Hackers have killed all the virtual characters
in a number of online adventure game World of Warcraft's main cities.
The Hackers appear to have “conjured” a
character with the ability to eliminate scores of other players and those
controlled within the game.
The Game’s creator Blizzard Activision has
appealed for information, but reiterated: "This exploit has already been
hot-fixed, so it should not be repeatable."
More than Ten million subscribers are active
Gamers of World of Warcraft, approximately half of these population are thought
to be from China.
Numbers had fallen down from a high value of Twelve
million in 2010 to Nine million at the start of this year, but have grown
steadily since the release at the end of September of an expansion called the
Mists of Pandaria.
Writing in an online forum, Blizzard affirmed
it stand by claiming that it was taking the action "very seriously".
"Earlier today, a number realms were
affected by an in-game malicious exploit, resulting in the deaths of player
characters and also non-player characters in a few of the major cities,"
wrote a representative known by the alias Nethaera, on Sunday.
Olivia Grace, contributing editor of website WoW Insider, said: "It was a Major
hack”.
"They discovered a method to roll a
level-one [beginner] character, which ran to the major cities.
"We don't know precisely what they did,
but one way or another they were able to kill every single player's character
in that city and every single computer controlled character - and they were
doing this repetitively."
Ms Grace said she believed the identical
hackers had attacked WoW before but not to this degree, with characters being smashed
again after "recreation" as is usual within the confines of the game.
