Hackers massacre thousands instantly in World of Warcraft

There have been mass deaths in the cities of World of Warcraft. Piles and piles of skeletons littered the floors around the murderers - level 1 characters who killed everything, players and AI characters alike, without lifting a finger.

How did they do that? "A kill hack," explained one of the perpetrators on a forum I tracked down easily but probably shouldn't link to.

"We didn't do any permanent damage," the bringer of death retaliated. "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 posted ended.

"It's not like I added 20,000,000 gold to everyone's inventory and broke the economy..."

Hacker

Videos and screenshots of the massacres recorded by the killers and by onlookers have flooded onto the internet. A couple are embedded below.

The perpetrators recorded themselves clearing the End Time dungeon in around three minutes. They would have tackled tougher raids and dungeons if they discovered the hack was about to be fixed, they explained.

"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.

Blizzard community manager Nethaera posted on the Battle.net forum.

"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," Nethaera explained.

"As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and conducting a thorough investigation."