World of Warcraft hackers kill thousands

World of Warcraft hackers became Death, the destroyer of worlds, last weekend when they discovered an exploit allowing level 1 characters to instantly kill any player or NPC in the game. Apocalyptic scenes of corpses littered the streets of Orgrimmar and Stormwind on the afflicted servers, according to Eurogamer.

"We didn't do any permanent damage," one hacker said in a forum Eurogamer elected not to share. "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)."

The hackers not only managed to decimate the player population, but also cleared WoW's End Time dungeon in about three minutes. Blizzard didn't see much to laugh about, though, and soon patched it up.

"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," said a Blizzard community manager. "As with any exploit, we are taking this disruptive action very seriously and [are] conducting a thorough investigation."

Some players grabbed footage of the mass killings, preserving eerie (but, we'll admit, darkly humorous) scenes of lone newbies roaming about the capital cities, fully geared heroes groaning and collapsing before their deceptively lethal gaze.