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"And the LORD plagued the people, because they made the calf, which Aaron made."
- Exodus 32:35
I know, I know... Two posts in a day. Still, I couldn't help myself. Although I'm not a religious man by nature, recent developments have gotten me thinking about the wrath of God. Assuming that God exists, which is possible, then as our online worlds get more and more complex are we risking His wrath? While yesterday I might have said no, today is a brand new day.
I submit into evidence the recent plague that has seethed into existence in the World of Warcraft. Basically, to sum it up, the developers at Blizzard created a monster who could infect players with a spell that would drain their lives. The spell could spread from player to player, wiping out a party in a very short span of time. It was assumed that the players would either kill the monster and recover, or they would die in that lonely dungeon. They assumed wrong. People started popping up in town infected with an affliction known as "Corrupted Blood". Soon even the non-player characters in town were infected. Players fled the cities, hoping to escape the dawn of this red plague. The game masters tried to quarantine the infected areas to no avail.
If you want, there is some media associated with this story over at Bit-Tech. But it does raise the question, if there is a God, how does he feel about us creating entire universes of our own, populated with pixellated people who worship false idols.
Hell, even if you set God aside in this issue there is still the question of whether online worlds are evolving into viable digital ecosystems. If we start giving digital creatures the ability to reproduce, and the desire to stay alive, how long before they start adapting on their own? I know that it seems like a long way off, but then again, a plague tearing apart virtual citizens without it being planned by its developers seemed pretty far off yesterday...
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