Jul

Plague has affected human (gnomish, dwarven as well?) society for millenia, but what does that have to do with Azeroth and World of Warcraft? Just hold your horses and your bubons for now while we have a history lesson.

Biblical Plague: the earliest account describing a possible plague epidemic is found in I Samuel 5:6 of the Hebrew Bible. In this account, the Philistines of Ashdod were struck with a plague for the crime of stealing the Ark of the Covenant from the Children of Israel. These events have been dated to approximately the second half of the eleventh century B.C.. Moral of the story? Don’t steal the Ark of the Covenant.

Plague of Justinian: in A.D. 541–542 is the first known pandemic on record, and marks the first firmly recorded pattern of bubonic plague. This outbreak is thought to have originated in Ethiopia or Egypt. The huge city of Constantinople imported massive amounts of grain, mostly from Egypt, to feed its citizens. The grain ships may have been the source of contagion for the city, with massive public granaries nurturing the rat and flea population. Moral of the story? Don’t import grain from Egypt and don’t nurture rat and flea populations in your public granaries.

Black Death: during the mid-14th century, a massive and deadly pandemic, swept through Eurasia, killing approximately one third of the population (according to some estimates) and changing the course of Asian and European history. You all know about this one: it was the bubonic plague, caused by bubons. Moral of the story? Bubons are bad.

Third Pandemic: began in China in 1855, spreading plague to all inhabited continents and ultimately killing more than 12 million people in India and China alone. Casualty patterns indicate that waves of this pandemic may have come from two different sources. The first was primarily bubonic and was carried around the world through ocean-going trade, transporting infected persons, rats, and cargos harboring fleas. The second, more virulent strain was primarily pneumonic in character, with a strong person-to-person contagion. Researchers during the “Third Pandemic” identified plague vectors and the plague bacterium (Yersinia pestis), leading in time to modern treatment methods. Moral of the story? Sometimes lots of people have to die for us to figure out what bubons really are.

We now fastforward to present day Azeroth, where the Center for Disease Control (CDC) alerted us to a recent emergence of a new plague pandemic. The locus of the outbreak was quickly pinpointed to a particular room in Naxxramas, the residence of a Mr. Noth. Not wanting Mr. Noth to become an Azerothian bubon, Renaissance arrived in Naxxramas armed with the latest Streptomycin, Tetracycline, and Doxycycline as well as the most advanced plague containment equipment. Imagine our surprise when Noth and his undead buddies were shown to be immune to our potent antibacterial pharmaceuticals. Simply put, we then fled for our lives.

In the end, we used a simple containment strategy: killing any rodents seen entering or leaving the area as well as quarantining any toon displaying initial symptoms of chills, fever, diarrhea, headaches, and/or swelling of lymph nodes. Pretty soon there were no new hosts available to the bubons inside Mr. Noth, and the gravely ill Mr. Noth just fell over dead by himself. We provided a suitable burial for him, inside an incinerator. Moral of the story? Don’t tell us you have chills, a fever, or diarrhea or else we might throw you in an incinerator.

Renaissance’s New Motto: protecting Azeroth from Ragnaros, Onyxia, Nefarian, and bubons.