Summary
- Blizzard will restore World of Warcraft Hardcore characters lost in recent DDOS attacks, an unprecedented move for the game.
- Forced disconnects leave players vulnerable for a brief time to prevent unfairly escaping death, but in the case of a DDOS attack, this measure has backfired.
Blizzard has announced that it will restore characters who died in World of Warcraft Hardcore during the recent DDOS attacks against the company.
Unique to Hardcore, death is permanent, and there are measures in place to ensure that you can’t escape it. For instance, if you force quit moments before dying, the game briefly keeps your character on the server, leaving you vulnerable. While that ensures everyone is on a level playing field, thus keeping Hardcore fair, it also means that forced disconnects, as in the case of a DDOS attack, will cause players to lose their characters without warning.
In response, Blizzard assured that it’s “taking steps to resurrect player-characters that were lost as a result of these attacks” and “further strengthen the resilience of WoW realms and [its] rapid response time”.
Our broader stance on character restorations or death appeals has not changed. To be clear, we do not intend to revive characters which have died due to server disconnects, lag spikes, gameplay bugs, or any other reasons.
Typically, Hardcore characters are not resurrected under any circumstances, but Blizzard stressed that “In the future, [it] may elect – at our sole discretion – to revive Hardcore characters that perish in a mass event which we deem inconsistent with the integrity of the game”.
OnlyFangs Might Not Disband After All
The popular Hardcore guild ‘OnlyFangs’, formed by Sodapoppin and comprised of well-known streamers such as Mizkif, announced two days ago that they would be disbanding after falling victim to the recent DDOS attacks. They at first postponed a raid to avoid risking their characters, but unfortunately, they were hit anyway, and the team was unfairly wiped out as they were booted from the server one by one.
OnlyFangs stated that they “don’t feel comfortable dragging people” through the game again just to hit a raid and get DDOS’d, thanking the community for sticking with them as they moved onto greener, hopefully, less laggy pastures. But they also assured that “if we get rollback” or “hear of some solid like DDOS protection”, fans should “ignore” the statement altogether. Blizzard has since announced that it will revive dead characters and improve protection, so perhaps this isn’t the end of OnlyFangs after all.
- Released
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November 23, 2004
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence (online interactions not rated)