A new evolutionary step - your avatar is a lab rat :-D
Has your avatar been a bit pale and listless lately? If so, it might be because epidemiologists have infected her with a virulent form of elf-pox. A new article in the Boston Globe describes how researching are using MMOs and other virtual worlds as a testing ground for epidemic preparedness, as well as other things. The example is cited of the virus "Corrupted Blood" that was introduced in WoW in fall 2005.
"Human response is, almost by definition, difficult to predict, requiring experiments on emotionally involved subjects to determine the proportion of the population likely to respond in various ways," the authors wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases study.
In the Corrupted Blood outbreak, researchers observed heartening altruistic attempts to heal people. There was also the specter of bioterror in accounts of players who contracted the disease in one part of the game and then intentionally introduced it to a major metropolitan area.
Contrary to common sense, some players broke out of quarantine set up by the game's designers or even tried to contract Corrupted Blood to see what it was like. Since the players are not subjecting themselves to these epidemics in real life, they are more apt to do things (spread contagions) that they would not do in a real epidemic outbreak.
I hope an ethics board develops in-game to provide informed consent to test subjects.
Anyway, the next time you find your character's skin changing or find yourself mysteriously debuffed, take two aspirin, vitamin C and PM me – your happy healer – in the morning.
