This is what it’s like in every hardcore version of every game. Diablo, Runescape, PoE, etc.
I don’t really know what people expect, this is what you signed up for.
1 Like
I can get behind the idea of playing hardcore, but in an MMO where disconnects are capable of happening? Lol…
People tend to not be self-aware about their misfortunes up until it actually happens.
3 Likes
Honestly kinda wondered that myself. Like someone could just quit playing if they were sick of it, but it was still the current Twitch “meta” and I wonder if someone on the inside wanted to put an end to that lol.
I don’t blame them, it was really boring to watch and I’ve been finding a bunch of new streamers playing other games elsewhere while these big streamers played Hardcore WoW.
Are you sure? It doesn’t seem like it.
1 Like
Being disconnected will happen naturally too with an mmo. Networks aren’t 100% perfect and they have their exploits and issues. If I’m being honest hardcore isn’t well suited for an mmo imo, or at least wow. Unless they had some kind of system in place to protect players from this kind of thing happening.
I know DDOS is affecting HC but I think it also affected retail servers. Did anyone notice some lags or disconnect? Because I had some lags last night when I was in Undermine.
1 Like
So why does Hardcore get hit with these attacks? Seems like a niche game style that most people wouldn’t care about.
With Hardcore it’s all about the risk. It’s up to the player as to whether it’s worth it or not. That said, I sympathize with anyone losing their progress as a result of these attacks. It sucks. I don’t really think there’s a way for them to address this without turning HC into something it’s not meant to be.
Blizzard absolutely doesn’t want Onlyfangs to die because it generates like 60% of their streaming traffic. It’s the reason WoW has been in the top 10 on twitch for months, and they get tons of youtube media from hardcore. It’s a less popular game mode by total players but hugely disproportionately valuable by social media value.
1 Like
What would be a reasonable policy and ability? Tell me how it’s done.
1 Like
More server bandwidth, more distributed network, geo blocking.
They can’t stop every sophisticated actor but they can make it harder.
1 Like
There’s no such thing as enough server bandwidth to protect against a large scale DDoS attack and a more distributed network won’t do a thing. Geo blocking is useless because the source IP addresses are spoofed.
ETA: Blizzard’s network is already massively distributed:
https://www.netify.ai/resources/applications/blizzard?form=MG0AV3
1 Like
Almost like now would be a good time to not log in
That’s the point, what do you mean by “large scale”. Yes if you have infinite capacity then you can overwhelm anything but most people don’t and can’t pull that off. You’re just assuming everyone has maximum ability and capacity but every roadblock you add blocks the ability of an increasing proportion of people.
It’s not the government of Russia DDOSing Onlyfangs, it’s likely some small scale actor or individual, and you very likely can defeat the ability small scale people through multiple basic measures. The problem more likely is that Blizzard isn’t willing to spend anything beyond the bare minimum to keep the servers up under normal conditions (and they regularly crash when more people than expected log in, also indicating they have no willingness to pay for an ability to deal with spikes in demand).
1 Like
I don’t know how you guys do it. I loved diablo 2 hardcore but in that if you died it only took a couple hours to power level, friends could pick up your gear, and you would be back going. Can’t imagine playing hardcore when it takes weeks to recover
1 Like
Because classic largely isn’t about the endgame, the experience starts at level 1. Raiding is an outlier experience, 99% of characters don’t get to 60. Most people playing it are just seeing how far they can get and trying different classes etc. It actually replicates the playstyle of vanilla even better than 2019 classic which is centered around leveling, and cuts out a lot of the botting/boosting issues.
2 Likes
That would make the problem worse because it could be targeted more easily, if that is indeed their goal.
Without knowing the technical details it’s impossible to say whether Blizzard is doing enough or all that they can. Which infra is being targeted, their network topology, and the kind of data is being flooded, etc. Even if the best defences may have a weak point, and it becomes exponentially more expensive with attack size to defend.
If you can survive a DDoS, you can survive a boss!
It’s trivial to rent a botnet cheap that can generate tens of gigabits/sec of attack traffic “for testing purposes.” Hacktivist groups have full control over these. There are botnets that can generate terabit attacks and they’re also for hire or under the control of hacktivists. These attacks are common – companies like Netscout that track them observe them all the time. It doesn’t take a government actor to generate them. In fact, it almost never is.
Some advanced attacks require very little actual traffic to DDoS the system because they target system resources that can be easily tied up with a little know-how.
Unfortunately, generating effective, large-scale DDoS attacks isn’t rocket science. Blizzard is almost certainly using Microsoft Azure for DDoS protection, and I think they use A10 DDoS mitigation appliances, plus homegrown measures, but sometimes those appliances can be evaded.
1 Like
An interesting topic though.
I wonder if maybe… if a ddos was recognized early, would it be an interesting idea to flag any hardcore account that is online as being immune to character deletion/death penalties just for the time of the ddos event? Any death timestamp is either reversed or denied? allow that character to ressurect once?
Would save them some grief, maybe solidify making HC a public event that is reasonable to run with if these events don’t cause permenant consquences outside.
That said, … May also encourage specific groups to research DDOS’ers, and try and use them to save their characters, but… Hm. Gains outweight the problems?