Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news[1.Local]: Plenty of butter and salt
by Lisa Poisso 
Jan 10th 2010 at 10:00PM
Is it just us, or does it seem a little warm in here? The news was popping here at WoW.com at the tail end of the week, and the reactions in [1.Local] were explosive. In what turned out to be a freaky Friday indeed, WoW.com posted not one but three articles peering behind the scenes at account security concerns. Those of you who like to know how the movie ends before you even take your seat can cut right to the final scene -- but for those who prefer to savor the whole, winding saga over a bucketful of popcorn (with plenty of butter and salt), let's take it from the top.
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Blizzard giving serious consideration to mandatory authenticators It all began on Friday with a post uncovering that Blizzard is giving serious consideration to requiring authenticators on all accounts: "According to our sources, while this policy has not been implemented yet and the details are not finalized, it is a virtually forgone conclusion that it will happen." The comments floodgate opened. Many players didn't want to have to click one more button to log in; others were afraid they'd lose their authenticators. Players in Europe and other locations outside the United States, along with soldiers using APO addresses, reported desperately wanting to use an authenticator but finding that their locations were ineligible for shipping. Still other players were simply irascible. devilsei: They want to make them mandatory? Fine. But they damn well better hand them out for free. Don't give me the iPhone/whatever bull either. I'm not interested in some hyped-up, useless piece of tech that will cost me 100+ to get a free authenticator program. I got hacked recently, and instead of completely restoring my items, they gave me back my gear, along with a good portion of my main's inventory. They gave me 2.5k gold, 70 badges of triumph and 14 frost badges as a way of saying "we're even." Nice, yeah, unless you take into account my bank alt had her entire bags emptied. ... Best part, though? My computer was abso-frackin-lutely clean of viruses and such. I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked. ... Call me crazy, but maybe Blizz fakes these hacks to try and make those who don't have authenticators get one. Hell, it was around Christmas. What better time to make someone completely paranoid about their account? Agony: "Call me crazy, but maybe Blizz fakes these hacks to try and make those who don't have authenticators get one." ...you're joking, right? Right? No? Damn... lay off the meth. Some guilds already require authenticators for all their members. Radioted: Everyone in my guild is probably getting one soon, after our GM got hacked. Meanwhile, seems to me the best thing to do would be to include one in the Cataclysm box, if they feel they can wait that long. If not, they should deduct the credit you the cost in game time. Allison Robert: My guild is considering the same policy. We've had two members hacked recently, and one of them was one of our two off-tanks with the highly specific +Block set needed for Heroic Anub-25 adds, which wound up being a a bit of a problem, as you might expect. If you don't have an authenticator yet, what do you think about the prospect of having them become mandatory? |
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Account restoration woes Next up in the Friday account security trifecta was a story that took readers behind the scenes of Blizzard support. WoW.com learned that Blizzard managers have been instructing account administrators to urge hacking victims to accept "care packages" before bringing up account restoration options. (Jump ahead to our update on how the story was resolved -- or keep reading, and we'll keep the popcorn coming ...) loug1016: That is ridiculous. While I can accept the gold (gladly!) what I want is my character with all of my stuff on it. Mark: Then if you get hacked, decline the offer. They'll restore your stuff. Netherscourge: Blizzard should give restored accounts a free authenticator and tell them that from now on, you will be responsible for your own account security and no further restorations will be provided. Mark: It's a choice. Players can choose the package, or they can choose to wait in queue for a restoration. This isn't slowing down restorations -- if anything, it's speeding them up by getting people who feel like 2500g and some badges will get them back on their feet as well as a full restoration. You write about this like it's a scandal being perpetrated against the players. Hyacin: I think you're missing an important part of this: "Instead, account administrators are being told to give people a "care package" and get them to accept the package in lieu of total account restoration." What that means in corporate terms is "get them to accept it by any means you can, including but not limited to hiding the fact that restoration is still an option if they flat out refuse this package." Similar to how when you call the cable or phone company to cancel, they have the "option" to offer you a term of free or discounted service, but this is an absolute last resort and if they think you are bluffing they won't even mention it, up to and past the point of you actually cancelling. And the revelations continued ... |
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Blizzard billing department flaws exploited The final account security story to hit uncovered lax training in Blizzard's billing department that allows unscrupulous exploiters to game the system for gold and high-value game items. (Again, you may click ahead to the final resolution, or keep reading for more commentary.) Chad: Wow, you guys are really taking the anti-fanboi stance today. Who pissed in your Grape-Nuts? (cutaia): Haha ... When wow.com defends an action by Blizzard, someone always has something to say about that, too. You can't please all the people, all the time ... but you can sure as hell always piss off at least one of 'em. :) Chad: You are correct, sir. Just seems like today they really have it out for Blizzard. I'm not a die-hard fanboi, so I don't really have an issue with it. Just WoW.com *usually* defends every one of Blizzard's decisions, right or wrong. (cutaia): The only issue I see with that theory is that every time wow.com defends a Blizzard action, people come along to accuse them of being too chummy or butt-kissy with Ghostcrawler and friends. In those instances wow.com never fails to say, "Look ... We're obviously not biased. We report on negative things, too." Why then is it taken as Adam Holisky just having a bad day when they DO post about a Blizzard problem? ... Adam Holisky: There's really nothing special about today. Today was just the day we decided to publish this material. It all fits together nicely, and makes a good series of post. We could have published it on Smarch 30th (damn that Smarch weather, for reals). As far as everyone liking me ... Well, whatever I post is going to get 50% negative reaction and 50% positive reaction. Two years of writing here and I've learned that's one of the few truths. Kylenne: You must not work in the corporate world if you think Blizzard management doesn't know this article exists and is not, as we speak, scrambling to have meetings on the subject. There will be a memo by the end of the day, mark my words. Especially considering how large a site wow.com is, and given that this is the third article in 24 hours about account security policy at Blizzard. ... As it turns out, Kylenne had the right idea ... |
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Blizzard reacts with policy changes Like a quest with an unexpected cinematic waiting at the end, the day concluded with fresh developments and a resolution to the entire situation: "WoW.com has learned through sources close to the situation that after our series of posts describing some questionable internal policies at Blizzard concerning account administration and security, as well as the likely introduction of mandatory authenticators, a few of these policies have been changed this evening. First, the abilities of billing representatives to directly roll back characters to previous states has been more or less removed, preventing the onioning exploit we spoke about earlier. ... Second, the care package deal has been sweetened." Briory: It is good to see that they responded so quickly. It really shows that they listen to the community -- and maybe not just the forums. T: Holding Blizzard's feet to the fire through a series of critical blog posts that are, in some respects, embarrassing for the company is not the same as "listening to the customers." Blizzard should be given credit for their fast response, but how many of these changes would have occurred if you personally had complained, or if even you and a thousand other people had complained at the same time? And I'm not asking that rhetorically. We'll never know. What we do know is that WoW.com laid out some very thorough posts that have probably been among the more informative things they've done in quite awhile. Credit is due to Adam Holisky and the staff of WoW.com, who have done a tremendous job. |
Speaking of a tremendous job ...
We couldn't resist leaving you with this zinger of a random e-mail that left most of the WoW.com staff utterly speechless. We've been accused of a lot of things, but we weren't quite sure what to do with this particular missive.
Name: [redacted]
URL:
Subject: enough with the Saronite!
Why do you just care about saronite huh? Its just armor. Didn't you guys play in the burning crusade? That place was full of fel influence. The stuff corrupted beasts and killed people. You fed fel glands to orcs to kill them and cought fel infected fish for making shark poison. Yet as soon as you got there herbalists began picking fel weed and mashing it into pots. I think all the noobs are just people brain damaged from fel weed abuse 60-70 in their potions. I mean any food ate in hellfire peninsula had to be some kind of radioactive.
Umm ... yeah. Radioactive. That's it.
Until next week!
Ha, caughtcha looking! Hey, don't scroll away -- come join the conversation on these and other posts around the WoW.com community. We'll see you around in [1.Local].Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Features, [1.Local], Account Security
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
CallMeIrd Jan 11th 2010 3:42AM
I guess that tracking the gold buyers isn't as easy as it looks? I really doubt that the gold goes straight from a hacked account to the gold buyer's purse, those guys are smarter than that.
Ethan Jan 11th 2010 6:39AM
How do you tell the difference between a level 1 gold seller mailing 10k and a level 1 bank alt mailing 10k for a legitimate purpose?
mel Jan 11th 2010 9:33AM
Gold buyers do get tracked and banned. There was a healer in my guid who bought 10k gold to buy Jet'ze's Bell. A week later he had a 1 week ban.
I can't say with what frequency Blizzard is banning gold buyers, but if it's done by hand you have 2 assume it's a difficult process.
Some sort of software could be developed on the bckend to track gold transaction greater than 1k gold, but even then each case would have to be reviewed to sort out the legitemate transactions.
The problem is much more complicated than it seems.
guyxavier Jan 11th 2010 12:19PM
If anyone played Runescape in the past year (maybe two) you could see a lot of changes in the game due to gold trading. There is a system that in the AH (it's called Grand Exchange) you can only post an item for the price the Grand Exchange generates you (based on the current number of offers and on statistics from the past day). When you trade, you can't give away a large amount of money (3000 coins max, I would say it is kind of 300g in WoW) or an item with a high Grand Exchange value (again, 3000 coins max). So if you want to trade something valuable, the trade has to be "fair": an item with a 50k coins value can be traded from 47k to 53k coins, or an other item with this value.
Before, when you killed another player in the PvP part of the world, all his items dropped and you could take them. Oh and the seller can't give the money in more times. Once you have a unfair trade, you have to wait one day before doing an other. They also made the PvP part a normal PvE place, because gold sellers could go there and get killed by the gold buyer.
Now, you can't buy gold anymore for real money. Accounts don't get banned. But the game is much more boring than ever before. You can't help out a friend with money or items, you can't do PvP.
I stopped playing the day they introduced these changes and looked for a game I would have fun playing... my first WoW character was born.
Sl0th Jan 11th 2010 12:42AM
It all makes perfect sense now. WoW.com is in the pocket of big demon. That's why they constantly run all those anti-Saronite articles with nary a word about the evil of demonic energies. Their fel-empowered handlers can't stand that there are viable, alternative forms of corruption out there.
Arkmoo Jan 11th 2010 1:11AM
this is kind of in relation to oriflames comment.
So im not very familiar with business related things but i have a pretty good understanding of supply and demand and basic things like that, but i was wondering if blizz couldn't just oversaturate the market for a while? ya know to atleast lower the demand for gold wich i know would put a lot of gold sellers out of business and by doing so a lot of hackers as well.
it seems to me that they atempted to do this by implementing the non-tradable badge system, and i think it was a great idea its a good way to ensure that its actually the player doing the work, but there are obviously still gold sellers out there and its not a big surprise considering how much gold is still needed (150g repair's, 5k mount training, mats etc), i'm not saying give every player 10,000 gold and be done with it but maybe just increasing drop rate's and switching things like rep items (korin tor, hodir, wyrmrest acord that kind of thing) to the badge system at least until they can get the millions of people who play this game an authenticator.
i don't know it just seems like blizz would have an easier time controlling gold buyers/hacker (gold backers?) in game rather than outside of it.
Neirin Jan 11th 2010 2:19AM
Unfortunately, the major costs of end game WoW are AH related, and is therefore not something that can be put on a badge system. If the market was simply flooded with gold, then AH prices would skyrocket, and we'd end up with an economic bubble - one that might actually promote the buying of gold as it pops. It would essentially be the price hike we saw after Wrath was released except without the increased average income that came with being higher leveled.
Fpazil Jan 11th 2010 3:23PM
Could you not try to put some limitations around how the gold is traded among toons making it a bit more time consuming and manual for the gold sellers? Limitations that should not severly impact any real players in the game. I am just thinking of most of the times I have traded gold:
1) Emailed to another one of my toons
2) handed it through trade window to friend
3) emailed to friend
So put the limitations on trading gold to only through email to toons on the same account and only manually through trade window to toons on different accounts. That would force the gold trader accounts to be on longer and maybe easier to track. Also, can you say sting operation lol. I suppose you could also force a grace period (time and/or level limit) on a toon being able to trade gold to someone after being created. But not limit them getting gold for those of us still starting level 1 character alts.
I know, hack and strip account, hand gold to lvl1, buy lots of items, email and sell. There are always ways around anything. But being in virtual security, you never have 100% solutions. You just try to make it difficult enough they go somewhere else. You just hope where they go is not worse than where they were.
The above options would not impact my gameplay as a very casual player. But as a very casual player, I am sure there are holes in what I proposed above that I do not see.
BoredRogue Jan 11th 2010 1:51AM
Is kind of sad, this used to be an interesting site to read. Then the old Editor in Chief left, and now its just a web tabloid it seems. *shrug* Pointless, yet you look at it anyways and chuckle.
Stridez Jan 11th 2010 2:13AM
BoredRogue. If you don't enjoy reading this site, you don't have to. If an article doesn't look interesting to you, don't read it! If you're really THAT bored that you enjoy slagging everything the site posts, you could do something else. It's not the only site on the internet, by any means. You could even go outside! I can guarantee you there is something better to do with your time than troll here.
Kindly STFU or GTFO :)
Alex Ziebart Jan 11th 2010 2:25AM
We've had the same Editor in Chief for the last two years.
Neirin Jan 11th 2010 2:25AM
Yes, a tabloid news site that demonstrated it's ability to shape official policy in a way that would make NBC news jealous.
If they really wanted to be a tabloid site they could do an intensive exposé on Ghostcrawler's secret love life (why he REALLY won't give you a pony), and reveal the shocking truth about the hunter gear conspiracy. Not to mention lists of the sexiest CMs.
Actually, there's some real potential there - someone file this away for April fool's day.
Terrant Jan 11th 2010 6:58AM
Web tabloid? Then where's my articles about Jaina Proudmoore's secret pregnancy and Varian Wrynn back in rehab?
Cmidrfti Jan 11th 2010 4:02AM
Regarding the account security and hacking issue, probably covering quitw a bit of the gold selling stuff as well.
Blizz, as stated earlier, obviously have a ton of information on us and our characters and are clearly tacking IP addresses as seen in the recent case of Blizz providing information on a suspected drug dealer.
If we know that Blizz can ban accounts why are they not going one step further and banning IP addresses of known gold sellers? I'm aware that this may not be any kind of permanent solution but surely it woould be a step in the right direction.
Wassie Jan 11th 2010 5:38AM
Actually, simply by spending a few bucks on a prepaid credit card, it wouldn't be hard to go to a known gold sellers site, purchase 1000g, trace all gold and item transactions through a few generations, and suspend all accounts related to them. The banhammer CAN be an effective weapon just by using a little common sense. Kill the high level toons they farm with, (not all the gold sellers hijack accounts but I bet that most of them receive goods from them) and the accounts related to them.
Is it really that hard to see that one person who continually has the 10 primordial saronite's successfully sell every day and what they do with that gold? I'd really like someone to tell me exactly why it's necessary for anyone to accumulate over 100k gold anyway. Or have over 100k in gold transactions over a reasonable time. There isn't imo.
Until Blizz starts nailing not just sellers but buyers of goods illgotten or bought with out of game $$$ the problem will still be there.
Mutak Jan 11th 2010 10:17AM
For some people the AH is the game. Making as much gold as they can is what gives them pleasure in WoW. Putting limits on that is like saying "I don't see a good reason for someone to have more than 1 level 80 character, so they should just freeze all your others when one dings 80." Telling someone else how they should play the game is generally not cool.
As far as how hard it can be to trace the gold...I'm guessing that the sellers are more sophisticated than you think they are. If i were doing it, i'd be routing the gold through hundreds of characters in small (100-500) amounts, in and out of guild banks, etc. I'd have some accounts that were played exactly like a regular account - bank alts and low-level alts, and i'd have characters that did nothing but play the AH - making real purchases and trying to make a profit there with a few money-laundering auctions thrown into the mix. For my slave-wage employees, getting to play one of those accounts would be a "good work" reward.
Gold would be trickling into and out of the regular economy of the servers so regularly that it would be almost impossible for Blizzard to know where my network ended and where the regular players started.
And that's just me thinking about it for 5 minutes. These guys have been at it for years.
Sintraedrien Jan 11th 2010 4:08AM
Alex Ziebart said,
We've had the same Editor in Chief for the last two years.
And a dang good job she's done, too! ;)
Drecin Jan 11th 2010 4:20PM
Well WoW.com....first I want to say that oncemy computers motherboard fried I was forced to take a break from WoW. Hence I took a break from reading your articles. Since I've been back I love reading your articles and the advice and news you give. Once a guildie got hacked there was much talk on how and why people get hacked. I know the basics on what not to click and where not to go online but I know I am vulnerable to getting hacked so I was reading what everyone was saying with vast interest. The very next day I read your 3 articles on security issues at Blizzard and I took that as a smack in the face and bought myself a authenticator. Just waiting for it to come in. I think its a great idea and want to thank you for bringing the news and your insight to the masses
Andrew Jan 16th 2010 4:17PM
Repeating:
Let me see if I got this straight.
wow.com posts an inaccurate article with a blatantly false headline, then advertises a means to exploit the system, and now wow.com tries to claim credit for changes in Blizzard policy?
Yeah, they changed how billing works. Great, thanks to wow.com, people transferred during a compromise have to wait longer. Cheers.
Oh, and what's this? You now half-heartedly amend your previous lie that the care package was an offer, rather than an active attempt to abandon customers, just as people were saying all along?
The articles today were utterly irresponsible. Poorly researched, inflammatory, and outright damaging to players who've been compromised.
Don't break that arm patting yourselves on the back.