On the Recent WoW DDoS Attacks

Back in March, I covered the news that World of Warcraft’s game servers have recently been under considerably more stress than usual thanks to a series of severe Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. In response to public outcry caused by this widespread server sabotage, Blizzard has elected to break its own self-imposed rules by restoring World of Warcraft Hardcore characters that died as a direct result of DDoS-related game server instability. However, it seems Blizzard may have unintentionally shot itself in the foot because of the timing of its response. Here are my thoughts on this whole situation.

When I say that the timing of the action on Blizzard’s part may have done more harm than good, what I mean is this: It was only after a prominent guild of popular Hardcore WoW livestreamers was negatively affected by these DDoS attacks that Blizzard announced it would help players who have been inconvenienced by said attacks. This could just be an unfortunate coincidence. Blizzard may have been planning to take action before the guild of livestreamers publicized their issues, but hadn’t yet been prepared to say anything publicly. From what I’ve seen recently, though, the general consensus among WoW’s player base is more cynical.

It seems quite a large portion of WoW players (even those who don’t primarily play WoW Classic Hardcore) think it’s more likely that the misfortune of those big-name livestreamers is the only reason Blizzard is doing anything at all in the wake of these DDoS attacks. If the extent of the attacks hadn’t been brought to light by a group of players with large platforms, it’s entirely possible that Blizzard would have just swept this entire kerfuffle under the rug. The more skeptical side of me is inclined to agree with this outlook on the matter.

What also doesn’t help Blizzard’s case is that they’ve publicly clarified they’ll only help players whose Hardcore characters have died as a direct result of these DDoS attacks. That is to say, they’ve specified they won’t help anyone who’s lost Hardcore characters due to smaller-scale and more “normal” issues like in-game bugs, lag spikes, and unrelated server instability. A common sentiment I’ve seen among WoW players recently is along the lines of, “Blizzard games have had official Hardcore servers since Diablo 2 originally came out. Blizzard has never helped Hardcore players like this in the past until these big livestreamers were inconvenienced.”

Allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. Blizzard Entertainment, of all major game developers, should know all too well by now that it’s impossible to please everyone. It’s entirely possible that if Blizzard gives the Hardcore WoW player base an inch, the player base will take a mile, so to speak. Blizzard has found itself in a very tricky situation in which I don’t think there are any entirely “good” solutions. Because of that, it seems the best Blizzard can do is take whatever the least bad course of action happens to be to right the ship.

Is it possible that Blizzard is, in fact, only tangibly addressing recent DDoS attacks at all because of “livestreamer privilege”? Yes. However, I highly doubt there’s anything Blizzard could say or do to convince their community that this isn’t the case, especially considering the timing of their public statement on the matter. I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard is well aware that anything it says or does could result in nothing but Blizzard digging itself deeper into this hole. Blizzard may not plan to say anything more at all, and instead let its actions do the talking.

I just hope Blizzard’s leadership takes the time and effort to really think through its options. Blizzard has said it’s still working on “strengthening the resilience of WoW servers.” Be that as it may, I’m sure there’s only so much Blizzard can do on that front. If there are any potential weak points left in Blizzard’s game servers, no matter how minor they may be, there are bad actors out there who will do everything they can to exploit those weaknesses. Just as the techniques Blizzard can use to secure and protect its servers evolve, so do the methods used to circumvent them.

Take that with a grain of salt, though. I’m not a professional software engineer, and I’ve forgotten most of the cybersecurity material I studied in college ages ago. There may well be quite a bit Blizzard can do to prevent situations like this from plaguing its game servers again. Either way, as I said, I’m sure there are malevolent corners of the Internet that will try to break whatever security measures Blizzard puts in place. That certainly doesn’t mean Blizzard should stop trying to strengthen its game servers against outside attacks, of course.

With all that being said, Blizzard deserves some blame here. Since they’ve thus far staunchly refused to assist Hardcore WoW players who have lost characters because of things like in-game bugs, that raises the question of why Blizzard doesn’t work toward fixing those bugs. Sure, that might upset some of the “no changes” purists who believe “Classic WoW won’t be the same if any of those bugs are fixed,” but that sounds like a price Blizzard should be willing to pay. I guess all we can do is wait and see how this all shakes out.