I think a simpler solution would be to make logging in more secure. I have been using online banks and institutions with data much more sensitive than a few pixels of gold for years and have never had a problem.
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I think a simpler solution would be to make logging in more secure. I have been using online banks and institutions with data much more sensitive than a few pixels of gold for years and have never had a problem.
they could change how they are authenticating. the generator id is associated with the bnet account... but currently, each sub account would need a different generated code upon login. why? they are trying to insure that you are you and that you have the authenticator. well, you could get the same effect if they tracked the ip address with the login request. if the ip address matches the previous bnet sub account, and the auth code matches, then let it through.
if their concern is that a single bnet account could be shared at an internet cafe (or gold farmer dorm), the existing 1 code per 30 seconds solves nothing. they would just hand around the authenticator.
additionally, if they are generally concerned about sharing, if the people are colluding, they could easily share the generated codes over a phone, IM, text, or vent. tracking the ip address with the login would at least reduce the number of people sharing bnet sub accounts.
to me, this just seems like an unreasonable hassle for no benefit.
I have mixed feelings about the issue - I'm 100% for authenticators, to start with, they work.
But, I'm done with WoW.com. There is NO confirmation that what they posted is true, and if it's not, they've stirred up a hornet's nest that did'nt need to be. MMO Champions will post info they get from channels, for patch releases and data mining files, but the Aholes at WoW.com just threw their "source' under the bus, if this is true - and if they figure out who it was, that person is absolutely fired. They are posting about internal Blizzard conversations and policies, and that's just not cool - if they think of themselves as any kind of journalist, they just blackballed themselves from the good graces of Blizzard, and they may have issues moving forward getting support or goodies from Bliz.
There's also a few things that don't add up...the GMs in the Customer Service Forum have been saying that while the time for restorations is backed up, they're claiming there's been no spike in the number of account thefts. So...what's going on? What are they spending all their time on? Why are they offering the Care Package, if there's no spike in thefts, which requires more specialist time...either Blizz is keeping the real damage under wraps to not give any kind of info to the bad guys...or they're lying.
If they ship Cata with an Authenticator, and require it - awesome. The days of account theft (and selling/trading/sharing) are over...so we'll see a new massive wave of bots and exploiters, so the gold farmer's have inventory to sell. Could be good...could be bad.
I like the idea of the authenticators, because it will put a lot of farmers/thieves out of business. I just don't care for WoW.com's blowing the issue up when it's not even been put forward by Blizz. And yes, Blizz could be behind the link, to gauge the response of the playerbase, but Wow.com has been posting a lot of garbage lately, like how they "discovered" (ie. took from another site) that there's an exploit people are doing with billing, and now they've pointed it out to all the kiddies out there who will want to try it now.
Wow.com needs to think a LOT more before they post. They are becoming a liability, and honestly, the talent left the site when Turpster left. The rest are hacks who post nonsense and nothing of value.
Wait until and IF Blizzard talks about this. Until then, it's all hearsay and rumor - and I hope the Blizzard lawyers sue and subpeona WoW.com to get their source.
WoW is MORE secure than most online banks. The main problem is there's no good way to track/punish people who hack accounts. If someone hacks your bank account and steals your money, there's an easy to follow trail and various laws they can use to penalize them. When someone hacks your account they're MUCH harder to track down, and there isn't much Blizzard can actually do to the perpetrator outside of the game. IRL you get caught once you're busted. In WoW you get caught you just try again on another account.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fizzler
The majority of gold, and advertisements for gold, come from hacked accounts.
I could care less, if people are selling gold, but don't like that others are being screwed over to supply it.
I read a blue post about a year ago, stating Blizzard has averaged 30,000 accounts banned each year. Which isn't a whole lot, out of 11 million active accounts. However, the sellers and exploiters are banned.
I know two friends out of the fifteen or so who play wow, who regularly buy gold.. Their logic is sound, can work for 2 hours a month and supply themselves with a week worth of farming in gold, and its "entertainment" money. If Blizzard were to ban the buyers, instead of just the sellers (ie go after the "Johns"), I wonder how many would continue to buy gold.
Assuming they move towards an authentication system. Gold won't come from keylogged accounts anymore, which will be a bonus. But as long as there is a market for it, they will find a way to provide it and profit.
Or someone looked at the balance sheets and saw how far into the red the customer service division of the company is and how much it costs to run all those GMs, thus triggering an effort to cut down on service time. This is a very normal process for companies that have been around long enough for their product to mature and the company to grow to the point where finding areas to improve efficiency mean more resources for the things people care about. (Hint: it ain't some schlub's hacked account, that's fo sho.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Gadzooks
Considering how many people would have to be coerced for your "lying" theory to hold water, I just can't see it.
Not to mention that account thefts could remain the same, but who knows how many people have been scuttled off to the unemployment line. Game companies and their support staff aren't safe from recessions either.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ughmahedhurtz
Hack a bank - Fed's get involved, you make money short term go to jail long term.
Hack a bank across country lines - International authorities get involved, you make money short term, go to jail long term.
Hack a wow account... blizzard restores the account. No legal ramifications.
Hack a wow account accross country lines - even less dangerous for the hackers.
The simple fact is that a wow account is likely to net more profit than ANY bank account once you account for risk.
There is an easy solution if Blizzard wants to solve really the problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ualaa
1 ) Mandatory authenticators or whatever that makes account hacking very difficult or practically impossible, but still not annoying to the final user.
2 ) Ban all the gold sellers and bot users.
3 ) Blizzard start selling ingame gold as they sell character name changes and realm migrations.
4 ) Make a strict policy like "yuou buy gold from a gold seller... you get banned too... but buying gold from the Blizzard official store is ok"
5 ) Make some way for players that have much gold to redeem that gold for prizes. Expensive pets, free game time, special mounts, etc...
Lots of other games allow you to buy ingame currency directly from the company that suplies the game. They have practically no gold selling problems nor spam. Some even allow you to "buy" game play time with ingame currency. EVE Online is just one example, but there are many others.
From the perspective of a player that has a job and some real life, a couple of hours working to buy ingame currency (fun) is quire more rewarding than farming that same ingame currency into the game spending lots of more time than 2 hours.
When an account gets hacked and sends 5k gold to another account then it's more than obvious that something fishy has been happening. Also there are lots of ways to detect bots usage. Unfortunately, gold sellers are a neeeded evil. If they stop the ways to get ingame currency and make everyone farm his gold, lots of people will leave the game because they will have no will or time to farm all the gold needed to craft the epic items they want in order to have fun raiding or oneshoting helpless squirrels with their rogue.
For all those that say "Nooo, that's bad. Blizzard should not sell ingame currency for real life money", think about ingame pets they sell for real life money. In my book this is exactly the same. the player that has no real life money to buy a fancy drunken panda pet will be aunable to buy ingame gold too, but he will be able to farm it if he needs it.
In conclusion, I think that the mandatory authenticator is not that bad, but they should also fix some other things too.
Personally, if that authenticator doesn't allow me to log with all my toons at once and requires me 5 minutes to login I will just cancel my wow subscriptions. This is just a personal choice because I am that much lazy to wait for authenticator to generate new tokens.
I hadn't thought about it but it makes you wonder what would happen to gold sellers/powerlevel companies/etc. if authenticators become mandatory.