A World of Warcraft bug accidentally created a virtual pandemic

In September two thousand five, World of Warcraft players encountered an accidental plague. The game introduced a dungeon boss named Hakkar the Soulflayer who cast Corrupted Blood, a curse designed to spread only within the dungeon itself. A programming error let it escape into the broader game world instead, where it spread uncontrollably across zones and infected thousands of players simultaneously. According to Boing Boing, the incident became one of gaming's most famous software bugs—a pandemic nobody intended.

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