center to see what’s going on
4. Everyone dies a few times exploring the mechanics of the debuff
5. Some people get bored and go back to what they were doing, while a large percentage stay to actively spread the disease

To me, that doesn’t seem very realistic. The psychology is fundamentally different in a game where you die more than once per day, and the concept of a disease is novel, and fun.