World of Warcraft Classic hit by DDoS attacks

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft Classic has been hit by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, leading to unscheduled service downtime.

A DoS attack is when a hacker floods the targeted host or network with traffic until it can’t respond or crashes, making the device or network resource unavailable to legitimate users.

In a post on its forums, Blizzard confirmed the World of Warcraft Classic DDoS attacks began on Saturday. “For several hours today, we’ve repeatedly seen WoW realms targeted and taken offline by the attacker(s),” it said.

“It is our top priority to resolve any issues that prevent players from being able to smoothly play World of Warcraft. However, it is the nature of DDoS attacks that players may experience the game becoming unavailable.”

On Sunday, a tweet from Blizzard’s European customer support account stated the DDoS attacks against network providers it was monitoring had ended, although the problems appear to have persisted in North America.

Shares of Activision Blizzard hit a nine-month high in August following World of Warcraft Classic’s release.

Blizzard will launch a World of Warcraft 15th Anniversary Collector’s Edition on October 8. Priced at $100 (£89.99), it will include 30 days of game time, a ten-inch Ragnaros the Firelord statue, a pin, a mousepad, a set of art prints and a pair of in-game mounts.