

Corrupted Blood Incident - Thevet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident

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tomtoise
I was around for this. It was amazing fun. It really made the world (of
warcraft) feel more.. alive somehow. You'd do everything you could to avoid
infected players, I'd only play on an alt since my main was parked in
Stormwind when the epidemic broke. I just stayed hidden away in the more
obscure levelling zones and survived. It's a shame stuff like this doesn't
occur more often, it really adds flavour to the game.

~~~
mahouse
>It's a shame stuff like this doesn't occur more often, it really adds flavour
to the game.

I'm not sure. WoW as of today looks like it's engineered to avoid the
slightest inconvenience or annoyance to players. :P

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tomtoise
Oh I absolutely concur, I came back for WoD.

LFR, LFG, bonus loot rolls, facebook minigame of garrison management, Bind on
Account for all pets, mounts and Heirlooms.. Heirlooms themselves.

It is definitely far more casual than it used to be. I'm not going to whine, I
understand the game needs to play to the market and I'm not going to pretend I
enjoyed having to find a group in a chat channel, run to the actual instance
and then grind away about an hour for resurrecting and loot squabbles that
existed before LFG and Personal Loot, some of the changes are great. I suppose
I'm also older and 'wiser' now (At least busier, with a 9-5 and whatnot), so
this new style of WoW suits me, I can't just stay up all night playing like I
used to.

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lectrick
I was playing WoW when this happened and witnessed it.

They call it "abusing game mechanics" now, but personally I find the act of
discovery of this sort of thing possibly the most fun aspect of games. WoW was
particularly vulnerable because of the raw complexity of mechanics introduced
in a short timespan.

See: Gamesmanship vs. Sportsmanship

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamesmanship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamesmanship)

There was another time in WoW when a mage soloed a raid by discovering they
could use spellsteal to steal invulnerability buffs off of bosses. (Hey...
that's what it says on the tin, right? "Spellsteal"? ;) ) Anyway... That got
patched. ;)

I remember playing Neverwinter Nights 1 and somehow I was able to squeeze 1
more weapon enchant than was supposed to be possible, onto my weapon, without
cheating. My monk became pretty OP :)

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tomtoise
I remember in Vanilla as a mage you could make yourself completely immune to
the damage that Air Elementals caused in the Blackrock Mountain area (I think?
I don't remember specifics, this was a good 9 years ago or so), and so could
farm highly sought after crafting mats in bulk. Nobody got banned AFAIK, blizz
just quietly patched it and moved on. I agree that some of the most fun things
in WoW were unintended (Twinking, exploration, GM Island etc), it's a shame
they're so much more against it these days.

~~~
lectrick
I'll never forget the day I got an escort to Ironforge from Menethil Harbor.
It was a walk that took close to an hour, as nobody had mounts then. I was a
lowbie night elf from Darnassus, before it had an auction house (or flight
paths, for that matter), and I needed to see it! But the areas we'd walk
through were dangerous, so someone nice volunteered to escort me. I wish I
could meet that person IRL and buy them a beer. ;) And then... finally walking
up to and through those gigantic doors... it was pretty amazing. I still think
IF is my favorite city in that game.

Another time, someone showed me how to get to the top of Ironforge. That too
was amazing. Sort of meta-gaming!

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mod
I wonder if this was possible in Second Life, and so a disease could actually
be engineered by a player.

That would be pretty interesting.

I don't know much about Second Life, though--I'm not even sure if you could
die.

~~~
ryanlol
Well, it's been years since I last touched SL. But last I checked it was
really easy to make infinitely self replicating items that would end up
completely filling up, and eventually crashing sims.

Something like this,
[https://youtu.be/YCc0hDuQt3w?t=72](https://youtu.be/YCc0hDuQt3w?t=72)

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craigching
I remember this. I don't recall specific chats, but I remember it being
complete mayhem, some people not understanding what was happening to them,
some intentionally inflicting it on others and some understanding it and
getting away from everyone. I thought it was pretty funny at the time and then
recall that some group was studying it for the parallels of an epidemic in
real-life. Pretty interesting!

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qnaal
a freeform mmo with an economy like EVE might be able to swing user-created
viruses with user-manufactured cures...

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HCIdivision17
I think it would actually be really hard. In game lore, capsuleers can't meet
in stations because decontamination is insufficient. Capsuleers already have
compromised immune systems as a result.

Not to say it couldn't be made to work, but I highly suspect it'd just result
in a pandemic that perma-deaths the player base. Could be handy if you could
dope a capsuleer with a debuff though, like a stim with no upside. (Maybe pay
off an NPC corp for the subterfuge?)

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mellavora
Cool when an artificial world takes on a life of its own

