Entire cities dead on certain realms

[AdamSavage]

Friend of mine linked me this:

This afternoon, Paris time, something very strange happened on various realms. Argent Dawn's forums have a long thread about it, but to cut a long story short, everyone in Stormwind and Orgrimmar was killed, NPCs included. It's also been happening on Tarren Mill, Ragnaros, Draenor, Twisting Nether, and no doubt other servers.

Of course, rumors abound as to just exactly what happened. Most people point towards it being a hack, and there's some videos out there floating around that give credence to this theory. Has it happened on your realm? What on earth is going on? And what do you think is causing it?

http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/10/07/repor ... in-realms/

[Jelani]

Heres a vid of one. THis may be part of the issue with the restarts XD

Instadeath for all!

[AdamSavage]

Heres a vid of one. THis may be part of the issue with the restarts XD

Instadeath for all!

That's what I was wondering as well, if the two are linked. It's odd they would do a realm restart on a Sunday.

[Chimera]

They probably are linked, i cant imagine restarts happening now opposed to two days from now unless it was something that was imparing peoples ability to play or interact in the game

[Jelani]

I still cant get back on ;_;

[Chimera]

They updated their status, they dont know the problem with the logging in and they dont know an ETA but they'll post a new update around 1:15pm pacific time

[AdamSavage]

I still cant get back on ;_;

12:17 p.m. PDT - We are continuing to work to resolve the connection issues that many players are experiencing while attempting to log in to the game. We do not have an ETA for when this will be resolved but will provide an additional update at approximately 1:15 p.m. PDT.

From one of the comments on the Wow Joystiq link:

This is what I've heard from the other MVPs as well as people close to the developers :

The 'kill' exploit has been known by hackers for a while, on WoW Exploit forums. Blizz banned one of the hackers before fixing it. This ban is what caused the hackers to flip out, and start killing everyone in the cities as 'payback' or something to Blizzard. Devs were called in in the early morning to deal with the exploit.

[Wassa]

More videos of this. It's a hack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLhOb4NjWEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb-1FpPpBRI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoM_sOC7jMA

[Kalliope]

Realms are back up! Yay Blizz for fixing the auth server issue.

[Jelani]

finally got back in!

[Vephriel]

Hilarious video of people searching for the hacker character.
Language warning though, NSFW, etc.
http://www.twitch.tv/sodapoppin/b/334750785

[Kayb]

have the hackers featured in these videos been reported to Blizz yet?

[AdamSavage]

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. 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.

Not trying to nit pick here, but if they knew about this Exploit then why didn't they have something set up to prevent it from being used ? Did they need someone to actually use it, to learn how to prevent it from happening again ?

[Lisaara]

That happened in not just cities but two places...Stormwind and all of Elwynn Forest. XD

[AdamSavage]

That happened in not just cities but two places...Stormwind and all of Elwynn Forest. XD

Someone left a comment on one of the video's. "Next stop, Goldshire on Moon Guard" lol!

[Lisaara]

That happened in not just cities but two places...Stormwind and all of Elwynn Forest. XD

Someone left a comment on one of the video's. "Next stop, Goldshire on Moon Guard" lol!

It already happened. Funniest shit EVER! XD

[Morven]

Not trying to nit pick here, but if they knew about this Exploit then why didn't they have something set up to prevent it from being used ? Did they need someone to actually use it, to learn how to prevent it from happening again ?

Knowing that a bug exists is a long way away from understanding why, or fixing it. Especially since they have to fix it without breaking anything else in the process.

The timing is also bad, what with an expansion being launched which has probably kept the senior developers very busy.

I'm suspecting a fix was already in the works, but they were trying to roll it out in the normal way rather than an emergency update, including a full test cycle to ensure it didn't cause problems. It's possible they could identify any account using the hack and ban them, which they thought would be enough until someone got all disruptive.

It's better for all of us if Blizzard can patch problems without rushing them through — it helps reliability if they get things properly tested before enabling them on live.

[AdamSavage]

I think they used a trial Account to do it, and I'm assuming they where not stupid enough to use the same IP as an real account.

[Lisaara]

Adam, you underestimate the stupidity of the human race. XD

[Sukurachi]

and there I was thinking this thread was about how some Capital Cities are "Dead" since there are only portals to one major city per faction....