Print
Throughout history, wars and plagues have wiped out entire cities and civilizations, leaving behind nothing but corpses and tears. Strangely enough, the same thing happened yesterday in World of Warcraft when hackers took advantage of an exploit that allowed them to march through various realms, destroying every character they came across, even non-player characters (NPCs).
Thousands of players simply dropped dead, including everyone in Orgrimmar and Stormwind, to name just two of the affected realms. Blizzard later acknowledged the exploit, which it promptly hotfixed, though not in time for those who met their maker unexpectedly.
"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," Blizzard announced in a forum post. "This exploit has already been hotfixed, so it should not be repeatable. It's safe to continue playing and adventuring in major cities and elsewhere in Azeroth.
"As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation. If you have information relating to this incident, please email hacks@blizzard.com. We apologize for the inconvenience some of you experienced as a result of this and appreciate your understanding."
A video on YouTube (embedded above) shows the carnage in hilarious detail (unless you're one of the affected, then you have our deepest sympathies. Honest.), as a character waltzes through Stormwind killing everything in his path. Throughout the video you hear sounds of characters letting out their last gasp of breath before crumpling to the ground.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
Comments are closed on this article
Coldrage
October 15, 2012 at 1:09am
I don't know what's the fuss about all this anyway, dying is only a very minor inconvenience and you could easily fly off or queue for a dungeon or BG to avoid being camped.
To be honest I wish I had experienced that, it's fun to have unintended things happen in the game, anyone remember when warlocks could control Brutallus? Good times :)
Oh and the Troll blood plague incident.
razorpetti37
October 10, 2012 at 11:14am
I find it hilarious and ironic that this story is almost identical to one of my favorite episodes of South Park. Except in South Park, instead of a hacker, it was a guy with no life who played WoW so much, that he had more experience points than even the Blizzard admins.
Penterax
October 11, 2012 at 7:09am
Which goes to show that they don't know anything about MMOGs, because there is an experience cap (a level cap) in almost all of them.
I've seen these games depicted in various TV shows and movies, and they invariably get something wrong about them, or think their laugh is worth being inaccurate. For me, it gives the humor a bit of a sour note, if not outright ruins it.
There are millions of people that play these games, finding someone to fact-check the writing would be simple and relatively inexpensive.
Biceps
October 11, 2012 at 4:01pm
Perhaps they aren't getting things wrong in the shows, but purposefully changing things in order to create tension and humor? That South Park episode is also one of my top 3 favorite episodes of any show, ever. If they had depicted everything exactly the way it actually occurs in WoW, the show wouldn't have been very funny.
My two favorite quotes from that episode were: "How do you kill that which has no life?" and "Mom! Hot Pockets!"
vdragonmpc
October 10, 2012 at 8:52am
LOL thats nothing if you play a BIGpoint game there is no support at all for any hacking. Lose your paid account: Tough luck you must have had an easily guessed password. (They have 'by accident' put your customer number in several easy to swipe places in the game)
Victim of in game hackers? Tough, they have a 'script' that catches it (nope never seen it ban a single cheater EVER) They have also messed with the game so much that now 75% of players are 'botting' accounts to get items for free and the going opinion is that the publisher is double dipping by providing the hacks/bots themselves as they seem to release with the updates.
Im not messing with anymore mmos as the experience is always negative after a while with time invested and the feel that the company will not help you when burned.
PCLinuxguy
October 09, 2012 at 3:09pm
crap like this happen(s) in the pc version of Halo that i played.. ruined the game for me multiplayer wise.
Bullwinkle J Moose
October 08, 2012 at 9:26pm
Just walk around killing everything in sight?
yeah, thats the game I want
Jono
October 08, 2012 at 4:34pm
Characters die all the time in WoW. You don't lose anything but the minute or two it takes to run back to your corpse and respawn, maybe a little durability. To me, if I were in game, it would have been amusing... just not repeatedly. The good thing about Blizzard is these issues are pretty rare and quickly fixed unlike Call of Doody. Where World at War multiplayer is unplayable after the next game is released because of hacking, invincible, flying nazis. Oh fun! ...The article mentions Ogrimmar and Stormwind as servers. I'm not sure if that is correct. Those are ingame cities. I don't think they are servers.
TommM
October 08, 2012 at 3:48pm
This is why I don't play MMO's any longer. Between the bots and the grief players, it's just not worth it.
slibinz
October 09, 2012 at 9:47am
This crap doesn't happen in RIFT. The Devs and GMs there are the best in the business. I've played six MMOs now in the last dozen or so years (and talked/read a ton about the rest) and I'm telling you, if you're missing MMOs, give RIFT a shot, it rocks. I've also played the beta of the new expansion, Storm Legion (out in a month) and I loved it, and even for a beta there were surprisingly few bugs.
wolfing
October 08, 2012 at 1:45pm
that's like me after eating at Taco Bell. You can see the people dropping like flies around me as I walk.
noobstix
October 08, 2012 at 1:40pm
You know, I can't help but be amused by this. Yeah it's a douche reaction but I can't sympathize with those who had their characters just drop and die like that. The only time I played WoW was for a 10-hour trial from when my brother bought the game and then maybe another 5 or so hours on a private server. Couldn't get past the graphics and the tedious quests.
slibinz
October 09, 2012 at 9:50am
The only long-term players still playing WoW are either kids, idiots, or those who can't afford new computers (the WoW engine is from 2006). The rest of us have graduated to better MMOs like RIFT (awesome PvE) and EVE (awesome PvP).
Coldrage
October 15, 2012 at 1:06am
You're obviously an ex long term wow player that quit for whatever reason and now seeks any opportunity to criticize the game, developers and the player base.
Whether you like it or not, the fact is WoW is still the biggest and most successful MMO around, invalidating your point "the rest of us have moved to RIFT".
Had to laugh at that one, lolAlso, the WoW engine is from 2004 actually because that's when it was released.
And Blizzard has made constant improvement to the graphics ever since.What you're saying is you could play WoW just fine on a computer from 2004, you can't, well you could probably play on low settings at 800x600 resolution but is that ideal? Hell no
Just because the engine is old doesn't mean the graphics haven't improved.
Exarkun1138
October 08, 2012 at 12:53pm
Never played WoW, never will, but this is just too funny! Maybe these people will get a life, a REAL life now!!
Bean Bandit
October 08, 2012 at 1:00pm
Lol plz. So your saying that all people that play MMO's have no life?
It's a game like any kind of game. No matter if it's on console or a pc or even a phone a game is a game and it's entertainment. Could say the same about sitting at home watching football or just TV in general.
Maybe you should go back to school and look up what the word means.
Exarkun1138
October 08, 2012 at 1:09pm
Dude, it was a joke. Maybe you need to go back to Kindergarten and learn that word. Sheesh. South Park even made fun of WoW. Man, lighten up!
SilverSurferNHS
October 08, 2012 at 2:03pm
it still was a tad inappropriate, and south park in its self is a joke, you left it as a statement and it read as such
this is an unfortunate case of neglectfully unintentional trolling...
Exarkun1138
October 08, 2012 at 5:14pm
Wow, you people need to chill. Get over yourselves, seriously!
Coldrage
October 15, 2012 at 12:59am
It's fine if you are just kidding but as WoW players we tend to get most of the flak directed in our direction and constantly be called a :
No Life
Fat
Virgin
Fat Virgin
Fat Spotty VirginEtc,,
It gets a bit tedious to read and can only assume most people saying such things are being serious.
Fixedu
October 08, 2012 at 10:57am
Not surprising. I had my Battle.net Account and Diablo III account hacked a couple weeks after Paul reported that Blizzard had a data breach on 08/10/2012. I was notified by blizzard only AFTER the hacker changed the email on the account. All the hassle I went through to get the account back could have been avoided by some notice by the company that they had a data breach, and perhaps reset passwords and security questions. Then, 2 days later, they had the nerve to ban my account for what the hackers did. Good going, Blizzard. My wife's account is still in limbo.
Bean Bandit
October 08, 2012 at 12:57pm
Wow, that sucks dude. I thought there customer service was better then that. Mostly from what I've seen and heard on hacked accounts it's usually quick and almost painless with the exception of stuff like professions if somebody did hack the account and reset your professions. I've heard they won't do that.
slibinz
October 09, 2012 at 9:55am
Sadly, no...Blizzard's customer service has a "ban first, sort out the details later" attitude. In the four years that I played WoW, I saw that same thing happen again and again.
Bean Bandit
October 08, 2012 at 10:49am
Never knew about that one but then again I hardly ever went to forums and read about it.
The video was ok, too short.
Bean Bandit
October 08, 2012 at 10:15am
I couldn't help myself but laugh out loud when I saw people just drop dead. I haven't played wow in a long time and don't ever plan on going back but I'm glad it wasn't me dying. LOL
I wish I could find more people that recorded this cause it's just too funny.
