As someone whose best efforts in Hardcore Classic World of Warcraft ended with a retired, but not dead, level 41 Dwarf Hunter, I’ll be the first to admit that Hardcore is amazing, but isn’t for me. For the uninitiated, it works like this: it’s Classic World of Warcraft – warts and all – with one major change: if you die, your character is permanently removed from the server. You can swap them to a non-Hardcore Classic server, but they cannot be resurrected, you cannot run back to your body, and you cannot salvage any of your equipment. It’s all gone the moment your HP reaches 0. It’s nerve-wracking, and Blizzard will not restore your character if you die. It requires knowledge, skill, and making the right calls at the right time.
It’s why OnlyFangs, founded and run by Thomas Chance Morris, AKA Sodapoppin, is so impressive. If you’ve been on Twitch over the last few months, you’ve likely seen World of Warcraft high up on the viewership charts. OnlyFangs has drawn massive crowds since its inception because the guild focuses less on gameplay and more on creating stories.
Comprised entirely of streamers, some of whom play WoW and some of whom don’t, the guild is focused on watching dramas unfold and basking in the constant realization that if any of these players makes a mistake and dies? They lose everything, and their progress resets back to square one. And everyone can see you screw up.
Big Personalities, Bigger Stories
There have been a number of stories and small interpersonal dramas, though the one that sticks out to me is the story of Tyler “Tyler1” Steinkamp’s improbable rise to glory. As a neophyte WoW player, he lacked the fundamental knowledge that Classic often asks of you. Despite this, he not only managed to reach level 60 and defeat Sodapoppin in a duel for ownership of the guild, but he went on to successfully off-tank Classic’s first major raid, Molten Core. Tyler1 stocks were riding high, with some believing that he’d continue his meteoric rise to Hardcore WoW glory.
That didn’t happen.
While raid leading Molten Core, Tyler1 and several other players would die to Baron Geddon due to a mix of boss mechanics, poor positioning, and dubious call outs. It was a stunning moment, and one that defines a lot of what makes Hardcore Classic so special. Tyler1’s epic journey was done. His Tauren Warrior Tonkatonk, who he’d spent countless hours leveling, gearing, and preparing for some of the game’s hardest challenges, was wiped from the slate.
All this to say, Hardcore’s propensity for storytelling is rooted in the idea that death has real, measurable consequences in the game. Tyler1’s death (and, by extension, the other players in the raid) was largely a result of his own mistakes and decision-making. Like I mentioned earlier, what makes Hardcore so compelling is that it often functions as a knowledge, skill, and gut check, and a mistake in one can cost you dozens of hours of progress.
Not all deaths are equal
This tense design immediately runs into major problems, though, when discussing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. It’s one thing for the raids and the guild drama to be compelling when people make mistakes, but what do you do when bad actors outside of the game are targeting your guild? On March 22nd, during a run of Classic’s second raid, Blackwing Lair, Blizzard’s servers began to struggle under the weight of a targeted attack. The Race to World First for the newly released retail raid was happening simultaneously, so to be safe OnlyFangs called off their raid.
On March 23rd, the guild picked up where they left off and pulled Ebonroc, the next boss in the raid. At 47%, a player called out, “I just d/c’d.” Morris called for the guild to keep playing, only for him to immediately disconnect while holding threat on the boss. Others chimed in and it quickly became clear they had been the intended targets of the attack.
To their horror, the guild logged back in to find that most of the raid group had been killed while they disconnected. Cumulatively, they had lost thousands of hours of progress, tens of thousands of gold, and hundreds of pieces of gear. Some had back-up characters and contingencies, but what would stop another DDoS from targeting them tomorrow? Or a week from now? With the wind taken out of their sails, Morris ended the raid saying, “I don’t know what this means on the horizon if we’re just not able to play...Long term? I don’t know what this means.”
A day later, he would post on the guild’s Discord that OnlyFangs was over. With targeted attacks attempting to sabotage their play experience, Morris wrote that the only way the guild could continue would be if they received character rollbacks from Blizzard or were promised some sort of DDoS protection, both of which he believed wouldn’t happen. Again, Blizzard makes it clear that Customer Support will not restore a character for any reason. For fans of OnlyFangs and Hardcore, however, this was unacceptable. The guild hadn’t died because of a mistake on their part. Across the game’s subreddit and forums, the cries for a rollback grew louder and louder.
To my complete and total shock, Blizzard agreed. On the 25th they made an official announcement saying that any characters lost to the DDoS attacks would be resurrected and restored. Going forward, characters lost during DDoS attacks would be eligible for restoration. For all intents and purposes, it’s a happy ending to what was otherwise a very frustrating situation.
Customer service for me, not for thee
Still, it does call into question this continuing problem many live-service games seem to have: the idea of a tiered-support system. Online, it’s often referred to as “streamer privilege,” the notion that if something bad happens to a streamer – say, their account is hacked or their play experience is being sabotaged – the developers are heavily incentivized to fix the issue to ensure an optimal play experience immediately.
But what about us, the regular players? While Blizzard promised that all characters affected by the DDoS would be resurrected, it’s clear that this was motivated by negative publicity. There’s a small, but vocal, contingent of players who believe that OnlyFangs should be forced to start again; after all, if this had happened to basically anyone else, there’s very little chance their characters would have been revived.
This is all to say that while I’m glad Blizzard is taking these steps to fix what was their own issue, I’ve become increasingly disenfranchised with the idea that problems only get fixed if they’re visible. It’s not just a WoW issue, and it’s certainly not just a Blizzard issue. Still, it represents a growing problem in online games that, unless you get traction on a Reddit or Twitter post, your problems fall through the cracks and get swept up by mismanaged Customer Service teams that have been gutted or replaced with AI.
I’m thankful Blizzard took this seriously, and I’m hopeful they’ll bolster their DDoS protections. I’m glad that if OnlyFangs does wipe their raid, it will be due to incompetence and not malice for that sweet, sweet schadenfreude. Still, I can only hope that developers realize that their games are more than just their streamers, and that had this happened to anybody else, it still would have been the right decision to make.
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