Re: A bioterror attack in World of Warcraft.

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

Roland Dobbins wrote:
> There's a lot of food for thought, here:
>
> http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/09/ _dig_this_an_eb.html

A must read indeed.

Moving beyond this story being cool, I'd like to actually discuss what 
we can learn from it.

I don't think establishing such games to learn how diseases spread can 
really teach us much beyond being a sweet treat to someone working on 
their Ph. D. There are a lot of metrics that can be collected here and 
therefore this can be interesting for many different research purposes, 
from the spread of diseases to comparisons between the biological and 
computers world.

I believe that looking at the ways the online game tries and will try to 
*cope* with the problem is by far more interesting.

So far we have seen "local authorities" try to quarantine users, as well 
as some other such measures. But what can really be done?

I suppose it all depends on the game and the capabilities of the 
software manufacturer and server managers to modify it "unfairly", which 
is basically what most game manufacturers try and prevent.

If they could wipe the disease out they would have by now (I hope), so, 
what could they potentially do?

They could use the band-aid approach and send the game a new item, much 
like they send a new monster. Widely distributing healing potions and/or 
something that will heal this particular epidemic.

They could do (potentially), a global "blessing" of sort to heal everybody.

Whatever it is they do try their solutions will fall under one of the 
following four categories:

1. Band-aids, trying to help as many as they can where they can. They 
could potentially heal most people, or have them take the medicine 
continuously over-time, as they will keep getting re-infected.

2. Do something global - "heal everybody". Problem is there are players 
who won't be there when everybody is healed and will just re-introduce 
the disease when they come back. I suppose constant global healing is 
not a Bad Idea, but it is once again a limited solution.

3. Game manipulation: just edit this out from the game and/or ALL 
characters, whether at the DB level or "on-login".

4. Scorched Earth. Kill everything. Maybe try to restore data from 
before the "attack" and/or from after with the disease data removed.

It is very interesting to see a feature that does what is intended and 
yet "runs" out of control. Following this story will be extremely 
interesting.

        Gadi.
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