A recent story on BBC and elsewhere reports the spread of a deadly disease among characters in the online role-playing enviornment World of Warcraft. I suppose this counts as a computer virus. Apparently the virus is spread from the killing of a particular creature, Hakkar the god of blood.
As BBC explains
The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar’s corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.
This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.
If this is indeed the case then this would appear to be some kind of germ warfare? virtual-bioterrorism? Of course the characters can be restored to life and the game reset, though perhaps the disease can simply be respread. I’m not exactly sure how that would work. Maybe the designers need to create some kind of immunization.
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Alex Reid 