Overview
- A technical glitch let a dungeon-only damage-over-time debuff escape Brackenhide Hollow and spread through social hubs on the Moon Guard US server, killing multiple players.
- Players filmed the episode in Stormwind, Goldshire and Lion's Pride Inn as the effect propagated by proximity and left dozens of slime-covered corpses in crowded areas.
- Blizzard applied a hotfix reported on July 3 that halted the spread and removed the immediate threat from the live server.
- One unverified player report said the debuff dealt very large per-tick Nature damage that would instantly kill low-level characters, which would explain why vulnerable accounts died quickly.
- Coverage likened the event to the 2005 Corrupted Blood incident and renewed interest in how player behavior, deliberate spreading and rapid developer fixes shape emergent outbreaks and their value for studying contagion dynamics.