Guild Wars 2

Just 3 days ago, SEGA of Japan got DDOS attacked by an unknown group shutting down service for many for PSO2 (or Phantasy Star Online 2). It seems to be coming from the SEA region as many suspect.

Are Anet and us players here at risk here too? Is it an isolated incident or is this team of hackers willing to take down many companies? They may decide to target other games in that region or side of the world too then target the US or EU.

It has happened several times in the past and it is sure to happen several more times in the future. Not much can be done to prevent it from happening to whomever they choose to target.

When a DDOS attack happen it is targeted at a server, Unless GW2 owns its own server then they can directly attack then. As you said above SEGA was attacked, there server they where on was attacked and any one that uses that server will be affected.

Sometime in the future GW2 will go down and I’m sure players will say that GW2 was attacked when in fact the server they where on was attacked and GW2 has no way to protect itself as the same goes to anyone that is on the same server.

Njords.5346:

When a DDOS attack happen it is targeted at a server, Unless GW2 owns its own server then they can directly attack then. As you said above SEGA was attacked, there server they where on was attacked and any one that uses that server will be affected.

Sometime in the future GW2 will go down and I’m sure players will say that GW2 was attacked when in fact the server they where on was attacked and GW2 has no way to protect itself as the same goes to anyone that is on the same server.

GW2 does own their own servers and have been DDoS attacked twice that I can remember.

Was surprised to here they own the servers as most gaming companies eg:- Blizzard WoW rent the servers they are on. So they have no control over how to stop the DDOS attacks.

Cloudflare was hit by the largest DDoS attack in history months ago, making it difficult to play GW2 reliably.

They have been hit before, they will be hit again. It is how it works. They pay a ton of money to try to prevent and minimize the effects as does every other company that depends on the internet for their income. Mostly they win, sometimes they lose and they learn for the next one.

Is it really that much of a big deal?

I may have missed something but as I understand it a DDOS attack is basically overwhelming the server(s) so it crashes. Then the people in charge of maintaining it just need to reboot it and try to find ways to stop them doing it again.

Which means the end result is a bit of down-time for the game. Given that GW2 has very little down time overall and no one is paying a subscription it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal.

Njords.5346:

Was surprised to here they own the servers as most gaming companies eg:- Blizzard WoW rent the servers they are on. So they have no control over how to stop the DDOS attacks.

Actually I’m more surprised to hear companies rent them.

Both my husband and I work for relatively small companies (less than 30 people) whose business is not exclusively online but both own and operate their own servers. I would have thought MMO companies especially would want to have that control over their servers.

Everything that is online-based is always at risk of a DDOS attack.