A World of Warcraft gamer has been sentenced to jail in the US for carrying out a cyber-attack that interfered with the service in Europe.

Calin Mateias had been accused of flooding Blizzard Entertainment's computer servers with traffic between February and September 2010.

He was said to have carried out the distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault to prevent rivals logging in.

Thousands of players were caught up in the resulting disruption.

The Romanian citizen - who had been extradited to Los Angeles to face the charges - pleaded guilty in February to one count of causing damage to a protected computer.

He has also paid $29,987 (£22,176) to Blizzard to cover the costs it racked up trying to repel the data deluge.

Prosecutors in the case said the then 30-year-old had been motivated by a "juvenile desire" to beat his rivals.

"Mateias, using his in-game avatar, often participated in collaborative events, such as 'raids' where players joined forces to meet game objectives and were rewarded with virtual proceeds or in-game advantages," explained the Department of Justice in a press release.

"[He] became involved in disputes with other players for a variety of reasons, including the division of loot and membership in raid teams."

Mateias - who is said to have used the online alias Dr Mengele, after the Nazi doctor who conducted deadly experiments on prisoners - had also faced charges over his alleged role in an effort to hack and rob California-based computer vendor Ingram Micro.

However, prosecutors dropped the case when Mateias was sentenced to one year in prison over the World of Warcraft affair.

It never stops amazing me how stupid people can behave over a game, things like this are happening more and more. I get that we love our games and would like to be the the player up the top.

People seem to forget there in game worlds and in game lives are not reality and do not in any way reflect the real world.

Lets get back to where it all started... Having fun :-)

Originally Posted by WayneCorp

It never stops amazing me how stupid people can behave over a game, things like this are happening more and more. I get that we love our games and would like to be the the player up the top.

People seem to forget there in game worlds and in game lives are not reality and do not in any way reflect the real world.

Lets get back to where it all started... Having fun :-)

Gaming is life! But I do agree people take some far too seriously