World of Warcraft Classic hardcore characters lost to DDoS attacks may get a rare revive

Blizzard announced on March 24 its intentions to revive some hardcore World of Warcraft Classic characters lost in a recent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a malicious flooding of the game’s servers with request data by outside entities that caused widespread lag and, in some cases, even disconnections.

“Unlike the many other ways characters can die in Hardcore, DDoS attacks are an intentionally malicious effort made by third-party bad actors, and we believe the severity and results of DDoS attacks specifically warrant a different response,” Clay Stone, associate production director for World of Warcraft Classic, said on the game’s official forums.

World of Warcraft Classic got hardcore realms in 2023 as a way of giving players an additional challenge in the form of permadeath. While it’s possible to transfer a dead hardcore character to a normal realm and continue playing there, the draw for many hardcore players is seeing how far they can get in the expansive MMORPG under the constant threat of losing all their hard-earned progress.

“In the future, Blizzard may elect – at our sole discretion – to revive Hardcore characters that perish in a mass event which we deem inconsistent with the integrity of the game, such as a DDoS attack,” Stone added. “Our broader stance on character restorations or death appeals has not changed. To be clear, we do not intend to revive characters which have died due to server disconnects, lag spikes, gameplay bugs, or any other reasons.”

World of Warcraft has been the victim of sustained DDoS attacks for several weeks. Where such interruptions are merely annoying for regular players, any bit of disruption with the game’s servers can be deadly on hardcore realms. OnlyFangs, a World of Warcraft Classic guild led by Twitch personality Chance “Sodapoppin” Morris, experienced this first-hand when they were disconnected during a raid and logged back in to find the entire party wiped. It’s unclear if the DDoS attacks were targeting OnlyFangs specifically, but it’s safe to say its high profile in the community probably had something to do with Blizzard stepping in and showing grace to those affected.

“I’ll ask around and see if things can get fixed, but if this is just how it is then yeah it’s the end,” Sodapoppin said on stream following their guild’s wipe, echoing the rest of the community’s frustration with World of Warcraft Classic’s ongoing security issues. “I’m not gonna have people prepare and get ready just to die to a [disconnnect] when it’s just inevitably gonna happen again.”