Page 0: Page 1: A World of Warcraft Approach to the Human Immune System Page 2: Introduction As we’ve seen in class, many aspects of World of Warcraft can be translated or discussed through other outlets, except biology. I was inspired to do this project by an article published about an infectious disease that was unleashed on the players of WoW. This experiment by Blizzard offered insights into real life epidemics and how people react to such crisis. This gave me inspiration to take it a little further and try to deconstruct WoW to compare it to something biological. My attempt with this presentation is to discuss the human immune system through the aspect of raiding and show the similarities of the two. Page 3: Introduction to the immune system An immune system is a collection of mechanisms within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism's own healthy cells and tissues in order to function properly. Detection is complicated as pathogens adapt and evolve new ways to successfully infect the host organism. To survive this challenge, several mechanisms evolved that recognize and neutralize pathogens. Even simple unicellular organisms such as bacteria possess enzyme systems that protect against viral infections. The immune systems of vertebrates such as humans consist of many types of proteins, cells, organs, and tissues, which interact in an elaborate and dynamic network. Page 4: Introduction to raiding A raid is a type of mission in a video game, where the objective is to use a very large number of people, relative to a normal team size set by the game, to defeat a boss. Usually a boss has enough defenses that it would be impossible to defeat it outside of the designed raid size parameters for the particular boss. For example, a normal team size in a game may be 8 people, but a raid for a particular boss may be up to 40 or more people. A normal team size wouldn't be able to handle the level of damage that the boss can do, therefore it is necessary to have enough people so that the damage dealt by the boss is manageable. This can be done through a large enough group of healers and other damage negation classes. Another benefit of an extraordinary large group of people are stacked buffs, where the damage dealing classes are buffed, through an increase in damage or accuracy, by other classes such that the damage dealt to the boss is enough to kill it. Page 5: Immune System vs. Raiding There are many components of the world of warcraft that are very similar to the components of the immune system. I will start out by showing the analogous components and then follow it up by explaining how it all fits together and the sequence of it. Page 6: Pathogen The pathogen in the immunology sense is basically a foreign intruder. This is obviously comparable to the boss or any enemies within a raid. = Page 7: B cells/Tanks The role of B cells is to tour the environment and seek the pathogen. Once is recognizes the pathogen, it secretes antibodies or signals to guide attack and takes the initial damage from the pathogen. As like the B cells, tanks purpose in a party is to absorb and deflect damage from other party members. = Page 8: Natural Killer Cells/Damage Dealers NK cells are a part of innate immune system and play a major role in defending the host from both tumours and virally infected cells. Damage dealers are analogous to NK cells in the way that they are the major source of attack from the party. = Page 9: Helper T-Cells/Healers, Casters T helper cells play an important role in establishing and maximizing the capabilities of the immune system. They cannot kill pathogens, and without other immune cells they would usually be considered useless against an infection. Healers and casters also play a similar role as Helper T-Cells. Healers, obviously, heal. Casters attack the enemy with spells as well as buff their party. = Page 10: So how does it all fit together? Page 11: This is very rough schematic of the immune system response in terms of WoW Page 12: The first step of the immune system response is the detection of the pathogen. When the B cell detects the pathogen it immediate stops patrol and locks in on its target, drawing in the pathogen to localize the attack. In a raid, the tank’s role is to draw in the enemy and take in as much as the damage as possible. This step is like an initiation to the start of the attack. Page 13: After the battle has begun, other members of the party begin their attacks. The damage dealers continue to attack the enemy while the enemy release its own attack on the tank. Page 14: Meanwhile, the healers and casters are doing their thing from a distance. They cast spells that can do such things as paralyze their enemy for a short period of time as well as other spells that may hinder the abilities of the enemy. Healers heal their party to make sure they are sufficient enough to fight. This is analogous to the immune response in the fact that helper T cells send out signals to recruit additional help and regulate the overall response. Other parts of the immune response are also similar to the actions of casters. For example, mast cells trigger actions like inflammation, an action that suppresses some actions caused by the pathogen. Page 15: Every role is important Every role in a raid and the immune response is important to the whole system. Every one plays in an integral part that will help the success of the system or party. With a loss to one part of the party may lead to either inefficient work or even death. For example, without the presence of a damage dealer, the effectiveness of downing a boss is very low, seeing that there isn’t anything causing major damage. In the case of the immune system, without components like NK cells, you would be left without an efficient attack against the pathogen. Another example is not having a healer around. Healers can play an especially important role in a raid. Without a healer you wouldn’t have sufficient healing of your party, especially to your tank. Without sufficient healing to the tank, your tank would easily falter and die. That would easily lead to the entire party dying. The immune system would be the same way. Without helper T cells, your immune system would be highly deficient. Page 16: Conclusion It was very difficult comparing the two ideas but if you can understand the purposes of all the components, you should be able to understand how every part has a role that will lead to the success of the system. Page 17: