Ok on hacking front. They sell all yoru good gear that they can. Tier gear of couse cant be sold but from what freinds of mine who have been hacked say they delete it. They will rob your guild bank take anything they can make money on. They then sell all your bank items taht are sellable . Then the transfer all that money to a gold spammer account and send it to the gold buyers. Thats what hackers do with yoru account. They do this on every character u have.
Game isnt easier in my opinion Making gear easier to get so people can actually see the final raid of an xpac is a good thing. For people who dont have as much time or came to wow later then others. So they dont hit max level during tier 1 of raiding. Having tried to pug kara in bc when zulaman and bt were out i knwo if my guild hadnt had so called pity runs id of never seen it on my horde rogue.
When people beat lk on 25 man heroic mode with no buff then come tell me how easy it is my understanding is only paragon has done this if others have i appolgize to those guilds but very few people have done that. Then tell me how easy it is. Reducing grind in wow isnt a bad thing making leveling more linear and easier isnt bad either . These are all things that make leveling alts more fun and also keeps newer players longer
People play mmos for the people as much as the game. If they didnt do this they would lose subscribers and then people who say its to easy and whine that everyone can see icc instead of just 5 pct of population. Would whine there was no one playing there game so the whiners will always find something to whine about.
As for gs its gotten out of hand. One thing gs cant tell u is do people know when to move out fo fire or will they move on rot like they are suppose to or on festur when gas sport comes out.
If you've been playing since BC then your deluding yourself if you think the game isn't easier now. I played since vanilla and the game is significantly easier not just leveling but at 80 as well, (faceroll heroics/no key requirements, raids which have easy bosses until half way in then everyone fails at coordinating etc). But thats fine, since the beginning of Wrath the game has changed it's philosophy to appeal to newer people, (Blizzard have this statistic that 70% of people who try the game quit before lv10, IMO I think it's erroneous but lets just say it's fact for argument sake) and to get those newer people to get their friends to come and play as well. The game basically isn't designed for people like me anymore, fair enough, their trying to appeal to newer markets now.
What does make me laugh is the 'When people beat lk on 25 man heroic mode with no buff then come tell me how easy it is'.....you do realise outside of WoW no one give two s***ts about what 'mode' people do it on? It's just repeated content, Blizzard have always been smart and they realised the e-peen whores will swallow anything and keep paying for anything that says, 'hard' or 'heroic', even though there actually paying for the same content they have on farm it's just HARDER!! :P
Some WoW players I think these days are like crack addicts, they don't care what it is or where it's come from as long as there's more of the same their happy.
I found out recently that my account was closed by going to the actual warcraft site. I did what they suggested for closure disputes and emailed them...
I waited a couple of days and got a response, but even though it's the same email that was told to write to, I'm not clicking the link lol
seems kind of stupid to warn people about phishing and say that any email no matter how realistic looking could be fake... and then to send people emails with links in them as the only means of recovering your account.
that's exactly what i've been dealing with for the last few months now. i receive emails saying my account has been compromised, go to this link, and fill in all the info to change it. i'm like, "yeahhhhhhhhhh fucking right! i'm not doing that!" i've been trying to get through blizzard's endless phone queue to no avail. their account security is a fucking joke. i don't want to begin imagining what it'll be like when cataclysm hits the store shelves.
in any case, the old card number my account was under has long been changed, and is no longer an active one. plus i haven't played the game in almost 2 years. regardless, i still check my bank statements to make sure there is no funny business going on.
i just made a snip of a phishing scam attempt. it's a very obvious one. anybody who falls for this one deserves to be hacked. something is happening that causes "enormous players???equipments, and currency to be stolen."
I just finished reading a "NEW" policy set forth by Square Enix,a corporation i have become less in favor of because of recent ongoing activities by Square.
What i found was VERY shotty wording and practices.They have files that keep track of our website activities[just as WOW does],they "SHARE" our information with third party vendors.I can only believe that Blizzard and most other devs operate in much the same manner.
They claim to keep your personal information secure,but also admit it is impossible for them to know exactly if third party vendors are adhering to the same security rules the dev has.
Your personal information can be accessed by employees and contractors,example anyone working on the servers ect ect,accounting ect ect.
Your personal information is also shared with outside vendors such as the cue card readers we all hate when talking to SUPPORT people who do not even work for your developer,they are usually outside vendors.
Another thing that really got me enraged,and made me send a nasty call to Square Enix was when their own servers were comprimised/hacked,they NEVER contacted me to tell me.I was working out of town for two weeks and only came home on the weekends,so my account went approx 5 days without me knowing of the server hack,so i was not able to change my security passwords.I read that part of the security and it says................we may notify you if information is compromised EITHER by email OR via their online site.
The way i found out was when i could not access my game,i visited their site,so if i never went to their site,i would have never found out.Well of course being total idiots,they then AFTER i complained sent me an email,like 2 weeks late,VERY lame security measures .I only got that email because they KNEW they were wrong by not contacting me,it should NOT be EITHER OR,it should be both via their site AND email.Apparently ONLY those who use security tokens received emails,i guess the rest of us were not as important?This perhaps tells me that the security breach was via the security tokens vendor?There was a VERY long delay for future token sales,much longer than it would take to make more.
Bottom line is these operations ONLY adhere to laws at the VERY minimum,but they are ALWAYS off the hook because they basically all offer you the exact same choice,if you don't like it,don't play and remove all your information via phone.
There is even more BS in the gaming rules,they MUST adhere to law that claims they cannot take information from under age players,example under 13 years old,but guess what,they can't play unless the parent or guardian releases THEIR information lmao.So no matter what they are sharing your information and tracking your website activity illegally,because they put the blame on YOU to keep track of the under age person.
READ your TOS or game rules,you will see how much BS goes into those legal documents set forth by their lawyers.If you think your information is secure,guess again.If you think you have ANY rights besides quitting,guess again.Gaming developers NEED to adhere to much stricter laws,they have had a VERYeasy ride so far.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
That game is digging itself a grave with allowing all this crap to go on. Gold sellers, account hacking, Gear Score, all this stuff that has turned the community into shit and trolls.
I am glad I unsubbed when I did. I wouldn't dare pay for cata...
Youll come back when Cataclysm is released every game has gold sellers, and account hacking. If gear score is such a bother join a guild thats half way decent and not all about stats but friends.
That game is digging itself a grave with allowing all this crap to go on. Gold sellers, account hacking, Gear Score, all this stuff that has turned the community into shit and trolls.
I am glad I unsubbed when I did. I wouldn't dare pay for cata...
Youll come back when Cataclysm is released every game has gold sellers, and account hacking. If gear score is such a bother join a guild thats half way decent and not all about stats but friends.
Well you certainly won't see me again in WoW, after that hack, my account is good as gone and will never be unbanned. If Blizzard ban you even if it was someone else who stolen it, that's it, your done for anyway.
That game is digging itself a grave with allowing all this crap to go on. Gold sellers, account hacking, Gear Score, all this stuff that has turned the community into shit and trolls.
I am glad I unsubbed when I did. I wouldn't dare pay for cata...
Youll come back when Cataclysm is released every game has gold sellers, and account hacking. If gear score is such a bother join a guild thats half way decent and not all about stats but friends.
Well you certainly won't see me again in WoW, after that hack, my account is good as gone and will never be unbanned. If Blizzard ban you even if it was someone else who stolen it, that's it, your done for anyway.
blizzard will always return/restore char's and goods lost through hacking... however.. only if its truly from that, its fairly easy to tell when an accounts really been hacked because of the ip address trail.. which means if you try and blag your way out of getting a ban claiming it was 'someone else' your likely to get ignored. sadly lately the number of accounts getting hacked does seem to be on the rise, another guildy had to have his char's and gear restored only last week, it took a few days but he did get it all back.. pretty much.
My account got hacked the day Battle.net accounts went live. This was the worst security issue I've ever seen with any game I've ever played. To make matters worse, Blizzard still hasn't fixed it. I had to fight for a little over a month to get things cleared up with my credit, and credit card. The Credit Card stored on my account was charged a year's subscription the same day. I called my Credit Card company once I got my bill in the mail and told them to cancel that charge. Luckily, the credit card company was able to refund the money. It showed up on my Credit Rating, however, and an delinquint (sp?) bill. So I called Equifax and told them what was going on. They did thier investigation or whatever they do (I still think they do absolutely nothing lol), and happily (or as happy as someone can be) it's been all take care off. I got a new credit card issued and went to FFXI
So much for my 7 level 80s, 15+ level 30-79s, 300,000+ gold, and time spent playing.
I had my account hacked and cleaned out last year and blizzard replaced it all within 3 days. I agree the community is bad but I have found a group of people I like and we recently started over for the 6th time on another server.
I don't think it matters at all if the average WOW community is good or bad.
With 11M players, you bound to find more than enough people whom you like. In fact, you won't have time to make friends with them all. You can always rage quit if you occasionally PUG with people from the "bad" community.
Well you certainly won't see me again in WoW, after that hack, my account is good as gone and will never be unbanned. If Blizzard ban you even if it was someone else who stolen it, that's it, your done for anyway.
Try harder. I've had a couple of friends getting banned for buying gold, getting banned for exploits (mostly for exploring forbidden zones) who got their account unbanned because they called and played dumb. Oh noes! You have to wait an hour to get a hold of an account specialist!! Oh well, such is life.
I saw you posted more misinformation about the authenticator. It wont make your account 100% secure (100% security doesn't exist even in banking, finance, defense...), but it WILL help. I've never read anything about so-called flaws that makes any account less secure with an authenticator, so I'll just give you a big [CITATION NEEDED] tag.
:-)
Edit - The queue time to get a hold of an account specialist is an hour according to Nifa so I updated my reply who previously stated 20 minutes.
Oh noes! You have to wait 20 minutes to get a hold of an account specialist!! Oh well, such is life.
You got a hold of an account specialist at Blizzard in 20 minutes?! Holy crap! Can I have the number you called, please? Because calling the official number that is on the official Blizzard website, in every actual (read: non-phishing) Blizzard e-mail I get, and which I've actually posted on more than one occasions in threads similar to this, I have never, ever - not even one time - gotten through to a real live person in under 90 minutes. No, that is not an exaggeration and I have the cell phone bills to prove it. And I've never even had t o deal with them over an account compromise!
I think that maybe you exaggerate (or rather, minimize - drastically so) the call wait times or you are the luckiest person on planet Earth.
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Oh noes! You have to wait 20 minutes to get a hold of an account specialist!! Oh well, such is life.
You got a hold of an account specialist at Blizzard in 20 minutes?! Holy crap! Can I have the number you called, please? Because calling the official number that is on the official Blizzard website, in every actual (read: non-phishing) Blizzard e-mail I get, and which I've actually posted on more than one occasions in threads similar to this, I have never, ever - not even one time - gotten through to a real live person in under 90 minutes. No, that is not an exaggeration and I have the cell phone bills to prove it. And I've never even had t o deal with them over an account compromise!
I think that maybe you exaggerate (or rather, minimize - drastically so) the call wait times or you are the luckiest person on planet Earth.
*shrug* that's what it took me... Maybe a year ago. Twice.
Oh noes! You have to wait 20 minutes to get a hold of an account specialist!! Oh well, such is life.
You got a hold of an account specialist at Blizzard in 20 minutes?! Holy crap! Can I have the number you called, please? Because calling the official number that is on the official Blizzard website, in every actual (read: non-phishing) Blizzard e-mail I get, and which I've actually posted on more than one occasions in threads similar to this, I have never, ever - not even one time - gotten through to a real live person in under 90 minutes. No, that is not an exaggeration and I have the cell phone bills to prove it. And I've never even had t o deal with them over an account compromise!
I think that maybe you exaggerate (or rather, minimize - drastically so) the call wait times or you are the luckiest person on planet Earth.
*shrug* that's what it took me... Maybe a year ago. Twice.
I repeat: you are the luckiest person on the planet because no one I know who has had to call them for any reason has ever gotten through that fast. 60 minutes is standard, and I promise, that is not an exaggeration.
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Account secruity is the responsibilty of the player... thats all we need to know.
As to gearscore I agree it has become the defacto measure of a players ability but it is only used by guilds/group whoes focus is the end and not the journey, there are plenty of guilds/groups (and if not make one) that do not use gear score or "link achievement" crap... takes a while longer to find them but the journy is worth it.
If any one is struggling to get into a guild then cata should help, if you reroll join a guild early and not one that invites the whole server (they die fast), and if your not reroling within a few levels you'll have similar gear than the top raid players so its like a reset... make use of that.
I think this can best be summed up statistically by two words: Toyota Camry. Toyota Camry is the number #1 stolen vehicle in the US. Why? They aren't stolen due to their luxury, a lot nicer cars out there. They are stolen because there are more Camrys out there than any other car. The likelihood of being stolen goes up just becasue there are more Camrys out there, hence the Camry is more likely to be the car that gets stolen. WOW is like this, Biggest and most common MMO game out there. Therefore, the chance of getting hacked increases based on this. The percent of hacked accounts out the 10 million users would probably be as big as many games' current total population? Just a thought about probabilty...I could be dead wrong but just my two cents.
I think this can best be summed up statistically by two words: Toyota Camry. Toyota Camry is the number #1 stolen vehicle in the US. Why? They aren't stolen due to their luxury, a lot nicer cars out there. They are stolen because there are more Camrys out there than any other car. The likelihood of being stolen goes up just becasue there are more Camrys out there, hence the Camry is more likely to be the car that gets stolen.
WOW is like this, Biggest and most common MMO game out there. Therefore, the chance of getting hacked increases based on this. The percent of hacked accounts out the 10 million users would probably be as big as many games' current total population? Just a thought about probabilty...I could be dead wrong but just my two cents.
I think this can best be summed up statistically by two words: Toyota Camry. Toyota Camry is the number #1 stolen vehicle in the US. Why? They aren't stolen due to their luxury, a lot nicer cars out there. They are stolen because there are more Camrys out there than any other car. The likelihood of being stolen goes up just becasue there are more Camrys out there, hence the Camry is more likely to be the car that gets stolen.
WOW is like this, Biggest and most common MMO game out there. Therefore, the chance of getting hacked increases based on this. The percent of hacked accounts out the 10 million users would probably be as big as many games' current total population? Just a thought about probabilty...I could be dead wrong but just my two cents.
That analogy is flawed since WoW is not "everywhere" like the Camrys. However if you said that the number of subcribers to WoW is like the number of Camrys out there, then that would make more sense.
The trouble of this is that, the more subscriber the game has, the more insignificant an hacked account is. Example: If there's only 100 subscribers, ten person getting hacked is 10% of your player based and makes it really important to update your account security as a company. But if there's 1,000,000 subscriber, ten hacked account is just 0.001% of the players, which is insignificant. WoW has over 10mil subscriber, so if you think about it, losing 100 subscriber is not the end of the world for them and it's cheaper for them to simply ignore it.
Also with the recent intergration of Battle.net to merge all your games into one account, you have more than likely to get your account hacked since hacker can hack your Battle.Net account and have free access to ALL your game accounts. And since Activition/Blizzard decided to partner with Facebook....you get the point.
I think this can best be summed up statistically by two words: Toyota Camry. Toyota Camry is the number #1 stolen vehicle in the US. Why? They aren't stolen due to their luxury, a lot nicer cars out there. They are stolen because there are more Camrys out there than any other car. The likelihood of being stolen goes up just becasue there are more Camrys out there, hence the Camry is more likely to be the car that gets stolen.
WOW is like this, Biggest and most common MMO game out there. Therefore, the chance of getting hacked increases based on this. The percent of hacked accounts out the 10 million users would probably be as big as many games' current total population? Just a thought about probabilty...I could be dead wrong but just my two cents.
That analogy is flawed since WoW is not "everywhere" like the Camrys. However if you said that the number of subcribers to WoW is like the number of Camrys out there, then that would make more sense.
The trouble of this is that, the more subscriber the game has, the more insignificant an hacked account is. Example: If there's only 100 subscribers, ten person getting hacked is 10% of your player based and makes it really important to update your account security as a company. But if there's 1,000,000 subscriber, ten hacked account is just 0.001% of the players, which is insignificant. WoW has over 10mil subscriber, so if you think about it, losing 100 subscriber is not the end of the world for them and it's cheaper for them to simply ignore it.
Also with the recent intergration of Battle.net to merge all your games into one account, you have more than likely to get your account hacked since hacker can hack your Battle.Net account and have free access to ALL your game accounts. And since Activition/Blizzard decided to partner with Facebook....you get the point.
You are missing the point. If 10 players get hacked out of 1000, yes its 10% of playerbase. However, if 1000 players get hacked out of 11 million, its a much smaller percentage, but a significantly larger amount of "OMG BLIZZARD SUXORZ, LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE GETTING HACKED" (sorry for caps). So yeah, I agree with Bacon - the more clientelle a game has, the more outcry you will hear.
I recently got hacked. I just found out today that 3 other members of my guild got hacked also. The only connection we saw is a new member to the guild joined played with us in teams for about 2 weeks then 1 day he oddly sent us all a low level engineering item ingame mail. we all took the item out of the mail and said w/e. That night he left the guild without so much a word to anyone and the very next day all 4 of us were hacked chars stripped the hole 9. Maybe i am reading too much into it or maybe not.
I recently got hacked. I just found out today that 3 other members of my guild got hacked also. The only connection we saw is a new member to the guild joined played with us in teams for about 2 weeks then 1 day he oddly sent us all a low level engineering item ingame mail. we all took the item out of the mail and said w/e. That night he left the guild without so much a word to anyone and the very next day all 4 of us were hacked chars stripped the hole 9. Maybe i am reading too much into it or maybe not.
Did you receive any emails from Blizzard recently?
Did your guild have a website where your information (your name and email) is shown?
I recently got hacked. I just found out today that 3 other members of my guild got hacked also. The only connection we saw is a new member to the guild joined played with us in teams for about 2 weeks then 1 day he oddly sent us all a low level engineering item ingame mail. we all took the item out of the mail and said w/e. That night he left the guild without so much a word to anyone and the very next day all 4 of us were hacked chars stripped the hole 9. Maybe i am reading too much into it or maybe not.
Did you receive any emails from Blizzard recently?
Did your guild have a website where your information (your name and email) is shown?
Guild has no website. Yes i got the scammer blizzard emails daily but i never even opened them cause they always showed up in my junk box so i figured it was suspcious and deleted them without opening.
You can still have your account hacked even with an authenticator, so it's not a lie.
The authenticator just makes it a little more complicated to hack, but the more sophisticated methods can, and have, allowed hackers to breach authenticator 'secured' accounts.
In other words, the authenticator isn't a sure thing, but it does help to have one.
Well, yes and no. Yes its still possible to crack such an account(takes rather specialized malware and a special type of reaction system). No, its not just a little more complicated. It takes a professional level knowledge of various technologies and methodologies to be successful. Using an authenticator is WELL worth the time require to purchase one, and link it to ones account. Think of it as an added layer of security.
If Blizzard wanted to make it even more difficult, they would add a virtual keypad for entry of the authenticator numbers. Code it so the numbers change locations (on the virtual pad) at random, and it would make things much more "interesting" for the bad guys.
Personally it was the bad sort of people that made me want to quit WoW forever and so I did leave, I threw the game away into the trash can since December 2009, I did it because everyone was so horrible to me, even guilds suck, try starting a friendly conversation and you'll realise that most of the time your being ignored and so no-one talks to you, same thing with everybody else who plays the game.
A few months later after I left, my account gets hacked, I'm not sure what these hackers do but I hear they can sell every item you have, give your gold away and strip you down into having nothing on, so really all my hard efforts in this game have gone to waste (since I had tons of gold on my characters from my auction house sellings). There's no reason to bring back the account either since you'll be hacked again afterwards, even with that Authenicator key Blizzard sell, you'll still be hacked. In fact how does one get their account back anyway?
God, I know I'm frigging yacking on but really it's not right that the most popular online game can't sort itself out so to speak. Nice playable game, but terrible as an MMO.
Its what is to be expected from growth, unfortunately. Gaming used to be a very specific sub-culture that involved people with far more similarities than differences. As gaming has moved into the mainstream you now have millions of people. This immediately means you are goign to have the bad elements, and more of them. The big city has the fancy lights and all this movement while small towns are quiet and boring. Yet the big cities have the crime and dregs of society, while small towns don't, so much.
Comments
If you've been playing since BC then your deluding yourself if you think the game isn't easier now. I played since vanilla and the game is significantly easier not just leveling but at 80 as well, (faceroll heroics/no key requirements, raids which have easy bosses until half way in then everyone fails at coordinating etc). But thats fine, since the beginning of Wrath the game has changed it's philosophy to appeal to newer people, (Blizzard have this statistic that 70% of people who try the game quit before lv10, IMO I think it's erroneous but lets just say it's fact for argument sake) and to get those newer people to get their friends to come and play as well. The game basically isn't designed for people like me anymore, fair enough, their trying to appeal to newer markets now.
What does make me laugh is the 'When people beat lk on 25 man heroic mode with no buff then come tell me how easy it is'.....you do realise outside of WoW no one give two s***ts about what 'mode' people do it on? It's just repeated content, Blizzard have always been smart and they realised the e-peen whores will swallow anything and keep paying for anything that says, 'hard' or 'heroic', even though there actually paying for the same content they have on farm it's just HARDER!! :P
Some WoW players I think these days are like crack addicts, they don't care what it is or where it's come from as long as there's more of the same their happy.
that's exactly what i've been dealing with for the last few months now. i receive emails saying my account has been compromised, go to this link, and fill in all the info to change it. i'm like, "yeahhhhhhhhhh fucking right! i'm not doing that!" i've been trying to get through blizzard's endless phone queue to no avail. their account security is a fucking joke. i don't want to begin imagining what it'll be like when cataclysm hits the store shelves.
in any case, the old card number my account was under has long been changed, and is no longer an active one. plus i haven't played the game in almost 2 years. regardless, i still check my bank statements to make sure there is no funny business going on.
i just made a snip of a phishing scam attempt. it's a very obvious one. anybody who falls for this one deserves to be hacked. something is happening that causes "enormous players???equipments, and currency to be stolen."
I just finished reading a "NEW" policy set forth by Square Enix,a corporation i have become less in favor of because of recent ongoing activities by Square.
What i found was VERY shotty wording and practices.They have files that keep track of our website activities[just as WOW does],they "SHARE" our information with third party vendors.I can only believe that Blizzard and most other devs operate in much the same manner.
They claim to keep your personal information secure,but also admit it is impossible for them to know exactly if third party vendors are adhering to the same security rules the dev has.
Your personal information can be accessed by employees and contractors,example anyone working on the servers ect ect,accounting ect ect.
Your personal information is also shared with outside vendors such as the cue card readers we all hate when talking to SUPPORT people who do not even work for your developer,they are usually outside vendors.
Another thing that really got me enraged,and made me send a nasty call to Square Enix was when their own servers were comprimised/hacked,they NEVER contacted me to tell me.I was working out of town for two weeks and only came home on the weekends,so my account went approx 5 days without me knowing of the server hack,so i was not able to change my security passwords.I read that part of the security and it says................we may notify you if information is compromised EITHER by email OR via their online site.
The way i found out was when i could not access my game,i visited their site,so if i never went to their site,i would have never found out.Well of course being total idiots,they then AFTER i complained sent me an email,like 2 weeks late,VERY lame security measures .I only got that email because they KNEW they were wrong by not contacting me,it should NOT be EITHER OR,it should be both via their site AND email.Apparently ONLY those who use security tokens received emails,i guess the rest of us were not as important?This perhaps tells me that the security breach was via the security tokens vendor?There was a VERY long delay for future token sales,much longer than it would take to make more.
Bottom line is these operations ONLY adhere to laws at the VERY minimum,but they are ALWAYS off the hook because they basically all offer you the exact same choice,if you don't like it,don't play and remove all your information via phone.
There is even more BS in the gaming rules,they MUST adhere to law that claims they cannot take information from under age players,example under 13 years old,but guess what,they can't play unless the parent or guardian releases THEIR information lmao.So no matter what they are sharing your information and tracking your website activity illegally,because they put the blame on YOU to keep track of the under age person.
READ your TOS or game rules,you will see how much BS goes into those legal documents set forth by their lawyers.If you think your information is secure,guess again.If you think you have ANY rights besides quitting,guess again.Gaming developers NEED to adhere to much stricter laws,they have had a VERYeasy ride so far.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Youll come back when Cataclysm is released
every game has gold sellers, and account hacking. If gear score is such a bother join a guild thats half way decent and not all about stats but friends.
Well you certainly won't see me again in WoW, after that hack, my account is good as gone and will never be unbanned. If Blizzard ban you even if it was someone else who stolen it, that's it, your done for anyway.
blizzard will always return/restore char's and goods lost through hacking... however.. only if its truly from that, its fairly easy to tell when an accounts really been hacked because of the ip address trail.. which means if you try and blag your way out of getting a ban claiming it was 'someone else' your likely to get ignored. sadly lately the number of accounts getting hacked does seem to be on the rise, another guildy had to have his char's and gear restored only last week, it took a few days but he did get it all back.. pretty much.
My account got hacked the day Battle.net accounts went live. This was the worst security issue I've ever seen with any game I've ever played. To make matters worse, Blizzard still hasn't fixed it. I had to fight for a little over a month to get things cleared up with my credit, and credit card. The Credit Card stored on my account was charged a year's subscription the same day. I called my Credit Card company once I got my bill in the mail and told them to cancel that charge. Luckily, the credit card company was able to refund the money. It showed up on my Credit Rating, however, and an delinquint (sp?) bill. So I called Equifax and told them what was going on. They did thier investigation or whatever they do (I still think they do absolutely nothing lol), and happily (or as happy as someone can be) it's been all take care off. I got a new credit card issued and went to FFXI
So much for my 7 level 80s, 15+ level 30-79s, 300,000+ gold, and time spent playing.
I had my account hacked and cleaned out last year and blizzard replaced it all within 3 days. I agree the community is bad but I have found a group of people I like and we recently started over for the 6th time on another server.
I don't think it matters at all if the average WOW community is good or bad.
With 11M players, you bound to find more than enough people whom you like. In fact, you won't have time to make friends with them all. You can always rage quit if you occasionally PUG with people from the "bad" community.
Try harder. I've had a couple of friends getting banned for buying gold, getting banned for exploits (mostly for exploring forbidden zones) who got their account unbanned because they called and played dumb. Oh noes! You have to wait an hour to get a hold of an account specialist!! Oh well, such is life.
I saw you posted more misinformation about the authenticator. It wont make your account 100% secure (100% security doesn't exist even in banking, finance, defense...), but it WILL help. I've never read anything about so-called flaws that makes any account less secure with an authenticator, so I'll just give you a big [CITATION NEEDED] tag.
:-)
Edit - The queue time to get a hold of an account specialist is an hour according to Nifa so I updated my reply who previously stated 20 minutes.
Was hacked and banned , got my account back in less than a day... no idea what you are talking about
You got a hold of an account specialist at Blizzard in 20 minutes?! Holy crap! Can I have the number you called, please? Because calling the official number that is on the official Blizzard website, in every actual (read: non-phishing) Blizzard e-mail I get, and which I've actually posted on more than one occasions in threads similar to this, I have never, ever - not even one time - gotten through to a real live person in under 90 minutes. No, that is not an exaggeration and I have the cell phone bills to prove it. And I've never even had t o deal with them over an account compromise!
I think that maybe you exaggerate (or rather, minimize - drastically so) the call wait times or you are the luckiest person on planet Earth.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
*shrug* that's what it took me... Maybe a year ago. Twice.
I repeat: you are the luckiest person on the planet because no one I know who has had to call them for any reason has ever gotten through that fast. 60 minutes is standard, and I promise, that is not an exaggeration.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I have not read all posts....
Account secruity is the responsibilty of the player... thats all we need to know.
As to gearscore I agree it has become the defacto measure of a players ability but it is only used by guilds/group whoes focus is the end and not the journey, there are plenty of guilds/groups (and if not make one) that do not use gear score or "link achievement" crap... takes a while longer to find them but the journy is worth it.
If any one is struggling to get into a guild then cata should help, if you reroll join a guild early and not one that invites the whole server (they die fast), and if your not reroling within a few levels you'll have similar gear than the top raid players so its like a reset... make use of that.
I think this can best be summed up statistically by two words: Toyota Camry. Toyota Camry is the number #1 stolen vehicle in the US. Why? They aren't stolen due to their luxury, a lot nicer cars out there. They are stolen because there are more Camrys out there than any other car. The likelihood of being stolen goes up just becasue there are more Camrys out there, hence the Camry is more likely to be the car that gets stolen.
WOW is like this, Biggest and most common MMO game out there. Therefore, the chance of getting hacked increases based on this. The percent of hacked accounts out the 10 million users would probably be as big as many games' current total population? Just a thought about probabilty...I could be dead wrong but just my two cents.
A very sound theory, I agree with it 100%.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
That analogy is flawed since WoW is not "everywhere" like the Camrys. However if you said that the number of subcribers to WoW is like the number of Camrys out there, then that would make more sense.
The trouble of this is that, the more subscriber the game has, the more insignificant an hacked account is. Example: If there's only 100 subscribers, ten person getting hacked is 10% of your player based and makes it really important to update your account security as a company. But if there's 1,000,000 subscriber, ten hacked account is just 0.001% of the players, which is insignificant. WoW has over 10mil subscriber, so if you think about it, losing 100 subscriber is not the end of the world for them and it's cheaper for them to simply ignore it.
Also with the recent intergration of Battle.net to merge all your games into one account, you have more than likely to get your account hacked since hacker can hack your Battle.Net account and have free access to ALL your game accounts. And since Activition/Blizzard decided to partner with Facebook....you get the point.
Ready for GW2!!!
You are missing the point. If 10 players get hacked out of 1000, yes its 10% of playerbase. However, if 1000 players get hacked out of 11 million, its a much smaller percentage, but a significantly larger amount of "OMG BLIZZARD SUXORZ, LOOK AT HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE GETTING HACKED" (sorry for caps). So yeah, I agree with Bacon - the more clientelle a game has, the more outcry you will hear.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I recently got hacked. I just found out today that 3 other members of my guild got hacked also. The only connection we saw is a new member to the guild joined played with us in teams for about 2 weeks then 1 day he oddly sent us all a low level engineering item ingame mail. we all took the item out of the mail and said w/e. That night he left the guild without so much a word to anyone and the very next day all 4 of us were hacked chars stripped the hole 9. Maybe i am reading too much into it or maybe not.
Did you receive any emails from Blizzard recently?
Did your guild have a website where your information (your name and email) is shown?
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
Guild has no website. Yes i got the scammer blizzard emails daily but i never even opened them cause they always showed up in my junk box so i figured it was suspcious and deleted them without opening.
I haven't been hacked, but I get 4-5 phishing e-mails every day and every sign on the interwebs points to a dramatic upswing in account hacking.
I don't care whose fault it is, it's still Blizzard's responsibility to do something about it
Well, yes and no. Yes its still possible to crack such an account(takes rather specialized malware and a special type of reaction system). No, its not just a little more complicated. It takes a professional level knowledge of various technologies and methodologies to be successful. Using an authenticator is WELL worth the time require to purchase one, and link it to ones account. Think of it as an added layer of security.
If Blizzard wanted to make it even more difficult, they would add a virtual keypad for entry of the authenticator numbers. Code it so the numbers change locations (on the virtual pad) at random, and it would make things much more "interesting" for the bad guys.
Its what is to be expected from growth, unfortunately. Gaming used to be a very specific sub-culture that involved people with far more similarities than differences. As gaming has moved into the mainstream you now have millions of people. This immediately means you are goign to have the bad elements, and more of them. The big city has the fancy lights and all this movement while small towns are quiet and boring. Yet the big cities have the crime and dregs of society, while small towns don't, so much.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012