In case anyone wanted more information on the disease that spread through World of Warcraft, here's the official BBC article about it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4272418.stm
And some experts discussing the practicality of modeling disease in a virtual world:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6951918.stm.
I'm amused the second one is actually in the "Health" section of BBC, rather than "Technology"...
Good thing it doesn't affect people in real life, also. That would be bad news.
That's really interesting. I wonder if the parts of the world hit by it (the ork homeland?) are still avoided by players?
Is everywhere in WoW the realm of one race or another? That would create a big difference from the metaverse's public 'urban' area.
This event, while still well known, occurred quite a while ago and has little effect on the game nowadays (Blizzard, the company who runs the game, hotfixed the bug relatively quickly so I've heard, but I don't know the details there)...but the example still exists, and even recently people have announced the possibility of similar simulations being run to predict the outcomes of actual epidemics....thus creating the further possibility of preventing or mitigating them.
It seems a bit incredulous that such a thing spawned from something like WoW...but who will question meaningful discoveries like that?
As far as division goes, these days the only real division is between Horde and Alliance...basically two different groups of 5 races that are allied with each other. Within each "faction" as they are called, there isn't really a ton of division. Many people on the Alliance hang out in the human city because its a convenient location and historically crowded. However, BETWEEN factions the division is well defined....in MOST ways. Probably the most noticeable and interesting is the fact that you cannot understand what people of the other faction say....it comes out as basically gibberish. In addition, people on different factions cannot group together directly or be in the same instanced dungeon. However, it isn't uncommon to find them cooperating in what ways they can (and in some cases, competing...but it varies).
Back to parallels with Snow Crash, WoW does have the so-called public urban areas (mind, they don't contain nearly as many people as the Street, but still a lot) and off-shoot zones and dungeons and whatnot. People talk, make friends, have arguments, from groups and guilds, trade and sell, and otherwise act a bit like a normal society (with the difference being that it IS still a video game). Heck, there's even a sort of economy with the buying and selling items and such.
Its an interesting thing, and many people might think of such virtual universes as just jacking yourself to a computer for hours on end....when in fact, it is a heck of a lot more complex and interesting to observe (and be a part of :) ).
Just to comment on how truly complex the society within the game, and virtually all MMO's, is, the economy functions much like a real one, and experiences inflation and deflation which can be tracked on the auction house, which is literally like an in game ebay system. Applying for high end guilds is much like applying for real jobs, where you submit a resume, it is reviewed, and then even if you pass with flying colors you start at a low rank and work your way up by accomplishing goals set out by the guild leaders. The physics of moving around are exactly like Snow Crashes, where avatars are passed through and all buildings, sign posts, etc. are not.
There are also three kind of servers to play on which offer very different societal structures. The first is a "roleplaying" server in which characters are encouraged to speak as if they really were the character and truly immerse themselves in the story lines provided. The second is a "normal" server in which characters interact regularly, and fighting between factions is limited to very special areas which you enter only for that purpose. The third is the "pvp" server, which is where I have my experience. Contrary to what the person above said about the two different factions often helping each other out in what ways they can, on a pvp server if I see a member of the opposite faction I will drop what I'm doing and do everything in my power to kill them and/or any number of their friends they decide to bring into my line of sight, and the rules of the server allow one to do such a thing. The societies that form in the games are quite fascinating and much more complex than one might think.
It seems like WOW and games like it are about as close as you can get to a perfect sociological experiment. The idea of modelling disease is one thing, but it seems like it also has endless potential for modelling social interactions. For anyone who thought the Stanford prison experiment (http://www.prisonexp.org/ for those who don't know what I'm talking about) was incredibly interesting but too inhumane, virtual worlds provide the perfect solution. You can put people into any kind of artificial environment you want and see how they react, without putting anyone in physical danger. Of course, it's not exactly the same as doing things in real life - you certainly play differently than you would live - but it seems like the possiblities for learning about human interaction would be amazing.