Mass casualties reported as hackers attack World of Warcraft, Blizzard issues hotfix and conducts ‘thorough investigation’

Hackers massacred thousands of innocent World of Warcraft players when they unleashed "a kill hack" earlier. Cities all over Azeroth were littered with piles of skeletons — both player and NPC characters — after level 1 characters were able to stroll into major cities and decimate the entire population like a plague.

Blizzard appears to have fixed the issue that allowed the hack, but the perpetrators have attempted to "justify" their actions.

"We didn't do any permanent damage," the unknown killer said on a forum (via). "Some people liked it for a new topic of conversation and a funny stream to watch, and some people didn't. The people who didn't should be blaming Blizzard for not fixing it faster (four hours of obvious use is sad).

"It's not like I added 20,000,000 gold to everyone's inventory and broke the economy, but look at the big Chinese gold seller companies who are doing this every day. Now ask yourself who is really ruining the game. It's not us."

"That's my justification," the post concluded.

The perpetrators recorded themselves clearing the End Time dungeon in about three minutes, but decided to nuke cities after discovering the hack was about to get fixed. The result was thousands of deaths and tons of videos and screenshots of the massacres being posted to the internet.

"We had to. The first account ban for using the kill hack was issued around 30 minutes before we started nuking cities. We did so because we knew it was going to be fixed," one of the hackers explained.

Innocent players can now safely log back into World of Warcraft free of fear from these "terrorist"-like attacks. Blizzard has hotfixed the exploit and responded to the situation, assuring players that they are conducting a "thorough investigation".

Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera wrote:

Earlier today, certain realms were affected by an in-game exploit, resulting in the deaths of player characters and non-player characters in some of the major cities. This exploit has already been hotfixed, so it should not be repeatable. It's safe to continue playing and adventuring in major cities and elsewhere in Azeroth.

As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation. If you have information relating to this incident, please email hacks@blizzard.com. We apologize for the inconvenience some of you experienced as a result of this and appreciate your understanding.

Oh, the joys of playing an MMO. What do you think? Did you find the situation funny or would you be pissed if it happened to you?