The concept of mandatory authenticators is not actually a "ridiculous measure". There are other aspects of that kind of requirement that people don't seem to consider or mention, however.

Firstly, this article presents the notion that we should all sympathize with Blizzard and how inconvenienced and overworked they must be as a result of having to constantly work to keep all their millions of paying customers happy. Wait.. millions of customers? And they all pay a regular fee for services rendered? That's a problem?

Secondly, this article and others all reiterate a fact that should be obvious anyway: Blizzard benefits far more from people using authenticators than members do. We save a couple of days of potential down time. Blizzard saves who-knows-how-much on wages and support costs, and can reinvest those resources elsewhere. Both sides are winners, but Blizzard scores more points. If Blizzard is saving all this money, and we're already PAYING them money, why would we be the ones to shoulder the cost of the authenticator?

Third, no one ever mentions all the other horrible and much more inconvenient things that can (and usually do) happen when you allow a keylogger on your PC. Ever log in to your bank accounts on the internet? Check credit card balances? Email? Pay any bills online? All of those things are equally at risk. Do you really think a motivated, malicious individual is going to stop at your WoW account and ignore everything else? "Let's see, credit cards... no... social security number.. no... bank accounts... no.... World of Warcraft! Bingo!" Two or three days of WoW down time is, relatively speaking, nothing.

In conclusion, I think that mandatory authenticators are a reasonable requirement. But considering who benefits/saves more and the fact that the use of an authenticator is a *certain* inconvenience to prevent a *potential* inconvenience leads me believe that Blizzard should provide authenticators to customers free of charge, either packaged in with the game/expansions or online. It should be fairly easy to provide one free authenticator to each account holder and charge for replacements if they're lost or damaged.