Hardcore Needs Acknowledgment: Restoring Characters Lost to DDoS Attacks, Blizzard

Regardless of whether you play Retail, Classic, Hardcore, or Season of Discovery, we all share a common ground: our subscription to World of Warcraft. We’re here because this game, in its various forms, offers something we love.

I understand server rollbacks are particularly problematic in Hardcore, where the very nature of the mode makes them deeply disruptive and unfair to those who haven’t experienced losses. However, for the sake of the game’s overall health and longevity, I propose a focused resolution: Blizzard should resurrect characters lost due to confirmed DDoS-related deaths.

This isn’t just about a few players; it’s about our entire community as a whole. The current situation, where players lose characters due to issues beyond their control, projects a negative image of the game in all versions and discourages potential new players. We’re experiencing widespread disconnects, and it’s deeply frustrating to lose hard-earned progress due to technical failures that are out of the control of the subscriber.

Losing characters, representing hours or even days of invested time, is devastating. While I haven’t personally experienced this, I empathize with those who have. Blizzard needs to acknowledge this issue and restore these lost characters.

Whether you like or dislike streamers, they bring attention to our game, attract new players, highlight events, and contribute to our community by revitalizing whatever version they play.

Are others feeling this frustration? Have you lost characters to these DDoS attacks? Share your detailed experience, raise awareness, and urge Blizzard to take decisive action!!

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No. They shouldn’t. You agreed to this type of experience when you created your character on the servers.

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Can’t they just play on a different server now? Those characters aren’t lost. If they’re begging to have their character restored after dying it seems like Hardcore wasn’t a great fit anyway.

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Well actually… they should, and are.

Kaivax

1803 posts

Community Manager

28m

Greetings,

Recently, we have experienced unprecedented distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that impacted many Blizzard game services, including Hardcore realms, with the singular goal of disrupting players’ experiences. As we continue our work to further strengthen the resilience of WoW realms and our rapid response time, we’re taking steps to resurrect player-characters that were lost as a result of these attacks. 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.

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.

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. Blizzard Customer Support cannot assist with issues related to characters who have died on Hardcore realms.

Thank you, as always, for your feedback.

Clay Stone
Associate Production Director, WoW Classic

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I guess Blizzard didn’t agree with you on that one

They totally did.

Last night after seeing their post. I was proud of the choice Blizz made to say F U to the ddos-ers and agree to a mass res. Big :trophy: Win. Thank you to everyone that posted on forums and made your voices heard. Except for the trolls…you guys can suck it. The world has enough chaos and negativity, we don’t need it here as well. Much love to all you lovely crazy WoW players!!! See you in game :smiling_face_with_three_hearts::heart:

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