Posts with tag warning

We've heard a few horror stories from Sweden already about excessive WoW-playing there -- we've reported on a 15-year-old collapsing after not taking any breaks, and we've even heard from a teacher in that country who's targeted World of Warcraft as a challenge to her students' attention. But now one group up there is claiming it's an epidemic -- the Youth Group Foundation has released a report comparing the game itself to cocaine, and says that of all the game addiction cases they've encountered, World of Warcraft has played a part in every one.

Obviously, here at WoW Insider, we're fans of the game, and it's hard to blame an inanimate object like a computer for serious problems in someone's life -- while World of Warcraft is one of the easiest ways an addictive personality can manifest itself, millions of people around the world are able to play it and maintain healthy lives and relationships.

Still, if you're playing World of Warcraft (or doing anything else) so much that it's affecting your health or social life, it's time to stop and/or get help from an organization like this. We won't blame the game for causing someone to pass out (common sense says that doing anything for 15 hours straight isn't good for you) or do poorly in school, but if either of those things are happening to you, in Sweden or anywhere else, because you're playing the game, then cut it out.

I would hope that most of you have learned this lesson by now, but for those who came in late: there is currently no Wrath of the Lich King beta test going on. We've been getting a steady stream of tips about various scam sites, or questions along the lines of "is this invite I just got real?" No, that beta invite you got from "bl1zzard@yahoo.co.uk" is not real. Wrath is in alpha, company-internally, maybe. Trust me, I want in at least as bad as you do, but any invite you get to a Wrath beta right now, unless you work at Blizzard, is fake.

When the beta does start (as it surely will eventually), and if you're lucky enough to get a real invite, it will point to a site at blizzard.com, worldofwarcraft.com, or (for our European chums) wow-europe.com. It will not, for instance, point to therealblizzard.net. The scammers have gotten pretty good at building convincing-looking sites (as pictured), but check the URL and don't be fooled. Do not enter your WoW account name and/or password anywhere other than the log-in screen of the game, blizzard.com, worldofwarcraft.com, or wow-europe.com. Oh, and use Firefox.

If you run Grisoft's AVG antivirus program, you may have seen a strange message pop up yesterday-- the program reported that there was a trojan in WoW's fmod.dll file. fmod.dll, as Datth tell us, is part of the sound engine for WoW, and is not a virus at all. But it appears that AVG picked it up as a false positive, and labeled it as dangerous when it wasn't.

There was some confusion yesterday about it, but as of right now, the fix is easy-- go to AVG's website and update it to the latest version. The most recent definitions rule WoW's directory A-OK, so everything should be fine. Apparently this is not the only false positive problem AVG has had this week-- Google Desktop was also ruled a virus, so either AVG is being too strict, or these two big software companies are getting a little too grabby for Grisoft's tastes.

[ via WoWLJ ]

We're all taught from an early age that it's nice to share. But not when it comes to your WoW account info. And I don't just mean e-mail scammers posing as Blizzard employees asking for your password. What I'm referring to is something that is something much more rampant and just as damaging to your WoW account's continued existence: willingly sharing your account information with a brother/roommate/guild mate/girlfriend, etc.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to spell it out:

If you're caught sharing your account, Blizzard will ban that account.

You'd think this fact of WoW life would be well known, and I believe it is, but many players are choosing to ignore this rule at their own peril. Why? A few rationalizations seem to be popping up over and over.