Ask Massively: Stay inside edition
In sharp contrast to last week's advice, this time around, I'm advising everyone to stay inside. There's all sorts of cool stuff wherever you are right now, and it's kind of hot out today. Besides, look at how much fun Christopher Walken is having inside. Don't you want to be like Christopher Walken? Don't you want the ability to fly when your indoor cavorting requires it?
In other news, please enjoy the earbug that's infected the entirety of the Massively staff on the day this was written.
In other other news, it's time for this week's installment of Ask Massively, addressing significantly less weighty issues than last week's gold selling question. No, this week we're talking about old livestream videos, the reason for the non-ubiquity of authenticators, and of course, the great outdoors. If you've got a question you'd like to see answered in a future edition of the column, leave it in the comments or send it along to ask@massively.com.
sjheiss asked: What happens to all the videos you delete [from your Livestream history]? Is there anywhere I can watch them?
They're deleted. Unfortunately, we only have a limited amount of space in our account, which means that the older installments need to slip away after a given amount of time. Beau's livestreams get posted to his YouTube account, but there are no hard and fast archives of the older streams as an aggregate.
Fienemannia asked: If authenticators are such a boost to account security, why don't more games offer them?
Authenticators do indeed make it a lot harder to hack a game account, but they require a fair amount of work to get set up. In essence, every authenticator needs to be produced twice, so that when you press the button and generate a random code, the same code is generated at the login server. (That's not quite how it works, but it's close enough for a quick explanation.) From the standpoint of the company, that's a lot of extra money for a service that not everyone will necessarily use or even want. So it's a cost analysis matter -- it's not worth investing in without a reasonable suspicion that the game will be big enough to merit the extra security.
capfnu asked: Is this an insight into the type of people who you believe read Massively articles, Eliot?
Nope. It's an insight into things that the people who write Massively articles think about. And it's just plain good advice.
Quarlo noted: I took a walk. Straight to Burger King for the Texas Double Whopper (no lettuce). Thanks for the advice.
But you left the tomato on there? Man, I don't get what that's all about.
Looking for some advice on which class is best for soloing in Aion? Not sure who this Raph Koster fellow is? Curious about the release date of NCsoft's newest MMO? You've come to the right place! No one knows MMOs like we do. If there's anything you'd like to know about the MMO genre or the site itself, Ask Massively is here to help every Thursday afternoon. Just ask!
