World of Warcraft: Orgrimmar and Stormwind temporarily wiped out

Yesterday, an event of apocalyptic proportions hit the realms of Azeroth, as entire cities - players, NPCs and all - were summarily slaughtered by hackers. The entire populations of Stormwind and Orgrimmar were killed, as a number of hackers playing as Level 1 characters proceeded to insta-kill everyone in sight. You can see astonishing footage of the mass slaughter beneath this post.

The hackers were taking advantage of an in-game exploit, which Blizzard has thankfully now hotfixed . Though Stormwind and Orgrimmar fell, and many other cities were assaulted, things now appear to be magically back to normal. But for how long? Well, probably the forseeable future, with Blizzard stating on the World of Warcraft forums that it "should not be repeatable". To be honest, we're slightly disappointed. If you missed out too on what will now surely be known as Wow-aggedon, you can catch up with the video below.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.