Corrupted Blood incident
E273708
The Corrupted Blood incident was an infamous 2005 in-game plague in World of Warcraft that unintentionally spread uncontrollably among players and NPCs, later drawing interest from epidemiologists as a model for real-world disease dynamics.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Corrupted Blood incident canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2495949 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Corrupted Blood incident Context triple: [World of Warcraft, notableEvent, Corrupted Blood incident]
-
A.
Altmark Incident
The Altmark Incident was a 1940 World War II naval confrontation in Norwegian waters, where British forces boarded the German tanker Altmark to free imprisoned Allied sailors, heightening tensions during the early "Phoney War" period.
-
B.
Wikkit Gate
Wikkit Gate is a powerful, universe-encompassing force field and key plot device in Douglas Adams' "Life, the Universe and Everything," central to a scheme to destroy the universe.
-
C.
Calas affair
The Calas affair was an 18th-century French legal case involving the wrongful execution of Protestant merchant Jean Calas, which became a symbol of religious intolerance and judicial injustice and inspired Voltaire’s campaign for civil rights and legal reform.
-
D.
Dung Gate
Dung Gate is one of the main historic entrances in the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, providing access to the area near the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.
-
E.
Memel offensive
The Memel offensive was a major Soviet military campaign in late 1944 aimed at cutting off German Army Group North by advancing through the Baltic region to the city of Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania) during World War II.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Corrupted Blood incident Target entity description: The Corrupted Blood incident was an infamous 2005 in-game plague in World of Warcraft that unintentionally spread uncontrollably among players and NPCs, later drawing interest from epidemiologists as a model for real-world disease dynamics.
-
A.
Altmark Incident
The Altmark Incident was a 1940 World War II naval confrontation in Norwegian waters, where British forces boarded the German tanker Altmark to free imprisoned Allied sailors, heightening tensions during the early "Phoney War" period.
-
B.
Wikkit Gate
Wikkit Gate is a powerful, universe-encompassing force field and key plot device in Douglas Adams' "Life, the Universe and Everything," central to a scheme to destroy the universe.
-
C.
Calas affair
The Calas affair was an 18th-century French legal case involving the wrongful execution of Protestant merchant Jean Calas, which became a symbol of religious intolerance and judicial injustice and inspired Voltaire’s campaign for civil rights and legal reform.
-
D.
Dung Gate
Dung Gate is one of the main historic entrances in the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, providing access to the area near the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.
-
E.
Memel offensive
The Memel offensive was a major Soviet military campaign in late 1944 aimed at cutting off German Army Group North by advancing through the Baltic region to the city of Memel (now Klaipėda, Lithuania) during World War II.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (50)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
World of Warcraft event
ⓘ
in-game event ⓘ virtual epidemic ⓘ |
| affectedEntity |
non-player characters
ⓘ
pets ⓘ player characters ⓘ summoned creatures ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| duration | several days ⓘ |
| endCause |
patch fix by Blizzard Entertainment
ⓘ
server reset ⓘ |
| hasCause |
Corrupted Blood debuff
ⓘ
game design oversight ⓘ |
| hasDeveloper | Blizzard Entertainment ⓘ |
| hasGame | World of Warcraft ⓘ |
| hasOriginBoss | Hakkar the Soulflayer ⓘ |
| hasOriginLocation | Zul'Gurub raid ⓘ |
| hasPublicationAbout | “The Untapped Potential of Virtual Game Worlds to Shed Light on Real World Epidemics” ⓘ |
| hasPublisher | Blizzard Entertainment ⓘ |
| hasResearcher |
Eric Lofgren
ⓘ
Nina H. Fefferman ⓘ |
| mediaCoverage |
mainstream news outlets
ⓘ
scientific press ⓘ |
| notableEffect |
emergent player quarantine behavior
ⓘ
griefing and intentional spreading ⓘ informal safe zones ⓘ mass player character deaths ⓘ panic and avoidance behavior ⓘ server-wide disruption ⓘ spontaneous volunteer healers ⓘ virtual corpses littering cities ⓘ |
| notableFor |
early example of using MMOs for scientific modeling
ⓘ
unintended emergent epidemiological experiment ⓘ |
| notableLocation |
Ironforge
ⓘ
Orgrimmar ⓘ Stormwind City ⓘ major population hubs ⓘ |
| spreadMechanism |
NPC infection persistence
ⓘ
healing and support interactions ⓘ pet recall from raid to city ⓘ player-to-player proximity ⓘ teleportation from raid to cities ⓘ |
| startDate | 2005-09-13 ⓘ |
| studiedBy |
complex systems scientists
ⓘ
epidemiologists ⓘ public health researchers ⓘ |
| usedAsModelFor |
bioterrorism scenarios
ⓘ
human behavioral response to epidemics ⓘ pandemic preparedness ⓘ real-world disease spread ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Corrupted Blood incident Description of subject: The Corrupted Blood incident was an infamous 2005 in-game plague in World of Warcraft that unintentionally spread uncontrollably among players and NPCs, later drawing interest from epidemiologists as a model for real-world disease dynamics.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.