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Beware of scam e-mails!
I've heard of plenty of reports of scammers trying to get your account information with e-mails claiming to be from Blizzard, but after having one land in my Around Azeroth mailbox, I thought I'd share it with you. And while we're at it, we can talk about how you can tell that an e-mail came from Blizzard or not.First off -- this didn't come to my primary e-mail address. Blizzard doesn't know me as "aroundazeroth@gmail.com" so any mail going there has to be bogus. And secondly, it's coming from Blizzard Europe, while I don't have a European account. However, if this had landed in my primary mailbox, and substituted US contact information for EU contact information, I'd have to take it seriously -- after all, it appears to have been sent from blizzard.com and it sounds awfully ominous. They suspect me of trying to sell my account and they're going to suspend it unless I verify it! Yikes!However, here's the big catch: after going through all of their ominous threats, they tell me to give them my account name and password. Nope, sorry. A Blizzard representative will never ask for your account name and password -- so don't give it out to anyone claiming to be with Blizzard, because that's all the information they need to take over your account. And if you get a mail like this that you're just not sure about -- don't give them any information, but confirm its authenticity with Blizzard, first. Get in touch with their billing support team by phone or e-mail!For those of you curious as to what one of these scams looks like, the full text of the e-mail is after the jump.
Tobold cancels his account (until next expansion)
Tobold, MMO blogger-at-large, has posted that he has cancelled his World of Warcraft account.Sign of the times or outraged for the wrong reason? That's for you to decide-- Tobold says his guild has moved on to Serpentshrine, and since he's not attuned yet, he probably never will be, which means there's no point to moving on. Apparently no one has told him about Vashj's attunement scrolls, which will let a guild that beats Vashj attune whoever they want to SSC. Of course, he'd have to wait until his guild actually beats Vashj, but hope is not lost yet.Then again, maybe Tobold's just going with the flow. If you ask me, leaving because your guild has moved on is a terrible reason to leave-- not only is there lots to do out there, either on your own or with the people in your guild who don't happen to be running SSC, but I do believe there is more than one guild in the game. Surely someone else would be willing to take Tobold to Karazhan, right?Either way, it's his choice. As he says, cancelling the account sends a clear message to Blizzard that he wants things to change. And if enough people send that message (for whatever reason), then you can't but agree that they will.
WSVG giving away Blizzcon tickets to lucky 3v3 team
Want to hit up Blizzcon but don't want to shell out for the ticket? Our contact at the World Series of Videogames sends along a note that they're sending one lucky guild to Blizzard big event in Anaheim, California. The catch? They'll be picking one lucky 3v3 team at random from all of the teams that attend their next event in Dallas, Texas on July 5-8.Yeah, it's kind of a big hoop to jump through (especially when you can just pay $100 now to get your own ticket anyway). But then again, tickets are going fast (I got mine the other day), and if you're planning on going to the event in Dallas anyway, it's a nice bonus. Interesting that they're giving it away to a lucky 3v3 guild-- maybe they need more of them to fill out the brackets? If you're interested, register an account on the WSVG site, sign up for the event when you're logged in, and then you've actually got to show up to the event to be eligible.We'll keep you updated on more giveaways as they come along-- WoWWiki has already given away a couple of tickets to their own contributors, and we're sure there will be a few more in different places in the days to come.
Would you cancel your account if....
I've never canceled my World of Warcraft account, so I can't give you any first-hand experience of the process. However, I do know that Blizzard never deletes characters, so if I were going to go on vacation for a month to someplace without internet access (ha!), I could cancel my account and pick up again later without any real consequences. But what if Blizzard deleted characters when you canceled? Over at Curmudgeon Gamer, they note that the cancellation screen seems to change depending on the reason you choose for canceling. When choosing an option for needing more time for school, family, etc, our curmudgeony friends were given the following message:We are proud that we were able to make a sucessful [sic], enjoyable game. And as much as we'd like you to keep playing, we understand that there are certain cirumcstances [sic] which may prevent continuous game play. Currently, we have no plans to delete World of Warcraft accounts regardless of their activity history. Provided that the characters do not get deleted by the account holder, we will retain all character information on our servers indefinitely.So you're safe for now -- but next time you try to cancel, who knows! It seems like it would be a PR disaster for Blizzard to start deleting character accounts at this point, if you cancel, they still hold the threat over you.
Beware the cursor hack
Apparently there is a flaw in the way windows handles animated cursors that could enable people to hack into your WoW account. Now I'm not sure why anyone would want an animated cursor in the first place, but de gustibus non est disputandum. It seems that malicious cursor sites can install arbitrary code on your computer along with the cursor, where it sometimes lies in waiting until you log in to WoW. At this point it pounces, records your login info, and sends it back to the hacking group responsible.The good news is Microsoft already has a patch out to fix this vulnerability (released on April 3rd), so go download it (auto-update will get it) and you should be safe. One interesting factoid in the BBC article on this flaw is that the value of a WoW account is now greater than the value of a credit card, at $10 and $6 respectively. What's so useful about the average WoW account that it's worth $10 on the open market?Update: You can find the download link for Microsoft's patch in our previous article on this vulnerability. Please download the patch if you have not already.[via MMORPGDot]
All they're asking for is your blood.
I'm not sure whether we should file this under "I'm glad Blizzard doesn't do this" or "I wish Blizzard would do this!" but Chinese gaming company Moliyo (who run the MMO Cabal Online) is offering banned players an interesting method by which to reactivate their accounts. What do you have to do? Simple! Donate blood, and they'll unlock your banned account within three days. And if you're an active player, you can receive a special game account for participating.This is, to my knowledge, a completely unique way of going about reinstating banned players -- while supporting a good cause. And asking players to donate blood is no more time-consuming than Blizzard's usual procedure for restoring stolen accounts, which requires notarized documentation proving your identity. (And will still likely take several weeks for Blizzard to investigate and restore any missing property, which doesn't always happen.) Perhaps Moliyo's way is easier in the long run -- though, being a needle-phobic, I'll stick to the usual customer service queues.
Over a hundred thousand accounts closed
During the month of November, another 105,000 World of Warcraft accounts were closed world-wide for violation of the terms of use. These closures have resulted in 12 million gold being removed from the game's economy. Many of these closures are the direct result in the investigation of reports made by legitimate players -- so keep reporting, all reports are investigated thoroughly, though rarely immediately. So happy holidays, everyone -- and may your new year be festively bot-free!
Dummy Xbox Live accounts blocked, not banned
Microsoft has begun blocking non-U.S. residents' access to exclusive downloadable content. Xbox Live users in Europe and elsewhere have long taken advantage of a well-known workaround, registering North American "dummy" accounts in order to access downloadable content exclusive to that region -- in some cases, North American users have done the opposite. Not anymore.With the launch of a downloadable TV and movie service in the US, Microsoft is suddenly interested in controlling the destinations of the content it provides. The solution is simple: block access of region-protected content from any IP address that does not correspond with the country/region that the user's Xbox Live account is associated with. We are still awaiting an official statement regarding this new policy, but Microsoft's Chris Paladino has apparently confirmed, "I do know for a fact that we are not banning the accounts."
Rumor: portable user accounts coming in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?
A new Apple patent uncovered by PC Pro hints at the possibility of portable user accounts making their way into the Spring '07 release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. For a quick break down: the long-standing rumor has been that this would allow a user to keep their account - the entire home directory, applications, media, preferences, you name it - on an external storage device like an iPod, and simply plug that device into any Mac and log in with access to all of their stuff. The possibilities are pretty juicy, and for once the language in the patent is fairly straight-forward, if not a little repetitive: "The multi-user computer system, eg. through its operating system, locates user accounts not only in local storage of the multi-user computer system, but also in any removable data storage attached to the multi-user computer system."While this particular rumor has been in the wind for a few years now, we don't have anything else specifying that it is for sure arriving in Leopard. This could be yet another unused patent, or it could be slated for 10.7 for all we know. As usual, we'll keep our ears out.[via Slashdot]
76,000 accounts closed
In another move against gold farmers, Blizzard has announced that 76,000 accounts were closed and 11 million gold removed from the game during the month of September. And while Blizzard's efforts in this direction haven't halted gold farming or selling (evidenced by adverts in my in-game mailbox as recently as yesterday), they show no sign of halting their own efforts. If you see a player you suspect to be bot-farming, Blizzard encourages you to report them to the Hacks Team via an in-game help request or use of their e-mail form. You probably won't get instant gratification, but all reports do get investigated.
59,000 More Accounts Closed
In their continued effort to rid Azeroth of hackers and gold farmers, Eyonix announced this evening that 59,000 accounts were closed during the month of June for terms of use violations. Have you seen anyone behaving suspiciously on your server? An account that's being controlled by a bot isn't too difficult to spot if you spend a bit of time paying attention - and Blizzard investigates all reports. So if you suspect such behavior, report it to a GM, and help the community be rid of the annoyance of hackers and bot farmers.
An Epic Journey of Epic Proportions
Last night, my raid leader was looking for fools -- ahem, volunteers -- to undergo an "Epic Journey of Epic Proportions", as he called it. I love the random and offbeat things that one ends up doing in WoW (from random Molten Core pick-up groups to helping out guildies with crazy quests), so I signed up. The epic journey in question? Infiltrating four dark, dastardly dungeons in order to "Steal fire! Become men! Obtain red (absolutely not pink at all) wisp minions!". With the Midsummer quests ending soon, and a sudden desire for rare pets, an adventure was on the cards.
Prepaid Time Expired?
Apparently an error caused US accounts that should have been automatically renewed on April 20th or 21st to not be renewed - meaning some of you have been encountering a cryptic "Prepaid Time Expired" error when attempting to login, despite the fact that your payment information is accurate and up to date. To fix it, for now, just go to the account management page and re-enter your payment information by clicking "Change Payment Method." Of course, a lot of players are likely attempting to access the same page, which means you may have trouble getting there...
