World of Warcraft Classic has been a resounding success since its launch. However, that doesn't mean that players had the smoothest experience playing it early on.
Early on, World of Warcraft Classic was plagued by server issues due to a DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service attack. It resulted in users being bumped from the server, and the issues eventually impacted Overwatch players, as well.
After the first few days, the issues subsided, and it's now become clear why. Blizzard has officially revealed that it began working with law enforcement officials immediately in order to try and track the perpetrator of the World of Warcraft DDoS attacks and to put an end to them. Now, the company has announced that a suspect in the DDoS attacks has been arrested and is no longer a threat to the company or its gamers' experiences.
At this time, Blizzard and law enforcement officials haven't shared any further information as to who the suspect was. Initially, a Twitter user took responsibility for the DDoS attacks and promised that they would continue, though the Twitter account has since been suspended. It remains to be seen if the arrested suspect and Twitter user are one and the same, or if the tweets were simply a random internet user trolling gamers and Blizzard as a whole.
This is far from the first experience Blizzard has had with DDoS attacks. Back in 2013, Battle.net and other gaming services were targeted by DDoS attacks. The perpetrator was eventually caught and charged, and has been sentenced to two years in prison for the DDoS attacks. While it ultimately depends upon a number of factors, the suspect in this case may also be looking at significant time in jail.
DDoS attacks are unfortunately common, and something that gamers are often faced with, especially during launch periods. While there's no absolute way to prevent these attacks, it's good to know that law enforcement officials are working on tracking down the offenders and preventing them from doing it again.
World of Warcraft Classic is available now for PC.