Posts with tag best-of-wow-insider

January was a busy month for us, but February was still busier. Players were getting deeper into Icecrown CItadel, the Lich King encounter became available, and controversy swirled over who really got the world first.

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Ensidia scores world-first 25-man Lich King kill As expected, Ensidia got the world-first 25-man Lich King kill -- and then a 72-hour ban for the use of saronite bombs. Turns out the bombs were bugging the encounter and rendering the val'kyr spawns a non-issue by causing the outer portion of the Frozen Throne's platform to reassemble. "It is a longstanding tradition for end bosses to be exploited in the most hilariously awful of ways," Alex shrugs.

Debunking another hacked authenticator story An article surfaces on The Consumerist claiming that a hacker removed an authenticator from an account. Robin doubts this assertion can be taken at face value.

Man-in-the-middle attacks circumventing authenticators Account security woes continued with yet another trick by hackers to bypass the layers of security surrounding a WoW account.

How to tell if a GM is whispering you Robin's war against the scammers continues with an instructive piece on how to avoid one of the newer phishing scams that sent players to bogus websites over a fake GM's whisper.

Winter Olympics 2010: Ghostcrawler promised me a moose The "Ghostcrawler promised me a (X)" meme kicked into high gear after an attendee at the Stephen Colbert rally in Vancouver made his presence felt. WoW players (and Blizzard) were amused.

As with last year, our editors have asked us to put together a list of what we considered the year's best stories. As of now, there are 12 days until the end of the year, so we thought it'd be fun to do another end-of-year countdown showcasing a different month each day. We hope you'll enjoy a selection of WoW Insider's best and most insightful, funny, and thoughtful stories from 2010. We also took the liberty of including articles that best captured the zeitgeist of Wrath of the Lich King in its waning arc.

January 2010 wasn't a quiet month for us. Players were just about a month into Icecrown Citadel, and the still-new dungeon finder was keeping even non-raiders thoroughly occupied. Patch 3.3 had been enthusiastically received ("Great patch or greatest patch?" as we asked at the time), but we were seeing the first glimmer of social changes wrought by the dungeon finder and continuing problems with account security.

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Man forced to choose between his wife and his orc Really, this is the sort of philosophical conundrum that might have occupied Aristotle in an earlier age.

Blizzard giving serious consideration to mandatory authenticators The number of hacked characters seemed to peak in late 2009/early 2010, and Blizzard had a few ways to deal with it -- including giving players the option of not actually restoring a hacked character. Alex wrote a counterpoint article with a few observations concerning the sheer scale of the problem.

Beware of WoW Armory phishing scams Robin had spent much of the previous year battling scammers and had no intention of stopping.

Bobby Kotick didn't think Blizzard was worth 7 million in 1996 Oh, how swiftly things change. Though, as commenters pointed out, he may not really have been wrong at the time.

Help! My account has been hacked We received so many complaints about hacking, phishing, and scamming that Robin wrote a straightforward article on how to handle it if you were among the unfortunate victims. In 8 months, Blizzard wound up automating the process.