“No one knows who patient zero was.”

If you stepped into the dwarven capital of Ironforge on September 13, 2005, you would find only bones. Lots of bones. The city, along with every other major population center in World of Warcraft, had been ravaged by a plague that slaughtered players by the thousands, their bleached bones covering every street. This is the beginning of the retelling of one of the most infamous bugs in videogame history, written by Steven Messner in 2019. It’s a surprisingly thrilling read. The TL; DR of the whole issue is that during a specific special event in World of Warcraft featured a big bad boss who actually stole blood off of players to replenish his own health. The fun narrative idea was that players were meant to infect themselves with a virus called Corrupted Blood, to trick the supervillain into getting infected, too. Things worked well except… the virus escaped containment. “The corrupted blood was an effect and the designers forgot to clear it off your pet, so if your pet got despawned…