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Introduction
Online computer role-playing games, or massively multiplayer online role-playing games, are hugely popular with many millions of people globally logging on to play them, and in turn, supporting a multi-million pound industry.
In the specific case of World of Warcraft, players create and play characters such as warriors or mages in a Tolkien-inspired virtual game world in which they can play through computer-generated quests, either alone or co-operatively with other players, or pit their characters against others in player versus player battles. In addition, World of Warcraft, like all online games, acts as a social networking site with players able to socialise either as themselves or as their characters. For example, there are a number of shared spaces within the game world that take the form of cities, or towns, in which players can go shopping for new equipment, socialise and look for new missions. In this respect, online computer role-playing games have much in common with table top role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons.
In September 2005, Blizzard Entertainment released a new playable area, Zul'Gurunb, for their hugely popular online computer role-playing game World of Warcraft, which at the time, had an estimated 4 million players. 1 Included in this new game content was a virtual infectious disease called Corrupted Blood. Owing to an unintended design oversight, the infection was able to escape the confines of Zul'Gurunb and spread throughout the games virtual world, Azeroth, in what became a virtual pandemic. 2 3 Eventually the games designers were able to resolve the problem and the Corrupted Blood pandemic has since passed into computer game folklore.
However, in an interesting development, the Corrupted Blood incident has drawn the attention of public health researchers, with the Centre for Disease Control reportedly having approached Blizzard Entertainment with a view to looking at the outbreak data. 4 This interest stems from the claim that both, the incident itself and online computer role-playing games in general, could be utilised to assist the study of real-world epidemics and epidemiological modelling. 1 2 5
Arguably, the general idea that online computer role-playing games can be used as, and assist with, models was first recognised by economists, who noticed that online games often incorporated virtual economies and monetary systems into...