By repeatedly trying to log in, the hackers managed to crash the sign-on system and gain access to other players' accounts. Even some Blizzard Entertainment employees lost control of their characters. Mass murder News of the loophole spread quickly and many people exploited the flaw to take over and kill strong characters, or strip them of their most powerful magic items. Precise details of the extent of the massacre are hard to ascertain. It is unclear how the error exactly arose, who exploited it and how many characters have been killed.
Some reports suggest hundreds have been erased.
On one player league, eight out of the top 10 characters were killed off. All lamented the hours of combat in the virtual world that had been lost. Blizzard Entertainment said that it had closed the loophole and pledged to resurrect powerful characters killed off between 19 December and 1 January. Resurrection day is 8 January. The company said the dead heroes would be restored to the level they reached before the software was updated.