Blizzard will have returned to work this morning and found a rather nasty shock. Yesterday a leaked copy of the Alpha version of their MMORPG World of Warcraft made its away around the hacking community and was being freely distributed through IRC channels and hacking websites.

This is of course not the first time Blizzard Alpha/Beta copies have been leaked, Warcraft III suffered a similar fate with a leaked Beta which was subsequently hacked and became playable online through unauthorised servers.

The leak of this Alpha will be of real concern to the development team who have been keeping much of the game under wraps for the last six months or so. The MMORPG market is highly competitive and Blizzard have kept many of the game's unique features away from prying eyes.

Due to the nature of the MMORPG genre the Alpha is pretty useless unless you can connect to a server but that won't stop enthusiastic hackers from getting this version up and running. There has already been talk of making this version playable in some shape or form.

Blizzard always state they have a stringent anti-hacks policy but have been rather lax when cracking down on websites illegally promoting hacking, item trading in violation of the EULA or illegal servers.

Thanks WorldofWar.net

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