A plague carried around the world by travelers, pets and curious teen-agers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers said on Monday.

Luckily, the world involved is an Internet game.

The outbreak of "Corrupted Blood" indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory -- the culture of online gamers.

"It really looked quite a bit like a real disease," Nina Fefferman of Princeton University, who worked on the report with her then-student Eric Lofgren, said in a telephone interview.

So, feel like playing World of Warcraft on PhD research funds? Head over to Princeton. Details here.

• Terran Tech Tree

Interesting stuff.

Kataku has posted a nice article about the single player campaign on Starcraft 2, summarizing the gameplayer video we linked earlier.

Discuss

• Protoss Tech-tree

Looks like the main tree is doing to be fairly identical to that of Starcraft. The Protoss player has three branches, air, robotics and templar. 

• Players will have a choice fo what mentioned to take.
• Between Missions, players will have the oppertunity to buy new upgrades and technology.
• Hero Units will be available.
• Many Old Starcraft 1 Units will be available.

Sounds awesome. Read about it:

• Gamespy Preview
• Gamespot Preview
• Infoceptor SC2 BlizzCon Facts

The game is looking good!

• Gamespot hands On
• IGN Hands On
• Gamespy Hands On

Be sure to read them!

• New Continent: Northrend
• Level Cap Raised to 80.
• Hero Classes
• Siege Weapons for PvP
• New Trade Skill: Inscription, that enhances a player's spells.

Check it out here.

The Death Knight is the first hero class to be announced, though little is known about it. By the looks of things, it'll be an offshoot of the Paladin, though probably not a particularly happy one!

Vivendi Games, parent company of World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, had revenues of 500 million euros ($685.4 million) in the first half of the year, a 69 percent increase over the same period in 2006.

The game now has 9 million subscribers, and its expansion, Burning Crusade was the fastest selling PC Game is history... not bad.

Blizzard has made an official post in regards to why Starcraft 2 will not feature much autocasting as was in War 3:

I have seen a lot of concerns on this board and on other boards about autocast and how this will remove a lot of skill from the game. This would be a really exciting debate, if only we were using it as much as some folks imagine we are. I'm afraid that most of our abilities aren't really appropriate for auto-cast. Here are some examples from the latest build.

Psi Storm: this ability fires with so much authority, uses so much energy and hits your own units if you're not careful. The player MUST choose when to do this. We cannot possibly do it for him. Any decision we would make would certainly be wrong most of the time. Plus if we could figure out a rule set for autocasting Psi-Storm (and I don't see how we could) we would remove way too much skill by putting it in the game.

Force Field: same deal. Position is so important we couldn't possibly choose for you and be smart about it. Plus it would ruin all the fun of using the spell.

Time Bomb: same. We can't make it auto-cast. There is no simple rule that would work. Plus, it would remove a lot of skill of using it at exactly the right moment.

It's an interesting read.

"It is the end of the World... of Warcraft"
"How do you kill that which has no life?"

Well, it is now nominated for an Emmy Award! Thanks Kiayateo!

Discuss

• Karune Starcraft 2 QA

Check it out.

• Starcraft 2 Screenshots
• Starcraft 2 Unit Renders

The game just keeps looking better!