Recently, we have experienced unprecedented distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that impacted many Blizzard game services, including Hardcore realms, with the singular goal of disrupting players’ experiences. As we continue our work to further strengthen the resilience of WoW realms and our rapid response time, we’re taking steps to resurrect player-characters that were lost as a result of these attacks. Unlike the many other ways characters can die in Hardcore, DDoS attacks are an intentionally malicious effort made by third-party bad actors, and we believe the severity and results of DDoS attacks specifically warrant a different response.
In the future, Blizzard 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, such as a DDoS attack.
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.
Blizzard Customer Support cannot assist with issues related to characters who have died on Hardcore realms.
Thank you, as always, for your feedback.
Clay Stone Associate Production Director, WoW Classic
That’s good news for reality TV audience but lets wait and see how you will act after it happens again because so far you’ve proven defenseless against these attacks. You’ll eventually aggro a lot of angry customers over preferential treatment.
I’m unaffected (and a hate-watcher of the streamers, lol), but I’m curious about how you handle people who have already deleted their characters or transferred them.
Sigh… I dont get this community any more, people just love to complain on Blizzard’s every move. For once the classic team made a decision on an ongoing issue that was badly needed to be addressed, not because of “the Onlyfangs wipe”, but for the continuity of official Hardcore all together. Since the ddos protection (if there ever was one) have failed so spectacular in the spotlight they need to step in and revive players who died as a result of the world servers going down in this specific ddos wave. They might even continue doing so untill a solid and working ddos protection is in place, stuff like that can take some days-weeks to get going. Give the classic team some credit for being able to act this fast and communicate as transparent as they can in a situation like this. It’s not like they are opening revive appeals…
I am happy that they will revive dead characters due to the DDoS attack but if the streamers weren’t affected Blizzard would do nothing for the ordinary players. Many disconnects have happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. There have been many lag spikes that killed hundreds of characters. What was done about them?
I am wondering if they cannot prevent DDoS attacks (and even if they work out some protection people will find out to circumvent the protection) can the server detect the attack and immediately despawn all hostile mobs and bosses?
It’s how it is, I agree it can seem like “only because of streamer x,y,z died to ddos -they would never done anything like this for me” but let’s be real here unless you stream the game for an audience you and me benefit Blizzard at most with our subscription. Yes there are systems that actively scan and detect malicious connection attempts as ddos and other denial of service flavoured attacks, but as you probably understand this is a really costly and compute intense solution mainly used by organizations like banks, states and so on. But even they can be overrun by traffic. It’s impossible to 100% prevent any internet connected system from ddos, unless it’s completely unplugged from the internet (Yeah, that would be you using denial of service on your own services ). But you sure can mitigate and reduce the negative impact of such attacks and I am sure this is the hot topic for the month within Blizzard. Sometimes your enemies have to check you for you to realise what actions have to be taken.
what a joke , its not the first server dc where ppl lost their stuff. Ohhh only fangs is involved we need to do something … every other player get told “no” …
You don’t seem to understand the difference between Blizzard being targeted with a ddos attack and a simple dc death? There is a huge difference. This might not been the first ddos no but it was the one that “broke the camels back” I get it it sucks losing a character to dc, suspected ddos I’ve lost two that way on Stitches. But finally they are acting to further protect their customers!
What is the procedure to have ones character restore as a … “non-famous-person”, i.e streamers? Is it a server wide rollback, or just for individual characters?
Please elaborate, so that i can get my time investment back!
Ah so it’s okay for thousands to lose their characters in random-beyond-their-control disconnects and/or other situations that happened before but as soon as its a bunch of narcissistic dramafarmers THEN you take action.
“As we continue our work to further strengthen the resilience of WoW realms” - that’s a thoughts & prayers statement if I’ve ever seen one. Do something to protect community events like OnlyFangs and RWF.
You’re saying it’s hard. It’s not. It’s expensive.
There is a difference… random DCs is just tough luck, loosing your character to a DDoS is something else. First of all it’s against TOS and why should you be punished for someone else breaching TOS?
They are taking a stand against this action. There have been hundreds if not thousands of players dying to DDoS attacks the last few days alone piling up several complaints, the live DDoS attack on OF might have been the last straw. That may or may not have caused people who aren’t even directly effected to start complaining too.
What they are saying is that if a death was caused be cause of server DDoS attack you might be eligible for a resurrect, but if you death was caused but simple lag your death is permanent.
Most likely yes. Problem is I’m not talking about random DCs. This attack was not the first time. They’re only taking action now because of certain people.
Do you really think the people that did this will now stop? It’ll only get worse.
It might get worse and it might not, the only thing we know is that blizzard won’t be sitting on their hands in future events, and might do character rollbacks in DDoS cases.
Stuff like this usually end if it doesn’t achieve the desired result or the method of interference change.
Sure, no, definitely not because they have higher viewership even than that of RWF for War Within.
And they never did.
Just by looking at the difficulties average players are experiencing in interacting with customer support, it sure does feel like public personalities are getting service above everyone else.
Someone gets banned, 20 tickets before CS invests time into a review to get him cleared. Some guy with a youtube channel gets impacted in the same way, gets it overturned same evening after posting a video.
Also what’s the difference between spending a week to level up in classic and someone else who had been camping TLPD for weeks on end just to have the corpse drop through terrain and become unlootable? How many times have we seen unwillingness to assist and deliver loot to those players by mail?
They’re only helping OF because of the free advertising and to avoid negative PR on a larger scale so the moment they start policing the server for disruptions it becomes a giant clown show.
There was a server crash on Stitches a long while ago which had massive casualties. Maybe even more than this case here. It was no DDOS attack but it was clearly a blizzard issue of the same magnitude and players didnt get squad. This is preferential treatment of the highest degree.
). But you sure can mitigate and reduce the negative impact of such attacks and I am sure this is the hot topic for the month within Blizzard. Sometimes your enemies have to check you for you to realise what actions have to be taken.