Blizzard has had plenty on their hands recently, as they have had to deal with DDoS attacks that have affected World of Warcraft Classic. The attacks caused high latency and disconnections. Blizzard has mostly solved the problem, but is continuing to monitor the situation.
On September 7th, starting around 11AM EST, World of Warcraft Classic players began to experience issues connecting to the game. Blizzard soon confirmed that they were facing DDoS attacks and working hard to get the game running. The same day, a Twitter account named UkDrillas claimed that they were behind the attacks. The motivation behind this person or persons is unknown, although they also claimed to be behind a DDoS attack on Wikipedia just prior to the Blizzard attacks.
By that night, Blizzard managed to stabilize every realm except Rattlegore, which was brought back online soon after. Blizzard continues to monitor the situation, but the biggest connection issues seem to have been fixed. Still, some of the damage was already done.
Several popular streamers were affected by the DDoS attack. Twitch streamer Alinity had a WoW Classic stream planned, but the server shutdown meant that she spent the stream playing with her dog instead. Another streamer, Asmongold, planned to get to the max level in the game, but the DDoS occurred about 3 hours into his stream, preventing him from reaching his goal. It seems like UkDrillas targeted Twitch streamers, naming several in now-deleted tweets and focusing on the servers that they were located on. The reasoning behind the choice of targets – Wikipedia and WoW Classic streamers – is still unclear.
The effects of the DDoS attacks on the WoW Classic servers have been mostly resolved by Blizzard, although Blizzard’s customer support twitter recently said that several Blizzard services continue to be impacted by the DDoS attacks. Until more information becomes available, a lot of how this story will resolve is unclear. Blizzard has not confirmed at this time whether they will pursue legal action against the attacker. UkDrillas has not explained why they chose the targets they did. It is not even clear who UkDrillas is. For now, it seems like much of the story is still a mystery.