MMORPG: How a Computer Game Becomes Deadly Serious (22 page)

“Only the bull is aggressive,” Drimm said. “The others won’t attack unless they’re attacked themselves.”

Robert nodded at the telltale colors, red and yellow, that lighted up under the cursor of Drimm’s mouse. “Will a Rhino attack to protect her baby?” he asked.

“Possibly. You never know. They might also attack simply because you anger the bull. When you first encounter a new species, always be careful. Especially when they’re moving in herds. Before you know it, you’re stampeded by ten angry beasts.”

While he was killing them one by one, aided by his lion, Khalid demonstrated several different tactics that could be used. Especially interesting to Robert were the tips he gave about how to transfer the aggro between the hunter and his pet. Again, he was learning from an accomplished hunter.

After twenty minutes of demonstration, Khalid announced that he had other things to do. Robert thanked him again and Khalid gave him a wide smile in response.

“No problem. You learn fast. It’s a nice game, don’t you think?”

It was obvious that the man was enjoying this opportunity to be his tutor. To his surprise, Robert found that he was actually starting to like him.

He smiled back. “Very nice. And addictive. I must be careful that it doesn’t ruin my studies.” With a pang, he realized that this was exactly what was already happening. If he didn’t spend more time with his books, he’d be in trouble.

“Don’t say that I didn’t warn you,” Khalid said. “But it’s up to you!”

Back in his room, Robert sent a text message to Rebecca:
Account: [email protected]

~~~

Chapter XIX

“
One
of the most intriguing things that ever happened in World of Warcraft was the outbreak of the Corrupted Blood Disease in 2005,” Rebecca said later that night. “I had just joined the game at that time.”

It took Robert a moment to shift his thoughts away from Khalid to this new subject.

Rebecca continued, “Without warning, a lethal and contagious disease started to spread. It started in the big cities, but it quickly spread around the world. Thousands upon thousands of players saw their characters die, everyone panicked. After some time it was hard to find even a small village without dozens of corpses on the ground. Rumor had it that it was a programming bug. A little later there was talk that it was an attack by cyber terrorists. Blizzard tried to stop the spreading of the disease by rebooting the servers. That didn’t help.”

She had captured his imagination now. “What happened?”

“It turned out to be a virus which originated inside the newly added Zul’Gurub instance. The end boss had been given a special ability. He infected his opponents with a disease called Corrupted Blood that slowly drew away the health of a player.”

“So Blizzard added the virus on purpose?”

“Yes, but it was never meant to escape Zul’Gurub. It was programmed in such a way that, upon leaving the instance, the disease was removed from a character.”

Robert tried to process this information. “So what went wrong?”

“What happened was that a hunter got infected. His pet got infected as well. Then something happened that the program designers hadn’t reckoned with. Before the hunter left the instance, he dismissed his pet. As you know, when you dismiss your pet, it just disappears.
It’s simply not there anymore
. So when the hunter left Zul’Gurub, the disease was removed from his own person, but not from the pet. When he summoned his pet again, he was back in a crowded city. Only, the disease hadn’t been removed from the pet. You can predict the rest of the story.”

“Sure I can. The consequences must have been terrible,” Robert replied in disbelief. “What happened next? What did they do about it?”

Rebecca laughed. “What happened next is what makes this so interesting. Blizzard tried to contain the virus by imposing a mass quarantine. Players were ordered to avoid certain areas, like the cities, while other places were designated safe zones. The programmers expected players to do as they were told, and the large majority did. There were others who ignored the quarantine or even seemed to enjoy spreading the virus. In the end, four million characters contracted the Corrupted Blood Disease.”

A vision of millions upon millions of virtual corpses scattered around Azeroth came to Robert’s mind. He found it difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend. Then a question came up. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because we need something to make the police understand that they should take us seriously. Until now, they dismissed us out of hand because they regard WoW as just another computer game.”

“And how is this going to help?”

“We’re going to show them that many scientists take World of Warcraft seriously, exactly because it’s so realistic. There have been several studies into the Corrupted Blood outbreak. Reports have been published in serious medical and scientific papers that all support the notion that this is the only realistic model available for studying and predicting behavioral patterns in case of a worldwide pandemic.”

Right after ending the call, Robert searched the Internet for support of Rebecca’s claim. He found several articles that linked the Corrupted Blood Disease to the study of pandemics in the real world. Most notably, an American professor called Nina Hefferman received a lot of praise for an article she published in
the Lancet’s Infectious Diseases Journal
in 2007
.

He carefully read the entire article. He had to admit that the significance of the occurrence seemed to be much greater than a simple programming glitch in a computer game. Maybe it could help convince the authorities to take them seriously. He printed the article and also some of the various comments.

He looked at his watch and saw he had over an hour left of his ‘shift’. After that, Andy would be standby to follow Khalid in case he decided to leave the house. With nothing better to do, he went back to the chore of completing the last level with Gunslinger.

The next day Robert took an early train to Schiphol Airport. He was excited at the prospect of seeing Rebecca again. When he arrived at the point where the passengers of Rebecca’s flight were to emerge out of the baggage reclaim area, the screens with flight information told him that he had to wait another thirty minutes for the plane to land.

He sat on the ground with his back against the glass wall of one of the many shops. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift. They turned to Rebecca and how anxious he was to see her. How was she going to react when she saw him again? They hadn’t seen each other for quite some time. Their only contact had been through telephone calls, text messages and, of course, World of Warcraft. He realized that he often visualized her as the Undead avatar Killermage from World of Warcraft.

His thoughts drifted back to the last weeks. Many conversations passed by in his head. Sometimes he had difficulties with the abrupt changes in her attitude toward him. She could swing from lighthearted and funny to businesslike and distant in a matter of seconds. How would it be to see her again? Was he falling in love with her? He just hoped their companionship would be as easy as it had been before she left.

He forced his thoughts away from this course and tried to empty his head. Instead of the void he was looking for, he was suddenly presented with images of himself and his parents when they arrived at this airport over two months ago. Who would have thought that his term of studying abroad would take such a turn? Suddenly, he was assailed by doubts about everything currently going on in his life. He envisioned the disappointment of his parents if he didn’t pass the exams in Holland. There was no denying that he was lagging at his studies. On the other hand, what was he to do? Could he just walk away from everything they had discovered? Lives were at stake!

His stomach contracted painfully at all these thoughts and doubts flying through his mind. As if they had a mind of their own, his legs pushed him up and started to walk. The sudden physical movement helped to quell the tide of dark forebodings rising fast inside his chest. He walked up to a counter and bought a newspaper. Next, he ordered a
latte macchiato
and browsed the news.

When he looked up again, he saw that Flight U26923 had landed. Shortly after, the assigned conveyor belt started to move. The area for passengers was separated by a glass wall that was opaque at most places. He tried to get a glimpse of Rebecca between the other people, but didn’t see her. He was still trying to see through a narrow band of transparent glass when he felt a knock on his shoulder. When he turned around, Rebecca was standing right behind him. She was carrying an oversized sports bag. Over her other shoulder she’d slung a laptop bag.

“Mr. Gunslinger, I presume?” she said with a wide grin.

Immediately, all the doubts he had been feeling earlier, blew away like a handful of dried leafs in a storm. One look at her face and tumbled hair was enough. With a stab, he realized that he had indeed fallen in love with this Scottish girl. They had gotten to know each other mostly by talking in chat channels in World of Warcraft, but did that matter?

He answered with a grin of his own and said “DING!”

It took her half a second to take in what he meant. Then she embraced him and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Gratz on reaching level seventy! When did it happen?”

She made no move to break away, so he held her like that for a few seconds. She reached a little over his shoulders. The smell of her hair was delicious. Making use of the opportunity, he kissed her on the top of her head.

“Right before I left to catch the train. I think it’s really cool!”

She stepped back and held out her luggage to him. “If you’re level seventy, you’re certainly strong enough to carry the bag of a lady.”

He took the sports bag and they walked in the direction of the exit. Rebecca asked him a thousand things about his conversations with Khalid, forcing him to remember nearly everything. When she was satisfied, she started to grill him over the briefing document he and Andy had prepared for the police. By the time they arrived back in Leiden, he had no more answers. Rebecca’s questions weren’t nearly exhausted.

He was relieved by Andy shortly after. As agreed, his Dutch friend was waiting for them in a coffee bar called De Bruine Boon, which was close to the train station.

He had the briefing document with him, and she made him translate it to her word for word. When he was finished, she went back to the killing of Benjamin Natale.

“Look,” she said, producing a sheet of paper out of her computer bag. “I made a drawing on scale of Raynewood Retreat.”

She put the paper on the table and gestured to Andy to hand her the drawing they had found in the newspaper. Now that they were side by side, the similarities were more obvious than ever. Still, she took the time to point them out one by one.

“There’s something else I found on the Internet that’s interesting,” Rebecca said as she carefully folded the paper and put it aside. She reached into her bag again and this time produced a set of prints in a plastic binder.

“In 2008, a presentation was given at the DNI Open Source Conference that’s of interest to us. DNI stands for Director of National Intelligence, by the way. As far as I could determine, it’s a conference of the international intelligence community that’s not held behind closed doors. It was held at the Ronald Reagan Building. The topic was ‘Open Source Challenges.’ Among the speakers were officials from Homeland Security and the CIA.”

“Open source Challenges, like World of Warcraft,” Andy interrupted.

She fixed him with a stare. “Exactly.”

She tapped the binder. “One of the speakers was a certain Dr. Dwight Toavs, a professor at the National Defense University, according to the Internet. I was able to find and download the PowerPoint of his presentation. In his speech he warned the audience for the threat of terrorists using World of Warcraft to communicate with each other.”

She removed the prints from the binder and handed them over to Robert. He leafed through them with Andy looking over his shoulder, noting a map of the zone of Ashenvale behind a slide called ‘Decoding the Scenario.’ There were arrows on the map, pointing out the Zoram Strand and the neighboring zone Stonetalon Mountains.

Rebecca leaned over, flipped through the sheets, and asked them to read the one she pointed out. They obliged:

A simple little conversation in a small corner of a ‘digital kingdom.’ One of a million such similar conversations occurring at the same time on message boards and online games across the country.

Next, she asked them to read another part, which appeared to be a transcript of the ‘little conversation’ the former sheet was referring to. Again, Robert read it out loud.

TALON238> Hey War, got your message. What’s up?

WAR_MONGER> Leading a big raiding party next Thursday! I need to activate your Guild. You up for it?

TALON238> Yes, the warriors have been training and are organized. Everyone’s at Level seventy and ready for action.

WAR_MONGER> Good. This is the big one. Lots of XP for everyone! And a ton of mobs to slaughter!

TALON238> That’s what we’ve been waiting for. Where’s the raid?

WAR_MONGER> A fun little romp through StoneTalon Mountains. You know the place?

TALON238> Sure, we scouted the area last year in a party, but left because the White Keep was too strong.

WAR_MONGER> Yes, but this time I want to hit the Keep! We’ll take down the Master Mage and his little Gnome. PvP baby!

TALON238> Wow! To take on that Instance, you must have acquired the Dragon Fire spell?

WAR_MONGER> Yes. Last week. In my Inventory and ready to cast. But I need tanks and DPS’s to support the raid and clear the guards.