Earlier today, Blizzard suffered a DDoS attack that provided a bit of disruption to their servers, particularly for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth. While the disruption was minor, it was more than enough to cause problems for the community and servers as a whole.
Players that were online were likely to have been disconnected from the servers, which can prove extremely frustrating and relatively catastrophic depending on what you were doing. If you weren’t too busy, it was likely as easy as just signing back on.
However, if you were unlucky enough to be mid-raid or running a timed Mythic+ dungeon, which plenty of players are doing at the moment with the weekly reset occurring today, the disruption could have proven much, much more drastic.
Blizzard swiftly announced the disruption as a DDoS attack rather than some sort of issue with the servers that had naturally occurred. During this time, communication was disrupted and many chat forms – Battle.net, guild chat, and the like – were unavailable.
Thankfully, the developers were able to get everything under control swiftly. A little more than an hour after the attack had been announced, Blizzard stated that the issues have been resolved, as shown in the tweet below.
As of now, no one has stepped forward to claim any sort of responsibility for the DDoS attack, so it’s unlikely that it had anything to do with current events. Many that were still able to talk during the attack were quick to wonder if it was politically inspired.
Part of the reason behind this thought seems to center around Blizzard recently speaking in favor of the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests that are currently sweeping through the United States. However, given that no one has taken responsibility for the attack, there’s no confirmation or proof of this, and it remains pure speculation.
This is also far from the first time that Blizzard has suffered a DDoS attack, which has often led fans to wonder why the developers aren’t able to properly defend themselves. With attacks coming alarmingly frequently, players are disrupted obnoxiously often.
Either way, the attack was brought under control fast enough, assuming that Blizzard has been successful in fully suppressing it. It’s difficult to tell from the outside looking in if Blizzard stopped the attack or the ones behind the DDoS attempt simply stopped themselves.
With the login and communication issues resolved, players are able to go about their lives as they wish until the next DDoS attack comes along. Hopefully, Blizzard is able to find a way to stop these attacks before they happen rather than being forced to react.
