Posts with tag token

Many people were quick to wonder and worry about whether the recent hacking of the RSA (the security branch of EMC) had the potential of harming Blizzard's authenticators or authentication software. Fear not, as the blues have chimed in with a response:

RSA Hack and Blizzard Authenticators

Pokzin,

The Blizzard Authenticators are based off modified Vasco tokens. I'm sorry to hear about RSA's troubles, but it will not affect the Blizzard Authenticator.

source

It doesn't look like Blizzard will be harmed by this at all. As a reminder, please keep your account safe by not clicking links in emails that don't appear to be from Blizzard, always check your email headers for incoming email addresses, and if you have any questions about whether an email is legitimate, contact Blizzard first. And do please get an authenticator for your account. Check out some of our own security articles here.

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I had concerns when Blizzard first announced the way bosses would be unlocked in Patch 3.2's new raid instance, the Argent Coliseum. Blizzard has announced that while the first boss is available immediately, other bosses will be unlocked week-by-week. It's not the first time an artificial barrier has been put up for raid progression -- hello Sunwell -- so I guess I'm not shocked by it, but progression wasn't really what I was concerned about.

In our current raiding system, each boss drops a pre-determined set of loot. Some bosses drop a token which can be turned in for a piece of armor matching that particular slot, and the boss will always drop this same slot token. Thorim will always drop a shoulder token in Ulduar 10, for example.

So the issue is, with the Coliseum officially being our new tier of raiding, with gear that far outclasses Ulduar gear, and with the Coliseum bosses being unlocked each week, it means that players could get screwed out of upgrades. Your chestpiece might not be the greatest, so if you were looking forward to upgrading it, you'd be pretty crushed to find out that the T9 chest token only drops off of the final Coliseum boss -- which will only be available (at best) a month or (at worst) several weeks more than that due to RNG.

It turns out that Blizzard was thinking the same thing I was. That's why, with 3.2, Coliseum bosses all drop one of three universal armor tokens -- the Regalia of the Grand Protector, Vanquisher, or Conqueror.

Badges of Justice, Battleground marks, Marks of Honor Hold and Thrallmar, Spirit Shards, Stone Keeper's Shards, Emblems of Valor, Emblems of Heroism, and now Emblems of Conquest: Ulduar will add yet another currency item into the game and Cypruss of Draka wonders, rightfully, if it's all just too much. The good news is that since the currency system was introduced, all of this stuff is out of our bags, but wouldn't it just be easier if instead of creating a whole new token system, Blizzard just charged a lot more for the gear?

Bornakk says no -- he says that if they just kept the same tokens and charged more per item, people would end up doing Naxx, Ulduar, OS, and any other instances that dropped that token every single week rather than actually moving up through the content, which is what Blizzard wants us to do. He also says that the Emblem exchange mechanic is designed to help this -- you can do Ulduar and go backwards for the gear, but you can't do Naxx ten extra times to get Ulduar gear.

Which, we have to give it to Blizzard, is actually pretty smart. Yes, it does keep players from farming up the tokens (Blizzard knows that if you could run all the instances per week just to get one kind of token, there'd be lots of players who would), but it also keeps people progressing to get gear they can upgrade to. As Bornakk says, they've been trying to improve the Badge system ever since it was introduced in BC, and this method of introducing new currency to send players up the ladder is a result of their work there.

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, trying to catch them in stock - good news! The Blizzard store is currently showing that there are authenticators back in stock for your ordering pleasure. As if that weren't awesome enough, it's not just the United States authenticators that are available and ready for purchase. It seems Blizzard has stocked up across the board as they're showing that the authenticator is available for Canada/Australia/Latin America/New Zealand, Europe and Korea as well. Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend where they're available everywhere more often.

That said, your guess is as good as ours as to how long the current stock might last. (Read: probably not long if history is any indication.) So if you forgot to pick up a present for that WoW player in your life and are looking for a way out of the post-holiday doghouse (or just need one for yourself) head on over to the Blizzard store and get your authenticator ordered - quickly.

Update: Looks like the Canadian ones are gone as of 7:26 PM.

[Via the WoW LJ]

Bornakk has announced on the forums tonight that the honor points wipe they were going to do before Wrath of the Lich King will not be happening after all.

Once again for clarity: honor points and PvP tokens will not be reset when WotLK is released. According to a post by Zarhym today, Arena points and teams will still be wiped immediately prior to Wrath's release.

This is a very interesting change of policy. Blizzard announced last week that all honor points and tokens would be reset. Since that announcement, there has been significant outrage by many players that have saved up large amounts of honor and tokens. With this change players will be able to stockpile points and purchase level 80 PvP gear. However this gear will be "significantly more expensive" than current level 70 gear.

We'll bring you any updates that develop on this breaking news.

An interesting forum topic has popped up on the World of Warcraft general forum today. It reflects on the amount of time we spend trying to gain one or two specific pieces of loot, only to have the gods of random drop-rates look unfavorably down upon us.

It is a vicious cycle of farming that has eaten away at hours upon hours of our lives, but we still do it. We still go after that one elusive item that taunts us from the virtual nether. "I have a 25% drop rate, but you can run this place a hundred times and never see me! Mwahahaha!..."

Players are recalling their 50+ runs for class chest from Upper Blackrock Spire, or their class helm from Scholomance. Mindtap Talisman seems to be a recurring theme, as well as the Tidal Charm. My worst experience was on my 67th run through UBRS for my Lightforge Shoulders from The Beast. They finally dropped, everyone congratulated me, and then the fury warrior rolled need. Ah well, water under the bridge as they say, especially since in my first Botanica run, I received the Spaulders of the Righteous.