When it comes to massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft, unpredictability comes with the territory. When you have that many people playing, you never know what someone’s going to do next.

Some hackers recently proved this with a bit of chaos. They unleashed some sort of mass death hack that saw thousands of players’ characters in multiple realms drop dead inexplicably. Blizzard fixed the issue within a few hours, but by then, many had fallen, and plenty of new YouTube videos had been uploaded to show the carnage.

Check out some of the videos below, as well as statements from both Blizzard and one of the hackers claiming responsibility for this…event.

Here’s what Blizzard had to say:

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.

Someone named Jadd on the hacker site Ownedcore, who claims to be one of the hackers who pulled the virtual genocide, had this to say:

“We didn’t do any permanent damage. 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 (4 hours of obvious use is sad).

It’s not like I added 20000000 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.

We hope you find it as funny as we do!”

What are your thoughts, WoW‘ers? An amusing little prank, or unacceptable?

Videos

[Source: NBC News]