Battle.net Woes

An unwelcome sight.

Several times this year I have read of issues related to Battle.net and possible DDoS attacks that have made logging in to Blizzard games nearly impossible.  It seems like there has been a new rash of attacks (Battl.net "authentication" issues) that have been causing massive headaches for gamers trying to log into popular games like World of Warcraft  or Hearthstone.  If you're one of the people feeling the heartache of having time off and having your playtime compromised....sorry friend.  I remember those days of frustration from the early days of WoW and waiting in hour long queues to log-in.

I don't really understand the purpose of these attacks.  Is it a group of people with some sort of political motives or are they just bored and decide that they want to mess with others?  Is part of the problem the requirement that you have to be online to play these games?  Unfortunately, mandatory online play has become very typical of gaming and it's something that I would like to see go away.  I'm glad that digital distribution centers like GoG allow users to download games and not require gamers to be online.

But oh, I remember that feeling of massive frustration.  The nerdrage that accompanies being unable to login to your favorite addiction.  I guarantee the Blizzard forums are full of angry posts about their inability to do anything right.  This is something that always got a chuckle out of me--I mean, I do suppose that people who play games like WoW and pay a monthly subscription fee do have some right to feel outraged since they are paying for the right to use the service.  I always felt like the servers were up the vast majority of the time and that Blizzard addressed problems quickly.  It seems like whoever has launched this last set of attacks is going after Battle.net, which controls launching ALL of the Blizzard games, as opposed to individual games.  Sheesh.  All this makes me glad that I'm not playing any Blizzard games at the moment.

If you're one of the affected many, I'm sorry.  Find another game to play for awhile and wait for this nonsense to go away.  The holidays are almost over and most likely the attacks will cease soon.  It's good to take a break from WoW once in awhile and see what you're missing.