Wow, someone called it.

[Yukiba]

Apparently the server issues are from a DDoS attack. Couple days ago someone said this might be the case and they were right. Just curious if anyone knows how you combat a massive quantity of computers from attacking your game? This is only my second MMO (FFXI was my first) and I've never seen this happen before.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...c98757b05b88f3

[Yukiba]

Also curious what someone or a company has to gain by flooding a games servers? Surely its not just competition attacking other peoples games right?

[Tupsi]

When XI got DDoS'd it was by Korea due to political unrest in the region numerous years ago. In that regard it was just a cyber attack (since starting a war would have been silly because Korea would have been nuked off the face of earth by the US.) What SE did to fix that was block the specific region it was coming from, which did hurt the people not takin part in the DDoS but it immediately stopped them.

They may not do that here if it's concentrated to one specific region, but the fact it's only NA/EU says it's likely someone who got caught and banned recently or could even be the RMT retaliating, since NA/EU has the highest RMT problems.

[Edeline]

Also curious what someone or a company has to gain by flooding a games servers? Surely its not just competition attacking other peoples games right?

Some DDoS are just to prove their point against big companies. Some DDoS are just to blackmail companies into paying them to stop (doubt anyone does it anyway) and they just keep going until they get tired. DDoSing is expensive as you need too many resources to flood their games. The longer it takes, the more they're spending while waiting to get a "ransom". Then I guess there are people who do it for the lulz. Who knows.

[Shneibel]

this is not the first time the game had been DDoS

[Camalott]

Humorously enough, I'm actually studying for my CCNA Security cert because I was tired of not knowing how to defend my network at an infrastructure level.

Not that I was being attacked. I was just tired of not knowing. I'm strange like that.

Anyway, they'll figure it out. Having been a network administrator for 15 years I have realized one thing: there are some really smart people out there. Unfortunately, some of those people use their powers for evil.

[Atomnium]

Also curious what someone or a company has to gain by flooding a games servers? Surely its not just competition attacking other peoples games right?

You know, there is a lot of perversion among humanity... some people just live to secretly (or not) make someone/something suffering in order to get a lot of pleasure from these actions, it's a basic sadistic matter. No need to find an answer sometime, the devil exist it's burried inside of the hearts of some people.

[Saccharin]

Apparently the server issues are from a DDoS attack. Couple days ago someone said this might be the case and they were right. Just curious if anyone knows how you combat a massive quantity of computers from attacking your game? This is only my second MMO (FFXI was my first) and I've never seen this happen before.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...c98757b05b88f3

There's nothing you personally can do. SE can take measures to reduce it but can't stop it.

Also curious what someone or a company has to gain by flooding a games servers? Surely its not just competition attacking other peoples games right?

It's been quite common lately to attack MMOs (and MOBAS). League of Legends not that long ago and Trion suffered one when they launched ArcheAge and Blizzard had one when they launched their expansion last weekend. It's been due for SE really since everyone else has been hit.

[Sylve]

this is not the first time the game had been DDoS

Its becoming quite common lately, Blizzard has had DDOS attacks on its WoW servers regularly since Warlords of Draenor released.

People here just need to stop freaking out that SE is somehow making their lives miserable on purpose.

Tip for all, assume its a DDOS attack until told otherwise. You'll be much less angry at everything.

[Yukiba]

Thanks for the answers everyone. Didn't even know such things happened. This MMO is the first MMO that I started regularly visiting forums and the game website so I was a little surprised to find out these attacks happen.