Anti-Aliased: Hax0red
Today was a beautiful morning. It was a morning filled with sunshine, chirping birds, and a good night's rest. I was up writing late last night, so it was nice to sleep in a little before getting a start on the day. Yet, all cozy naps must come to an end, as I had to get up to man my computer, check my e-mail, and get a start on today's work.
As I booted up Mozilla Thunderbird and looked over the e-mails that were floating in my inbox (yesterday's MAG comments, Star Wars Galaxies comments, and some new screenshots for D&D Online) I saw one that kinda stuck out. It was from Blizzard Entertainment Support, and it was a password change notification from Battle.net. At first I chuckled, thinking it was some type of spammer who was trying to get me to give up my password, but on looking through the letter, I noticed it was authentic Blizzard material.
That's when my phone rang. It was one of my guildmate's numbers flashing on the screen. Those birds stopped chirping after that booming string of profanities escaped my mouth.
Gold farming *censored* ruined my writing plans!
Anti-Aliased wasn't supposed to be about hacking this week -- it was supposed to be about MAG, Global Agenda, games of that caliber and how we as a culture don't accept them as MMOs. Unfortunately, gold farming account hackers had a different idea this week, and thus my fingers are typing furiously at 10:40 AM this morning. You guys will just have to wait for that column next week.
I've already tried to log into Battle.net, but no such luck, of course. My password really was changed. As I picked up my phone and talked with one of my close friends, he told me that Sephare, my lovable angry retributive paladin, was online. He had already guessed that it wasn't me and had the guild file tickets to notify Blizzard support.
"What tipped you off that it wasn't me?" I asked him.
"You logged in and didn't condescendingly bitch at everyone in sight in the RP chat in your usual Sephare manner," he replied with a chuckle. Touche, my friend, touche.
He went on to tell me that my guild has already filed tickets with Blizzard support, and they were hoping to get a response to lock down the account. Apparently Faux-Sephy had already cleaned out the guild bank before they got the chance to demote her, but we had nothing important in there except money, which Faux-Sephy couldn't get to. Sephare had alot of access as an officer/former raid leader of the guild, but they luckily never gave me access to the money, thank goodness.
I really didn't want to call Blizzard, but call them I must
I haven't even played World of Warcraft in three months and I had no intention of going back. I even joked around on Twitter, saying that I had finally quit Warcraft for good. Matt Mihaly (nice pirate hat, btw, Matt) from Sparkplay Media didn't believe me, so I even took a screenshot of my cancellation screen just to prove it. I wasn't worried about someone getting my account name -- I had converted over to Battle.net, so it wasn't even my accurate account name. Either way, I was going into this with proof that said I hadn't even logged in.
Plus, as all of this happened today, it would be quite easy for the support team to revert the character and our guild bank to what it should be. The account changes included a password change, payment status change, and, most likely, an e-mail change. This wouldn't be hard to prove.
I punched in Blizzard's number and let it ring. The happy automated woman picked up the phone and told me to stay on the line. Estimated wait length was only 20 minutes.
Sheesh, all this for a game I didn't even play anymore.
