WoW Moviewatch: The Ironforge Plague

by Elizabeth Harper Jun 24th 2007 at 12:00PM

Those of you who weren't playing World of Warcraft back in September of 2005 have probably never seen this footage or heard the extremely entertaining story that goes along with it. That September, Blizzard rolled out the 1.7 patch, which included a brand new raid dungeon called Zul'Gurub. And the final boss of Zul'Gurub was Hakkar, the Blood God and the Soulflayer. (A very challenging fight, until you figure out the trick to it.) And when Hakkar died, he left raiders with a parting present -- a damage over time debuff called Corrupted Blood, which did a reasonable, though not entirely deadly, amount of damage to any players present.

As far as Blizzard's design was concerned, this should have been it.

However, Blizzard overlooked a minor issue -- pets could get Corrupted Blood. And pets could be dismissed while they had the debuff and then re-summoned into crowded areas. (The debuff was short-lived -- so even if a player hearthed while under its effect, they wouldn't make it before it wore off. But when pets were dismissed, the debuff's duration was conveniently paused until they were re-summoned.) And the really fun part is that Corrupted Blood would spread to any nearby players. So, by this method, a few days in mid-September were spoiled for many a player in Azeroth, as Hakkar's plague went through the land, repeatedly infecting and killing players in major cities, while GMs tried to quarantine infected players and Blizzard scrambled for a hotfix.

Previously on Moviewatch...

Tags: corrupted blood, CorruptedBlood, hakkar, moviewatch, plague, world of warcraft, WorldOfWarcraft, wow, zul'gurub

Filed under: Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

potatowedge Jun 24th 2007 12:56PM

Awesome ... I'd read about this, but it was really funny to actually see it. And the Benny Hill music only made it better.

Definetly keep digging up stuff like this!

Balasan Jun 24th 2007 1:05PM

There's even a wikipedia entry specifically on this issue. According to wikipedia it's being used as a research piece about epidemics even.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood

lanceleader Jun 24th 2007 2:09PM

I remember when this happened. It was No Quarter which was the top guild on the server. They were also the most hated by both factions. Anyways the hakkar plague lasted about 3 days I think until blizzard could patch it. The horde also had several raid on IF during that time.

esumiwa Jun 24th 2007 3:11PM

This event also caught the idea of IDS - Infectious disease System doctors and scientists who are appearantly running their own private servers to see how disease spreads in social systems - such as malaria, bubonic black(black death). I cant recal which issue it was, but it was published in scientific Amercan

Theserene Jun 24th 2007 5:19PM

I'm glad I finally got to see it! :)

My degree is in infectious diseases and it is an amazing case study to see how a deadly virus would likely impact upon a society.

i Jun 24th 2007 5:48PM

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2113910591037370141

lol this need to be next video lol

Liquidis Jun 24th 2007 5:51PM

Anyone have any idea what the song playing is called? I'd love to use it for some videos.

Anywho, seems like IF had a blast.

TheGreatLarro Jun 24th 2007 7:19PM

unsure of the artist, but the song is called Yakkity Sax.

BenMS Jun 24th 2007 7:36PM

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.