(The game's administrators introduced the disease as a challenge for some high-level players they didn't expect it to break out of the caves and into the virtual world's cities and towns.) The disease then ravaged the player population � despite administrators' efforts to quarantine the infected � and gave World of Warcraft its first virtual-world pandemic.
Both papers document the path of an unexpectedly virulent virtual disease called 'Corrupted Blood,' which swept through World of Warcraft's online characters starting in September 2005. That's the message behind a new paper appearing this month in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases, and also behind a separate, similar paper published in Epidemiology earlier this year. Follow says video games are a waste of time? World of Warcraft � a virtual online world where millions of players quest for power, wealth and magical items � has got public-health experts considering new ways to track the spread of disease.