The epidemic began on September 13, 2005, when Blizzard introduced a new raid called Zul’Gurub into the game as part of a new update. Its end boss, Hakkar, could affect players by using a debuff called Corrupted Blood, a disease that damages players over time, this one specifically doing significant damage. The disease could be passed on between any nearby characters, and would kill characters with lower levels in a few seconds, while higher level characters could keep themselves alive. It would disappear as time passed or when the character died. Due to a programming error, players’ pets and minions carried the disease out of the raid.
Non-player characters could contract the disease but were asymptomatic to it and could spread it to others.[2] At least three of the game’s servers were affected. The difficulty in killing Hakkar may have limited the spread of the disease. Discussion forum posters described seeing hundreds of bodies lying in the streets of the towns and cities. Deaths in World of Warcraft are not permanent, as characters are resurrected shortly afterward.[3] However, dying in such a way is disadvantageous to the player’s character and incurs inconvenience.[4]
During the epidemic, normal gameplay was disrupted. Player responses varied but resembled real-world behaviors. Some characters with healing abilities volunteered their services, some lower-level characters who could not help would direct people away from infected areas, some characters would flee to uninfected areas, and some characters attempted to spread the disease to others.[2] Players in the game reacted to the disease as if there was real risk to their well-being.[5] Blizzard Entertainment attempted to institute a voluntary quarantine to stem the disease, but it failed, as some players didn’t take it seriously, while others took advantage of the pandemonium.[2] Despite certain security measures, players overcame them by giving the disease to summonable pets.[6] Blizzard was forced to fix the problem by instituting hard resets of the servers and applying quick fixes.[3]
The major towns and cities were abandoned by the population as panic set in and players rushed to evacuate to the relative safety of the countryside, leaving urban areas filled to the brim with corpses, and the city streets literally white with the bones of the dead.[7]
It is a lie that women have been able to vote since 1920.
White women have been able to vote since 1920. All Native American women couldn’t vote until 1924. All Asian women couldn’t vote until 1952. All Black women couldn’t vote until 1964.
In five years there is probably going to be some big centennial celebration of women’s suffrage. But that will be a whitewashing of history. It will be an event that erases the struggles of non-white women. It will be an event that will try to hide the fact that white feminists heros like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton actively argued against the rights of people of color in order to advance their own goals.
there was a golden age superman comic where someone called a hit out on clark kent, and so a sniper tried to shoot him while he was out having lunch with lois
except he’s fucking superman so the bullets just fell off his chest into his lunch and clark just had to pretend nothing happened and hope lois wouldn’t notice that someone just fucking shot him
the hitman thinks maybe he just missed and gets ready to shoot him again, but then he’s watching through the scope as clark starts to eat the fucking bullets to hide the fucking evidence, acting like everything is totally normal as he noshes down on lead
dude just packs his shit up and leaves town because reporters in this city eat bullets for lunch and he’s not fucking with that no way no how
