The Joy of Shared Experience
The plague was never meant to spread outside of the confines of the Hakkar locale, but through a bug in the way players could take their pets with them, the plague was able to propagate to the wider player population.Players who fought Hakkar were affected by his debuff (a spell which has a negative effect over a fixed period of time). The debuff, in this case, was Corrupted Blood, a spell that caused 250–300 points of damage (compared to the average health of 5000 for a player of the highest level) every few seconds to the afflicted player. The affliction was passed on to any players standing too close to infected players. While the curse would kill most lower-level players in a matter of seconds, higher-level players could keep themselves alive (via healing spells and other means) long enough to spread the disease around the immense landscape inside the game.
What is so wonderful about this little spot of serendipity is that the bug created a server-wide shared experience. It's great to hear stories from the commenters about this spot of Warcraft history. An example:
These sort of shared experiences, like the lobby stories discussed in Horror! Horror! Forza!, do serve to illustrate a strong and lasting difference between online and offline play, they act as a very powerful social tool, and its great to reminisce about such things, virtual or not.This happened shortly (about 2 days) after I started playing. Wandering in to Stormwind for one of the first times, I was amazed to see the number of bodies everywhere - I thought some massive raid had just taken place! I later realised that because the bodies were still there, their owners must have logged off after the millionth time they died.
Microsoft has to be commended with the Achievements system, which attempts to not share an experience, but rather indicate that gamer has had it, and spur on friends to do the same. However, it can never really come close to The Real Thing.
Sharing is caring.
