At approx. 2:20am, the "Corrupted Blood" plague reached IronForge, spreading quickly. It was a minor annoyance for some and instant death for others. Somehow, this disease was brought back from Zul'Gurub, but after almost an hour of constant deaths in and around the bank and auction house, it finally subsided. Our sources say however, that it's unlikely to have been completely eradicated.

Aftermath photos: Mailbox, Auction House & Bridge

Update (Sept 17, 2005): Blizzard is curing the plague by removing its existence from anywhere but the Zul'Gurub instance. A rolling restart of all servers is set for 4am. The Great Azeroth Plague of Sept '05 lasted approx 2 days.

Update (August 22, 2007): Corrupted Blood has resurfaced in the news.

Update (March 23, 2008): Corrupted Blood is back again.

I'm still astonished at the legs on the old Corrupted Blood story (mirrored from original post). The plague that hit IronForge was the most fascinating thing I've witnessed in any MMORPG. This week I was indirectly Slashdotted over the story resurfacing yet again, this time someone has used one of my Flickr'd screenshots on Wikipedia's article of the plague.

Two years ago I'd posted briefly about the accidental plague event in WoW via the Silvermoon Update (semi-defunct but still technically online, I should migrate some of the articles here), along with screenshots which were referenced by the Guardian shortly afterwards.

If I was a more successful journalist, I should have had the foresight to have gotten paid for breaking the story. Ahhh well, me and half a dozen other schmo bloggers I'm sure.