AOpen monitors
At this time, the undead Scourge had essentially transformed Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas into the toxic Plaguelands. There were only a few pockets of Alliance resistance forces left. One such group, consisting primarily of high elves, was led by the last of the Sunstrider dynasty: Prince Kael'thas. Kael, an accomplished wizard himself, grew wary of the failing Alliance. The high elves grieved for the loss of their homeland and decided to call themselves blood elves in honor of their fallen people. Yet as they worked to keep the Scourge at bay, they suffered greatly at being cut off from the Sunwell that had empowered them. Desperate to find a cure for his people's racial addiction to magic, Kael did the unthinkable: he embraced his people's Highborne ancestry and joined with Illidan and his naga in hopes of finding a new magical power source upon which to feed. The remaining Alliance commanders condemned the blood elves as traitors and cast them out for good.
Once a week people all over the globe would turn on their televisions to see how far the ping pong ball had travelled in the past week. The television studios would have a large map of Africa on the wall, with an arrow pointing to where the ping ball was on that particular day.
It would be an elegantly simple experiment for the people of planet Earth to perform. For two months, the attention of the world would be focussed on what was happening to a ping pong ball travelling down the Nile river.
The outcome of the great ping pong ball experiment would not change the lives of many persons living on this planet. But perhaps, just perhaps, the experiment itself would help people realize that in some ways the planet Earth is just a small, frail ping pong ball traveling through space.