There are no recovered addicts, just people who die before they relapse. Research from Blizzard (via gamesindustry.biz) shows that about half of Warhammer expatriates and nearly 70% of those who left for Age of Conan have returned to the warm embrace of Azeroth.

Players haven’t necessarily cancelled their other accounts, but the time demands of MMORPGs don’t exactly encourage playing multiple games unless you work at Massively. So it’s probably fair to guess that those players have actually shifted from game to game.

Player recidivism coincides with the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, which will hit stores this week. Coincidence? Um, no.

28 minutes later
Image by
Katie McKiernan

The travel brochure says “Don’t eat the food” and it’s not kidding. Crates of infected grain have been delivered to all the major cities in World of Warcraft, spreading the same scourge that created the undead and ultimately the forsaken faction. Taking a cue from Resident Evil Outbreak, players infected by the scourge become zombies and can then attack and infect other players. Of course, other players and guards can reciprocate the aggression, though they run a risk of infection if they do. There’s a brief incubation period where the players can be cured, but clusters of bodies near the healers indicate that things could be going better.

The last time a plague ran rampant through Azeroth, it was a little less scripted. The introduction of the Blood God Hakkar propagated a disease called corrupted blood that killed any characters who had not yet reached endgame instantly. Epidemiologists tracked the spread of the disease through the game’s transit networks and used it to develop disease transmission models that may one day be useful for real world outbreaks of fatal contagions.

While the current oubreak is a bit more controlled, it does have one distinguishing feature that makes it different than the corrupted blood epidemic. The world narrative calls for increasing urgency in the outbreak, a fact that Blizzard has chosen to simulate by gradually decreasing the duration of the infection debuff.

Put another way, you used to have 10 minutes to find a healer. Now you have two.

The combination of Warcraft’s dense server populations and the gradually decreasing incubation period make the scourge an interesting source of modeling data. Shorter incubation means less chance to travel, but also means more rapid spreading in denser populations. Whether epidemiologists take notice or not, players can hope to see resolution of the disease plot line in the upcoming expansion: Wrath of the Lich King.

If you thought you were ripping Blizzard off at $15/month, worry not! The developer has worked out a way you can give something back. Bloggers at WarCry are reporting a button in the assets of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion beta labeled “Paid Character Customization.”

Though reluctant to comment on it at Blizzcon, WoW production director J. Allen Brak eventually conceded that the button was real and would be implemented in the future. Just when you thought you were safe from micropayments.

Anybody out there willing to pay cold hard cash to change your character’s hair color? Equipment? What would it take to make you part with an additional $2 for your favorite MMORPG?