If you’ve been playing Destiny this weekend, you’ve most likely contracted what Guardians are affectionately (yet inappropriately) calling “space AIDS”. But did you know that it’s paying homage to a similar, unintended epidemic that happened 11 years ago, almost to the day, within World of Warcraft?
Termed the “Corrupted Blood incident”, the contagion began on 13 September 2005 thanks to a new Raid and its end boss, Hakkar the Soulflayer.
Hakkar was able to cast a contagious buff upon players called Corrupted Blood. It was meant to last a short time and only affect players within the Zul’Gurub region, though things didn’t actually pan out that way. Soon, the buff spread outside the Raid into the world (of Warcraft), infecting anyone who came in contact with it.
Developer Blizzard began to implement in-game quarantine procedures; players did the same, with some even going as far as to avoid logging in during the week-long event. The contagion was aggressive — it took a handful of patches and server resets to finally put Corrupted Blood to rest.
Most interestingly, real-world researchers have used data obtained in the Corrupted Blood incident to help model actual contagions, better preparing the world for real-life epidemics.
Things are a bit different in Destiny, of course — people are actively attempting to be infected ahead of “Rise of Iron”. To date, no one knows what the infection will ultimately do, apart from short-term XP and Faction boosts.
For more on the Corrupted Blood event, head here.
“Rise of Iron” heads to Xbox One and PS4 on 20 September.
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