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After Hours-Long DDoS Attack, Blizzard Restores Access to 'Diablo IV', 'World of Warcraft' (engadget.com) 54

Posted by EditorDavid from the return-from-darkness dept.
Blizzard's Battle.net online service was the target of an apparent DDoS attack, "since at least the early hours of Sunday morning," reports Engadget, "making it difficult, if not impossible, to play Diablo IV, World of Warcraft and other Blizzard titles." It was just 20 minutes ago that they tweeted that the DDOS attacks "have ended."

Engadget notes Blizzard's customer support account had tweeted at 10:24AM EST, "We continue to actively monitor an ongoing DDoS attack which is affecting latency/connections to our games." When players launched Battle.net on PC, a notification warned "We are currently experiencing a DDoS attack, which may result in high latency and disconnections for some players..."

On Reddit, some players reported they hadn't been able to play Blizzard's latest game for at least 10 to 12 hours.

Engadget predicts, "At the very least, you can bet this incident will likely renew calls for Blizzard to add an offline mode to Diablo IV."
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After Hours-Long DDoS Attack, Blizzard Restores Access to 'Diablo IV', 'World of Warcraft' More

After Hours-Long DDoS Attack, Blizzard Restores Access to 'Diablo IV', 'World of Warcraft'

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  • Oh dear (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @01:58PM (#63631250)

    People might have to revisit games from 15 years ago and older that worked without internet, didn't nickel and dime you with microtransactions, didn't require graphics cards that cost twice the price of an entire computer of that era, and were just as good as today's game. Really, that was a thing, honest!

  • Albeit the offline mode would be what players most want, Blizzard will not cede control of their games to its paid customers. They have zero concept left of players.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cats-paw ( 34890 )

      you have to vote with your wallet or your vote doesn't count.

      what Blizzard has done is create games that are good enough that disruptions like this will incur complaining but no real reaction.

      Just look at the sales numbes for D4 if you don't believe me.

      • I'm not one of those sales, and I won't be until Blizzard gets around to releasing their combo pack with all the major DLC included on an offline game card like they did with D3 and the Switch [polygon.com].

  • Sadly, this is what was choosen by the public.. (Score:3)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Sunday June 25, 2023 @02:20PM (#63631294)

    There are plenty diablo like games that don't require online play and such, but probably due lack of a decent technology targeted education, people choose to rent a game.

    • The reason to engage in a game is to purchase a block of entertainment. Lots of games from back in the day only delivered at less than an hour of play per dollar spent. Owning it didn't improve the value proposition. For a great many users the Diablo games have been some of the greatest values of all time. This isn't an uneducated choice. It's a very smart one.

      • Duration of entertainment isn't what's being discussed here. It's whether or not that duration is available for us to enjoy at our leisure post purchase.

        For those affected by TFA, the answer to that was "No it's not." Which means their duration was effectively 0:00 despite having paid for it. You may not care about paying for entertainment and then having that entertainment stolen away from you without compensation, but others do.

        INB4 "It's not stolen": Funny, that argument is always rejected by them wh

        • If you are proposing not to talk about duration of entertainment, why are you evaluating it against a specific block if time? Briefly it was unavailable. If you say the value stopped for some hours, you also must say it started again.

          If you insist on it, the honest way to evaluate what you think you are owed would be: hours unavailable / total hours * purchase price.

          Even now what you are owed would be pennies.

        • We're talking about a 12-hour window of time that it was unavailable. It's not like they dumped the login servers and shut the whole thing down permanently. Let's get some perspective.

          No, it's not ideal that they force you into a online login for a game that a whole lot of people are playing on their own with the multiplayer interaction limited to some random walking through their fights every once in a while. But it is what it is - if you don't like the tradeoff, then don't give them your money.

          But you

          • It's not like they dumped the login servers and shut the whole thing down permanently. Let's get some perspective.

            No server lasts forever. It's only a matter of time before it's down permanently. Things are far easier to argue about when what the public stands to loose is still accessible.

            But it is what it is - if you don't like the tradeoff, then don't give them your money.

            I haven't.

            But you also don't have to be a smug judgemental asshole

            And you don't have to be a holier-than-thou asshole that claims to represent society's interests because you enjoy beating down on others with a different opinion than your own. If anything, I'm arguing for other's continued access to something that they purchased with their own hard earned money. You however are arguing

      • I disagree with how the metric of hours/$ is calculated. Replayability is relavent, but companies just slow gameplay down to increase 'hours of content'. "Game seems short... put mazes between towns, decrease walk speed, make them slay 100 mobs instead of 50, and add a skin that unlocks when the player has walked 5000miles"

        Those things make the game less replayable. Diablo seasons kill the game for me too. I don't want to roll new characters; leveling is just burreacracy.

    • Name them.

  • I'm not a gamer and don't generally follow gaming issues, but why would someone want to DoS Blizzard, or another similar company? I didn't see any mention or ransom/extortion, so would there be some point other than being a dick?

    • Someone probably was beaten by a lesser opponent and instead of sucking it up they disrupt the game for everyone. Even better if they were beaten by a girl.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 )

      Some people just enjoy watching the world burn... or at least making other people unhappy. A few years ago, some Grinch DDOSed Xbox Live over the Christmas Holiday.

    • Plenty of folks have an axe to grind with Blizzard.

    • I'm not a gamer and don't generally follow gaming issues, but why would someone want to DoS Blizzard, or another similar company?

      The game industry has been stealing PC games since 1997, beginning with ultima online. When you network two or more computers together they become a single computer, so because software is licensed, you can start stealing files out of computer games, operating systems and applications and holding them hostage on the other side of the internet.

      It's called the mainframe model of computing, so when everyone got modens in the mid 90's game companies started rebranding their PC games "MMO's" in order to confus

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Saffaya ( 702234 )

        The removal of player-run servers for games that don't require persistence, such as FPS, is despicable and I agree with you.
        However, your diatribe against MMO, ie. games that require persistence, is unfounded and getting stale. I suggest you educate yourself about computer game history:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        MMO are just graphical upgrades of MUD, and those were made in the 70s.

        • The removal of player-run servers for games that don't require persistence, such as FPS, is despicable and I agree with you.
          However, your diatribe against MMO, ie. games that require persistence, is unfounded and getting stale. I suggest you educate yourself about computer game history:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          MMO are just graphical upgrades of MUD, and those were made in the 70s.

          Dude go listen to ultima onlines post mortem, MMO's DID kill the traditional PC game with dedicated servers and level editors, note that as soon as ultima online became a success that was the final death of ultima as a local application, everyone at the time was expecting ultima 9/10/11 to eventually get what quake, descent had - aka the ability to host your own multiplayer games with friends, mmos were just a rebranding I'm sorry to tell you, you were fooled, yes "Muds" existed in the 90's but you're not g

        • "However, your diatribe against MMO"

          Not a diatribe, here it from the ultima online devs themselves, EA and the ENTIRE INDUSTRY WOKE UP to the fact they could now make every game a client-server app, aka EA was expecting to give us ultima 10/11/12 with dedicated servers and level editors to be parity with quake and descent and warcraft 2 at the time and ultima online blew all that up and publishers worldwide went over their RPG's they had in development that would have had dedicated servers and level editors

      • It's not 'stealing' if it's in the terms and conditions that you accepted when you installed the game. They are not obligated to run their games the way you would like. It's their software, not yours.

        • It's not 'stealing' if it's in the terms and conditions that you accepted when you installed the game. They are not obligated to run their games the way you would like. It's their software, not yours.

          There's no point in speaking for someone who wants to pay more money and get less games, as a consumer idiot, if you are paying for a videogame then its in your own natural interest to pay less money and get more game and own the game. You're a moron at being a consumer.

    • DDoS a service the size of Battlenet would be very expensive. My guess is Blizzard are lying and it's just a technical fuckup they don't want to admit to. Calling it DDoS to deflect customer irritation onto some unknowable third party hacker would be a very typical corporate reaction. The Australian government did this when they made a broken online census that couldnt handle the load. It was easier to blame hackers than admit to incompetence.

      • Absolutely! There is no way Battlenet wasn't built this time round with counter measures to DDOS. Clearly they are simply lying and instead they had an internal fault.

    • They probably had wagered mafia money on ranked PvP, and this was a easy way to steal some wins they didn't deserve.

    • Teenage virgin boys with acne, anger issues, an online beef with another nerd and enough script kiddie skills to make a dick out themselves. Mommie is too busy shagging the milkman to care and didn't restrict the wifi password. The kid behind it probably doesn't know how the Internet works from the server admin side and will probably be caught quite easily. They will get a nice surprise when they find out that their VPN provider doesn't really want to be associated with cyber crime and hands all the logs

  • then as the provider of that licensed service you owe me compensation for failing to provide the service. You can deduct it from the billable hours.

    • Hours offline / total hours * purchase price

      It's asymptotic, of course, but the longer you wait, the closer to zero it'll get.

      • Hours offline / declared "hours of gameplay". Doesn't matter if I only ever use the first meter of it, a tape measure still has to have all 3 meters it was advertised with. If it doesn't someone's in trouble.

    • You'll need to read the terms and conditions next time. They don't owe you anything.

      • By replying to my post you have agreed to my EULA which states that you have to give me all of your money.

        Oh wait that doesn't work, because contract law is pretty clear on what constitutes a valid contract.

  • Online only playing started with Diablo 3 and never went offline play, so you can forget about them changing Diablo 4 to offline play. Too many other games now require online only play including POE then we get to Steam games....online ONLY they them !!!
  • Sympathizing with Blizzard for a sec (ducks), they want to validate ownership, but this -constant- connection thing is a beast to uphold. Why not have an offline mode with validation checks every, say, 15 mins? As opposed to the several packet exchanges every second, this would require minuscule bandwidth.

    I loved the days of media in / play game for infinity, but I think unfortunately those days are over.
  • Anyone who is stupid enough to spend $80 US on a software program where the main objective is to click mouse 1 deserves any upset that comes.
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