...researchers to see how social ostracisation occurs as a disease spreads and people try to avoid going near the infected.
In her report on the Whypox study, Kafai said that results were mixed. On the one hand, the virtual sickness "capitalised on students' knowledge of natural infectious disease through virtual symptoms." But she also noted that it was likely the children saw the spread of the disease as little more than something to watch rather than as an actual biological process to learn from.
In the case of WoW, while many players were instantly affected by the plague, others found they could avoid it by maintaining a distance from victims. At the same time, many players used healing spells to help the afflicted recover.
One WoW player, known as Valewalker, told ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com that the effects of the plague looked like a scene from a Steven Spielberg movie.
"Someone teleports into town with the effect of the disease on them," Valewalker said. "It was like dominos watching the plague itself hop from person to person within personal space of each other. And next thing I saw was many players dead left and right in seconds."
Patrick Bowman, a production coordinator at Activision (not the maker of WoW) and an avid WoW player who fell victim to the plague, saw similar scenes, and like many others, decided it would be amusing to see if he could intentionally spread the disease.
"I... saw hundreds of dead bodies and bones around the area," Bowman said. "I realised that now it was actually spreading from person to person so I ran over to the Fly Point and affected everyone around it." WoW is the most successful massively multiplayer online game in history, partly due to remarkable player loyalty, as well as what many say is the best implementation of game play, graphics, user interface and story line of any online game.
Jacobson explained that the disease was not originally supposed to spread, but was intended as a way to inflict temporary damage on high-level players attacking a "boss" in one area of the game.
"It [was] meant to spread within the raid group attacking him with the plague as it does... damage to anyone who gets it," Jacobson said.
Pets infect players
What was unexpected, he said, was the way the plague infected players' pets and then later transferred from those pets to others in populated areas of the WoW world.
"People would infect...
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