NPR on WoW

October 6, 2005 10:30 AM

See, this is what I love about MMOs. Remember that plague that broke out in World of Warcraft recently? The way that unexpected events such as that play out in virtual worlds is a fascinating thing to me, and apparently it is to National Public Radio as well. NPR has a feature up comparing the reactions of players in-game to the reactions of real-world disaster victims. Blizzard's lead producer on WoW also speaks. He notes that, while the plague was unintentional, Blizzard was very intruiged by the player reaction and might want to introduce a similar more controlled event.

According to the co-director of the Tufts Center for Modelling of Infectious Diseases, accurate simulations of disaster events are extremely hard to run, because people's reactions tend to be very different than they actually would in a completely unexpected situation. She would like to cooperative with Blizzard, so that if the company ever introduces an unannounced plague-like event, she can observe the results and interview players to guage reactions and understand why they acted the way they did. Blizzard representatives said they were open to the prospect of working with her.

Thanks to Arkbender for the tip.

Chris Remo

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Chod

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October 6, 2005 10:39 AM

Blizzard does plenty of un-announced plague like events all the time when they dramatically change something without telling people. She should just go to the official WoW forums and cry.