There has been an interesting development in a multiplayer online game, a MOG or MPOG or MMOG.

Millions of people participate in this kind of playing, often paying others to keep their character or characters going. Obessive. Like bloggers.

World of Warcraft has been an online multi-player game since 2004.
The game company adds new worlds (layers) to keep fans interested.

In the last week, it added the Zul’Gurub dungeon which gave players a chance to confront and kill the fearsome Hakkar - the god of Blood.

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a “corrupted blood” infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar’s corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.

Although computer controlled characters did not contract the plague, they are said to have acted as “carriers” and infected player-controlled characters they encountered.

Facinating. Characters don’t ’stay dead’ in World of Warcraft, it is about heroes after all, but even rolling back servers and changing code didn’t stop this.

Virtual worlds behave like the real world. Apparently it happened in a MPOG Sims a bird flu sort of thing with an infected virtual hamster.