Everyone in WoW has AIDS

In an absolutely bizarre turn of events, a virtual disease is spreading through the World of Warcraft servers, killing off characters everywhere it spreads. The disease is a direct result of a new in-game instance created by Blizzard, which appears to be working not quite how it was intended.

There is a little info over at Shacknews, but the basic gist is this:

Blizzard adds in a new instance, Zul'Gurub. Inside is the god of blood, Hakkar. Well, when you fight him he has a debuff called Corrputed Blood. It does like 250-350 damage to players and affects nearby players. The amazing thing is SOME PLAYERS have brought this disease (and it is a disease) back to the towns, outside of the instance. It starts spreading amongst the general population including npcs, who can out generate the damage. Some servers have gotten so bad that you can't go into the major cities without getting the plague (and anyone less than like level 50 nearly immediately die).

GM's even tried quarantining players in certain areas, but the players kept escaping the quarantine and infect other players.

How absolutely bonkers.

There's an amusing animation here which basically sums it up.

This incredulous scenario has equally bizarre consequences. Is this the first example of an in-game disease ramping out of control? Is it another step towards on-line worlds becoming just like real worlds? It seems likely that this 'escape' will go down in history as one of the events that defines the MMO-era.

Are you having trouble with WoW? Afraid to log on in case you catch something? Let us know what's going on your end in the forums.