Hackers will invariably do anything to get a rise, so to say.  When it comes to hacking games, they want to see chaos erupt by any means necessary, even if it means wiping out hundreds and thousands of players, or even an entire city, for that matter.  Yesterday, several hackers in the guise of Level 1 World of Warcraft characters killed off everyone – players and NPCs included – in Stormwind and Ogrimmar.  Other cities, such as Draenor, Ragnaros, Tarren Mill and Twisting Nether were also affected by the exploit, but notably, these hackers committed WoW genocide in the first two locations mentioned above.  Why they did this except to satisfy their desire for some perverse fun, we do not know.

Fortunately, a hotfix was implemented by the folks at Blizzard, who have assured gamers that everything should be back to normal in Azeroth.  In an official statement made on the Battle.net forums, Blizzard allayed concerns, saying that “we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation.”  Anyone who knows any additional information related to the exploit is encouraged to email hacks@blizzard.com to share what they know.  For now, Blizzard said that things appear to be okay once more following the hotfix.   But we can’t help but notice the lack of confidence, the lack of a definite answer as to whether a similar exploit could occur once again, or whether the hotfix is permanent or not.  Blizzard has replied to these concerns by saying that the exploit “should not be repeatable.”

Interestingly, there are some Battle.net regulars who believe that the hackers aren’t any strangers to Blizzard.  A member known as Debris said shortly after the fix was announced that the hackers were “the same people who crashed the servers a few weeks ago and have been messing around with the game for quite some time now.”  He added that these may have been the same individuals who stole account details months ago.   So what’s taking Blizzard?  We hope for more decisive action against these no-gooders, even as the problem is seemingly resolved for the meantime.

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