Millions Mourn After Massacre Leaves City Littered with (Virtual) Dead

"Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities," wrote a representative going by the name of Nethaera. This October, a serial hacker laid waste to World of Warcraft (WoW),  unleashing a deadly "significant hack". This virtual genocide left thousands of skeletons littering the realm of Azeroth. Perhaps stranger still was the fact that mainstream news organizations from the BBC to the Huffington Post breathlessly reported the events. As we move towards an increasingly virtual existence we should expect a lot more major virtual news.