During the past few days The Elder Scrolls Online players have been reporting issues with server instability. The issues appear to have ramped up during the past 48 hours, causing discussion on social media and forums.
According to developer ZeniMax Online Studios this has been caused by a series of DDoS attacks. The news was confirmed by admin Gina Bruno, who shared the following:
We’d like to briefly explain what’s been going on with the North American server stability lately. In short, we’ve been getting hit with many repeated DDoS attacks (Distributed Denial of Service). When this happens, it floods our service and prevents you from being able to log in, stay connected, or even group properly. Sometimes they only affect a handful of players, and other times they can cause a much greater and widespread impact. Either way, it’s a frustrating situation.
While we do have protection in place (which we obviously can’t discuss publicly), it hasn’t been enough. We’ve been working hard to implement additional security measures to make sure you’re able to log in – and stay logged in – whenever you want to play, and aren’t interrupted. We hope you understand why we’re being somewhat vague and not discussing specifics here. We take this issue very seriously, though, and are working hard to ensure everyone has the best experience possible.
Thank you for your continued support and patience.
The attack has arrived in the middle of a major PvP event for the game called Midyear Mayhem. Many players have reported losing progress during participation, summoning frustration among the playerbase.
It is unclear when the DDoS will subside, but ZeniMax has historically been effective in thwarting attacks.
These attacks are among many in 2017. Earlier in the year DDoS was a huge concern of Ubisoft when it launched For Honor, and we’ve seen seen mega companies such as Blizzard and Square Enix affected on a routine basis.
