At Hearthstone , Blizzard experimented with a new idea: A card back was supposed to go viral. And the experiment around the Blood Plague of Hakkar from the old WoW days worked perfectly.
This was the idea: In early February, Blizzard gave a card back to only 200 selected players in Hearthstone. These were mostly journalists and content creators, as it has now been revealed.
If these 200 players equipped the card back and faced someone who did not have it yet, the “virus” could spread, and the opponent would also receive this card back.
How fast did the back spread? In just 24 hours, practically every PvP player in Hearthstone had this card back, as Blizzard has now revealed.
The site Forbes created a graphic showing how incredibly fast the virus spread among the Legend players. After 3 hours, already 80% of the players were running around with this card back.
As Blizzard revealed, the virus infected almost the entire player base within 24 hours.
Where does the virus come from? The card back refers to an event from the early days of WoW. Hakkar, the final boss of the Zul’Gurub raid from 2005, could infect players with a Blood Plague that spread to other players.
It was possible for players to bring this plague from the raid into the “free world” and then infect players in the capitals. For example, in Orgrimmar.
Many veteran WoW players still remember this event as a remarkable incident in an MMORPG.
This is what Blizzard says: In an interview with Forbes , Pat Nagle, the live content designer, discusses the event:
- They had been playing with the idea of bringing the event for about two years
- The toughest decision was how many “patient zeros” to choose and who that should be
- They had already planned that the virus would spread quickly, but were still surprised at how fast it went – almost all players had the card back within a day
- The event was incredibly successful, but they don’t want to promise that they will do something like that again – it needs to fit the theme of the expansion
