Posts with tag technical-support

Submitting a GM ticket has always been sort of an arcane process -- you're not really sure where your ticket goes, or to who, or what steps have been taken to resolve your particular issue. It's a pain! Thankfully, it's always been a long-term goal of the support department to demystify and improve the support process for players, and Blizzard has unveiled a big new step in that direction: a new support website.

What's so great about it? Well, it collects all lines of communication for support in one place and attempts to provide automated help for your request where applicable, while you wait for a representative. The biggest improvement, though, is that the site lets you track the progress of your support requests. This includes tech support emails, billing inquiries, and yes, GM tickets. You can edit your ticket while it's in the queue, track it, and even update your ticket and place it back in queue after it's been closed if you feel it wasn't addressed properly.

The full text of Blizzard's announcement is after the cut.

A heads-up for our Mac users, although there's a good chance you've already been painfully aware of this if you play on one of the affected systems -- patch 3.3.3 has been causing major issues for some PowerPC and Tiger users, which have (hopefully) been fixed by the mini-patch 3.3.3a.

S4d1K -- 3.3.3 Known Issues for Mac players

We are aware of 2 critical bugs that are affecting users with specific configurations.

#1 PowerPC G4/G5 users get disconnected after login.

#2 Users with a MacBook Pro GeForce 8600M and 10.4.11 crashes after entering the world.

We are very sorry and we are working on these issues and hope to fix them as soon as possible.


UPDATE 5:10pm:
We have a fix for both issues but it will require a client patch. We don't have an ETA for now.

UPDATE 3/24 12:15pm:
We are currently testing a patch. We want to make sure that we do not break the game for another group of people. We are doing everything to release this patch as soon as possible.

source

The patch in question is (we think) 3.3.3a. With the patch, many of the affected users are now reporting that WoW is playable again, but while monitoring the official thread on the issue, it's apparent that a lot of players are still having problems. We had several people drop comments on Adam's earlier post on the mini-patch -- did 3.3.3a work for you?

Just a quick update from from our friends at World of Raids about the current situation regarding circumvented authenticators. It appears there are multiple websites being used for this malware. Be careful of which sites you go to in order to update your addons from; fake website addresses are being used to trick users.

For example, one of the fake sources appears as a "Sponsored Link" right at the top of a Google search. Don't actually visit that site and be sure to warn players asking about addons where to go.


What happens is the fake site will allow you to download a fake copy (did you see fake?) of the WowMatrix AddOn Manager which installs the emcor.dll. This Trojan (Malware.NSPack) can currently be detected by Malware Bytes.

Thanks Kody!

It has been brought to our attention that Blizzard's technical support department is currently handling a security exploit that is, in a limited capacity, circumventing authenticators. Before we get into the details, please do not panic. This does not make authenticators worthless, and it is not yet a widespread problem. Do not remove your authenticator because of this, and do not base your decision on whether or not to buy an authenticator off of this. They are still very useful, and your account is much safer with an authenticator than it is without one.

This is not the only report of this that we've seen, but it is the first time that a Blizzard representative has openly acknowledged that there is something afoot. For a full account of what happened, check the thread on the EU Technical Support forums. To sum up: There is a piece of malware (emcor.dll is what is being reported at the moment) that is being used as a hijacking tool to facilitate Man-in-the-Middle attacks on users.

Kropaclus

After looking into this, it has been escalated, but it is a Man in the Middle attack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-in-the-middle_attack

This is still perpetrated by key loggers, and no method is always 100% secure.

source

To explain in the simplest way possible, instead of data being broadcast directly to Blizzard when trying to log in to your account, that data is being broadcast to a third party via this malware. This includes your authenticator code. Rather than you logging into your account, the hacker on the other end does so. They log into your account, clear out your characters, and move around virtual funds to fulfill orders from players buying gold. This method of circumvention has been theorized since the release of the key fobs, but it has only now started to actually happen.

In the aftermath of one of the biggest patches WoW has ever seen, many realms are still experiencing some technical issues. Talents and items are going missing, world and instance servers are down, and I've heard at least one report of trash mobs in Naxxramas suddenly breaking out in song.

Okay, I might have made that one up. The point still stands: problems exist in the realms right now. Blizzard knows this too, and they've decided to keep their technical support department open today until 7 PM Pacific time (10 PM Eastern). Usually they're only open on weekdays. Support will be available over the phone, through email, and in the tech support forums, as usual. Eyonix has posted a list of the methods to contact tech support, so check it out if you're having problems.

The opening announcement on the login screen has just let us know that there is urgent maintenance being performed on the authentication servers. The maintenance will continue until 1:00 p.m. PDT / 4:00 p.m. EDT.

During this time you may or may not be able to log into the game. Pretty much the luck of the draw and beyond your control.

Account management and posting on the forums will be offline during this time as well, so the troll's trolling will have to terrifically terminate 'till temporally soon.

We'll update this post when things are back to normal, or if there are additional issues.

Vaneras over on the WoW EU forums put up a post today listing Blizzard resources for WoW players when the patch drops tomorrow. While the post doesn't say "Patch 3.0.2 is tomorrow" it does have the title "10/13 Patch Day Paradise!" But the fact that 3.0.2 is dropping tomorrow isn't really anything new.

The Blizzard resources he provides includes an FAQ on connection and patching issues. Topic covered include being stuck on connecting, having problems with your firewall, game version validation, corrupt patch files, blizzard downloader issues (see our patch mirrors for a quick and easy solution to that), and general patching advice for your operating system of choice.

He also points out the technical support phone numbers (US EU), but usually the fastest solution is to post on the technical support forums (US EU) and you'll get a response very quickly from a fellow player or from a blue.

Thanks to Trevor for the scoop

I have this annoying habit of taking things for granted. For instance, have you ever really thought about how wonderful bone marrow is? My hands, feet, heart, and all the other parts work just the way they should. What would WoW be like if I couldn't use both hands?

Doomsprockt of Mauradin faced just such a dilemma. He (Jaime) was in a struck by a car in an accident that left him paralyzed on the left side of hisbody. Among the challenges of recovery, Doomsprocket sought to regain access to WoW, but his first solution, a frog-pad failed to do the trick. He appealed to the Mac Technical Support forums for assistance.

Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week Nick writes in:

Hello to all the writers/columnists at WoWinsider! My name is Nick and I would greatly appreciate for your help/advice. My problem is that my PC, runs on windows XP home edition, is very VERY slow. I believe that it is because of an infestation of viruses, even though I run AVG free edition, Avast, and Spyhunter. I scan once a week and nothing comes up. My gameplay in WoW is very...laggy. If I am lucky enough, I'll get maybe, 10-20fps in Azeroth and 7-9fps in outlands/isle of quel'danas. It has been like this for a long time. I play a 70 bloodelf Mage, Evolves, on Lightbringer-US while I live in the east coast, even though its a west coast server. I understand that brings my latency up but still not as bad as 1fps EVERYTIME in shatt. I need some help to speed up my computer and maximize efficiency, any ideas/advice? Anything would help me because I'm desperate and am considering quitting WoW if this continues... :'(
Sincerely,
Nick

The worst part of the keylogging episode was that my Shaman was transferred from a PvP to PvE server. After about a week in limbo my beloved Tauren was returned to her proper place. I was extremely relieved. Unfortunately that's the only thing on my account that Blizzard was kind enough to restore. They refused to return any of my gear or gold and did nothing about the items ninjaed from the guild bank. I appealed their decision with several emails. Those appeals were ubiquitously denied despite logical arguments and heart-filled plights. I thought it was all over, for better or for worse.

I got more bad news in my email box the other day:

Many of us, both in and outside of the United States, have been having serious connection issues with the game recently. Not only can we not connect to the game, but we can't even get on the main World of Warcraft website. This can be particularly infuriating because we can't go and find help. When I got dropped in the middle of Kael'Thas (the real fight, not the weeksauce one in Magisters' Terrace), I wanted to take my computer out to a field and yell obscenities at it about PC load letter.

WoW Insider feels your pain! After all, imagine having to write about WoW only to find out you can't get into WoW.

I wanted to answer a lot of the comments about what people can do. First and foremost, we're not Blizzard. So we can't really say for sure what's going on. We can make educated guesses through. Continue reading after the break for what you can do and where you can go to solve this problem.