World of Warcraft brought down by DDoS attack as the latest expansion launches

By Will Fulton November 14, 2014

world warcraft brought ddos attack expansion launch of warlords draenor — Image used with permission by copyright holder

World of Warcraft‘s servers were hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack at the launch of its latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor, Blizzard confirms. At time of this writing the servers are down for maintenance as they recover from the attack.

Coinciding with the North American launch of Warlords of Draenor on November 13, Blizzard announced that its servers were hit by a DDoS attack that caused latency, disconnects, and log-in problems. The studio responded by lowering the maximum number of players in each realm. As of 8am ET on November 14, all North American servers have been down for maintenance. According to the developer, servers should be back online by the afternoon.

Related: Celebrate 10 years in Azeroth with Blizzard’s World of Warcraft documentary

Blizzard is no stranger to launch day difficulties for its games. Diablo III players experienced connection problems in the immediate aftermath of its release while the servers were bombarded with players. This latest incident is confirmed to be a deliberate attack on the servers, however, in addition to the expected increased player load.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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