Cities like the dwarven town Ironforge and wow classic gold orc town Orgrimmar were overrun within hours. Non-playable personalities, who could not die due to special coding, could also capture the effect, meaning any player that passed by them could receive Corrupted Blood.

Once word got out, players searched frantically for information about what was happening.

"We kept a close eye not only on our guild chat but on world chat as well to see where not to go. We didn't want to catch it."

The spread of Corrupted Blood, and also the player's behavioral changes to it, captured the interest of epidemiologist Dr. Nina Fefferman, who was a World of Warcraft player at the time of cheap wow gold classic the episode. In 2007, the two published a paper that detailed their findings, such as complex models of human behaviour during a pandemic. Fefferman claims the episode has helped inform her current research to predictive modeling about covid-19.