I'm going through withdrawls

[ChumleyEX]

So Friday I found out someone took over my account. Friday night Bliz disabled my account for 72hrs. I personally thought the bad person got back in and changed my pass this time, but no it was Bliz, and they won't talk to me about it until it's unlocked. My friends caught the evil doer while he was looting my stuff. As I understand Bliz might give most of it back and I sure hope they do. I know that I run a firewall, I have a virus/spyware scannerthat is on all the time and scans weekly and I keep windows updates up to date. I work in IT and I am aware of the reasons to do all of this. The only thing I can think of is it was from my notebook, I don't think the little guy stays on long enough for the scanners to do their jobs. I do think Bliz should reset it for me and I feel it's their duty in a way. Why? Well because they are the keeper of the data, I am not. I can't back it up and reinstall my toon into their database. Should I have to pay for this service? I think that would be exceptable, after all it must have been something I did wrong so I should have to handle the responsibilty as much I can. My bannishment is hopefully complete withing 8 hours or so. I sure can't wait to get on there and play. Do you think these idea's would help prevent this sort of thing?

1. Bliz could have a security option that you pay for that provides you with a token that has a rolling number on it. If you don't match the number at login then you can't get on? Thats pretty secure and could be used anywhere. Of course not everyone would use this option, but for folks with several epiced out toons this would be nice to have.

2. Bliz should sell gold. Gold farmers won't have anyone to sell too. I know there are moral reasons not to do so and of course bliz would rather you spend time farming your own gold, but I feel this idea will cut down on evil doers doing evil things.


Would you pay a 1 time $40 fee for the token or would you buy gold from bliz?

[Twoflower]

2. Bliz should sell gold. Gold farmers won't have anyone to sell too. I know there are moral reasons not to do so and of course bliz would rather you spend time farming your own gold, but I feel this idea will cut down on evil doers doing evil things.

so you think doing bad things organised is better than trying to fight bad things ? shame on you.

[ChumleyEX]

I guess if Bliz does it then it's not a bad thing.

[MidnyteRose]

Personally I think you have the right to demand to talk with Bliz WHILE your account is banned if this happened. Especially since someone got onto your account. It is also a way for them to lose customer rating - in a way. Secondly, Bliz should replace your items that were taken from you since your friends caught the person in the act of looting them.

1. Bliz could have a security option that you pay for that provides you with a token that has a rolling number on it. If you don't match the number at login then you can't get on? Thats pretty secure and could be used anywhere. Of course not everyone would use this option, but for folks with several epiced out toons this would be nice to have.

2. Bliz should sell gold. Gold farmers won't have anyone to sell too. I know there are moral reasons not to do so and of course bliz would rather you spend time farming your own gold, but I feel this idea will cut down on evil doers doing evil things.


Would you pay a 1 time $40 fee for the token or would you buy gold from bliz?

I agree with the first one. You should be allowed an option to have some sort of security enabled for your account. However, I'm not sure how well that'd work for the users who use the GameCards to pay for their accounts. I use GameCards because even though Bliz says my card info is protected I don't even want to chance that. Especially if someone tries to get onto my account. With that happening, there is always the possibility that the person can get CC info and do a lot more damage to your bank rather than just WoW.

The second part I'm not sure where I stand on that. True it may reduce the baddies from getting onto other people's accounts but there're sites that sell gold as well.

[Khab]

A key fob would be a good idea but asking for $40 is a little much. Paypal offers this option and charges $5 for it. Personally I think all banks and financial institutions should provide them free of charge to their customers.

[Proverbs]

Blizz cares about customer satisfaction the same way a crack dealer doesn't care about customer satisfaction.

They are supported by thousands, possibly millions, of addicts. Even if some players quit due to bad customer service or any other reason. Blizzard still has millions of other customers who will always renew their subscriptions.

[MidnyteRose]

Aye, that's true. I don't use Paypal and I don't like to use my DC/CC for stuff like WoW. Even if there's protection to the info I still wouldn't want to risk it. Call me a "worry wort" but that's just how I am, lol.

[xDarkDrifterx]

First, I'd agree about having some security on your account, but we should all get it for for free. We're the paying customer, why should we pay them to protect their customers data? Also, they should change the way they are storing the data so that when your account is hacked you get EVERYTHING back, including the random enchanted items.

And, as much as I am against gold buying - Blizz should sell gold (but limit it). Why? Check data in the real world on certain drug, firearm, sexual crime rates of countries and in our case, states YET to pass legalization of marijuana usage, prostitution, and carrying a concealed weapon. Then look at the same statistics a year later - they have, in most cases all gone down. If the gold sellers have no reason to advertise, sell gold, set up trojans and key loggers to steal accounts all because blizzard sells gold cheaper than they could even begin to, then they'd have no reason to exist. If you see that ad selling 1k Gold for $100 then Blizz should just sell some at waayyy cheaper of a cost than that, essentially the gold sellers would have to pay money to stay in business, as they could not compete with the low cost that Blizzard would provide it's gamers. This would run most of them all out of business within the World of Warcraft.

[MidnyteRose]

First, I'd agree about having some security on your account, but we should all get it for for free. We're the paying customer, why should we pay them to protect their customers data? Also, they should change the way they are storing the data so that when your account is hacked you get EVERYTHING back, including the random enchanted items.


I agree. Added security to your WoW account should indeed be free. As well as getting everything back at no cost if your account does get hacked.

Also, I bought 1k gold for $40. To some people that may be expensive while others think it's cheap. Personally I'd say it about average for the time. Then again, that same site has 2k gold for about only $15 - $20 more. I'd say that's actually a pretty fair deal instead of having to pay twice as much to get 2k gold.

[det]

Okay...so Blizzard starts to sell gold. Then there are people who will still offer powerlevelling services, BG botting, sell accounts, see well geared toons.

What will you ask for next? The option create an epicced out toon at lv 70 right away?

In that way improving account security sounds good, but there will always be people who are careless with their accounts and other people will find ways to steal accounts.

You can keep accusing Blizzard of not caring, but as long as people remain gulible and lazy, others will exploit that.

[maladroit2000]

Blizzard selling gold is quite a good idea in my opinion, I've never thought of that. It would solve a lot of the minor niggles I come across in the game, and maybe they could even spend the extra cash on making a better game or improving customer service somewhat...

[xDarkDrifterx]

Okay...so Blizzard starts to sell gold. Then there are people who will still offer powerlevelling services, BG botting, sell accounts, see well geared toons.

Yeah but those people have asked for it - they gave out their information to another party to obtain leveling services, BG Botting? (you need a third party to BG bot? people just rig stuff or use a macro program) and the account selling will always occur - even if in game gold didn't exist (people have always and will always try to sell various game accounts that they're done with). They also bought little Jimmy's account knowing full well that after a few phones calls and an email, little jimmy can access the account again (so they're not acutally being hacked like other's that have not bought or sold accounts have - they took a risk purchasing the account - so who cares about their account and if it gets hacked? I sure don't. I'm talking about real single owner accounts that have never used a service, bought gold, etc. The issue IMO is the GOLD selling companies and all the ways that they are trying and successfully gaining access to peoples accounts via fraudulent emails, viruses, key loggers, etc.

What will you ask for next? The option create an epicced out toon at lv 70 right away?

No, that's no even close to buying gold. I'd like to protect those people that have worked hard for those epic'd out 70's. I'd be pissed if people could just make a 70 off the bat.

In that way improving account security sounds good, but there will always be people who are careless with their accounts and other people will find ways to steal accounts.

Indeed, but don't you think that without gold selling the number of people stealing accounts would dramatically go down?

[ChumleyEX]

Ok, I never said anything negative about their customer service. I have worked at call centers before and I know that it's near impossible to balance customer service without spending an outragious amount of money on it. I live near their support site and I know they are constantly hiring.

I didn't know that the tokens could be so cheap, if pay pal does it for $5 then I would think bliz could do the same. I don't mind paying something like that for peice of mind. For those of you that don't like using Credit Cards you would just need to buy a game card with that much on it, thats how my friends have transfered their toons from one server to another.


When you compare selling gold to things like power levelers I get lost. I don't see how a power leveler can come in and steal my account for my level? He can come in and steal my gold to sell to others but why would he do it if bliz already sells it. I would be wasting my time.

Of course you don't have to sell gold, you could sell mounts and enchants. Have a vendor that takes a specific code and then an email or mail that you get. Once you get the mail it gives you a timer and the code. Get to that person before X amount of time is up, drop the code in, open trade or get a glyph and then your done.

hmm maybe I should write them and then buy some stock..

[piscene]

$5 for security? Sure I'd do that.

Gold-selling is bad for the in-game economy. People with ready cash can stop farming mats to sell, which then drives up the price of the remaining mats. People without ready cash then can't afford to buy anything in-game because the gold cost is too high. I see it creating more problems than it solves.

[Twoflower]

1 : security : use a somewhat imaginative password, dont give it to anyone else, dont download fishy stuff and dont browse fishy webpages and you are safe. No matter how much you pay them, blizzard cannot protect you from your own stupidity. And lets face it, the only way someone can get your acount info is if you give it to them. Just dont do stupid things !

2 : they DO care about their customers. It just has its limits, like every company. If you have a serious claim, a real problem ingame etc, they will help you. If they see yet another person crying that they lost something from their acount to someone else logging in to it, well, i wouldnt care too much either.

3 : selling gold is wrong. It is against every principle of the game. The game rewards effort with some ingame reward. items, gold, reputation, whatever you want. But it is ingame reward for ingame effort. That s how the game works. Blizzard would never be so stupid and break their own game rules.

[Tikki]

1 : security : use a somewhat imaginative password, dont give it to anyone else, dont download fishy stuff and dont browse fishy webpages and you are safe. No matter how much you pay them, blizzard cannot protect you from your own stupidity. And lets face it, the only way someone can get your acount info is if you give it to them. Just dont do stupid things !

2 : they DO care about their customers. It just has its limits, like every company. If you have a serious claim, a real problem ingame etc, they will help you. If they see yet another person crying that they lost something from their acount to someone else logging in to it, well, i wouldnt care too much either.

3 : selling gold is wrong. It is against every principle of the game. The game rewards effort with some ingame reward. items, gold, reputation, whatever you want. But it is ingame reward for ingame effort. That s how the game works. Blizzard would never be so stupid and break their own game rules.


I have to agree with all of this.

1. You don't go around giving you bank password or your email password to people. Give your WoW account the same security. If you're going to 'cheat' by using third parties to get ahead in the game, you have to take the risks involved and you can't blame anyone else buy yourself. You should have added security on your computer for internet websites, downloads, etc. Things are specific to just WoW websites, addons, etc...there are security risks involved in anything/everything and unfortunately it is up to the user (you) to protect yourself from it.

2. Blizzard can't please everyone. And they can't begin to try. Think of everything that's on their plate...all the problems, all the expansion demands, etc. My personal experience has been great with Blizzard. They've always been nice, courteous, and eager to help me.

3. Gold selling should be nil. People have lost sight of the point of the game- to personally gain money, buy gear, etc. It's a game, the work you do in the game is suppose to be enjoyable...it's not suppose to be easy. You often hear of people saying they're "bored" with the game because they've reached endgame and they've done it all. If Blizzard started selling gold, it would enable people to reach the endgame quicker, and most likely result in people being bored, asking for more expansion...this goes back to "pleasing everyone". Gold making is a MAJOR aspect of the game, if not the most important. Therefore, it's against the idea of the game to sell gold. It's like playing a board game and not rolling the dice, but yet going to the end of the board...you have to roll, a numerous amount of times, to get to the end.

I think the game is perfect the way it is. People need to get back to the root of the game which is working hard to get your goals.

[det]

Indeed, but don't you think that without gold selling the number of people stealing accounts would dramatically go down?

Really no idea. However: Blizzard has (with daily quests) found an easy way to make gold in my opinion. Yet there are still goldsellers at EVERY corner of Orgrimmar on my server. People are lazy. People will want an epicced lv 70 NAU! People buy accounts. As long as that is so, there is still an incentive to STEAL accounts.

1 : security : use a somewhat imaginative password, dont give it to anyone else, dont download fishy stuff and dont browse fishy webpages and you are safe. No matter how much you pay them, blizzard cannot protect you from your own stupidity. And lets face it, the only way someone can get your acount info is if you give it to them. Just dont do stupid things !

2 : they DO care about their customers. It just has its limits, like every company. If you have a serious claim, a real problem ingame etc, they will help you. If they see yet another person crying that they lost something from their acount to someone else logging in to it, well, i wouldnt care too much either.

3 : selling gold is wrong. It is against every principle of the game. The game rewards effort with some ingame reward. items, gold, reputation, whatever you want. But it is ingame reward for ingame effort. That s how the game works. Blizzard would never be so stupid and break their own game rules.

QFT

I suspect on some level that Blizzard has gone from not caring about us to actually hating us :(

And you can back up this "argument"?

[piscene]

I suspect on some level that Blizzard has gone from not caring about us to actually hating us :(

Blizzard hates the 9million people who pay a monthly fee? I think not.

There are so many customers of this game, and a very wide variety of expectations for Blizzard to try to live up to. It's unrealistic to think that they will succeed every time.

As far as I can tell, Blizzard makes a serious effort towards taking care of their customers.

[ChumleyEX]

1 : security : use a somewhat imaginative password, dont give it to anyone else, dont download fishy stuff and dont browse fishy webpages and you are safe. No matter how much you pay them, blizzard cannot protect you from your own stupidity. And lets face it, the only way someone can get your acount info is if you give it to them. Just dont do stupid things !

2 : they DO care about their customers. It just has its limits, like every company. If you have a serious claim, a real problem ingame etc, they will help you. If they see yet another person crying that they lost something from their acount to someone else logging in to it, well, i wouldnt care too much either.

3 : selling gold is wrong. It is against every principle of the game. The game rewards effort with some ingame reward. items, gold, reputation, whatever you want. But it is ingame reward for ingame effort. That s how the game works. Blizzard would never be so stupid and break their own game rules.


1. You honesly don't know must about the bad people on the net and their bad practices or you wouldn't say things like "And lets face it, the only way someone can get your acount info is if you give it to them. Just dont do stupid things !" There are sniffers, phisher, spoofers, keyloggers, social engineering etc etc, that can TAKE your information from you. Have I claimed to hand out my password, I'm sure my password is way more imaginative then most other peoples. To be honest I'm not sure how you know what is a fishy website and what isn't before going to it. I came to this site without anyone's suggestion and it could have had some sort of keylogger involved. If you know anything about security then you will know that adding in another level of security makes it harder to crack. Who you are, what you know and what you have make a pretty strong set of rules. In this case, your login name, your original password (normally 9 characters at a minimum with numbers and additional asci characters{ @$!<> and then something that only you have, be it a smart card, a RSA token, Thumb print, USB key, etc. USB dongle or the RSA Token would be cheap and would almost completely eliminate the need for the department at wow that helps with stolen accounts.

2. Do you see me crying, or being accepting of the situation? My main complaint in this all is that I was locked out for 72hrs and I just want the joys of playing the game. (which was promptly delivered after 74 hrs)

3. Thats a fair opinion, I only suggested that for debate and can see that side of it with no problem.

[Twoflower]

2. Do you see me crying, or being accepting of the situation? My main complaint in this all is that I was locked out for 72hrs and I just want the joys of playing the game. (which was promptly delivered after 74 hrs)


2 : true enugh, and i understand your want to play :) i dont understand either why they have to lock down a acount for such a long time to work on it.

1 : i wouldnt want them to add more and more levels of security, to be honest. it is enugh for me that i have to tipe my password every time. Sure you could add usb dongles, eye scanning, fingerprints and some code you get like for ebanking. it would just be overkill.

There are sniffers, phisher, spoofers, keyloggers, social engineering etc etc, that can TAKE your information from you.

in all of these cases you actively GIVE the information they want. well, keyloggers may be a bit different because you dont know that you do. But all of these require you to hand out your information, knowingly or not, willingly or not. You do tipe it in by yourself.

As long as you never ever give your password to anyone and you have a working virus check and a working firewall, i see the chances of getting hacked dropping near zero very fast.

And yes, it is difficult sometimes to guess if a site is legit or not. With this forum it is easy, with others it is not :) But you get experience the more you are around the net. It realy boils down to experience, there is no rule of thumb you can easily apply. In general you are better safe than sorry, i guess.

i am sorry for your loss, and if everything you claim is true, you are the 0.0001% exception that still proves that the rule is generaly true :)

[ChumleyEX]

":in all of these cases you actively GIVE the information they want. well, keyloggers may be a bit different because you dont know that you do. But all of these require you to hand out your information, knowingly or not, willingly or not. You do tipe it in by yourself."

So it's not stupidity, you have to type the password at some point, and if your typing it into the correct place then your doing everything right. NOTHING STUPID! A sniffer can still snif out what your sending. I suppose I should never use a password and just not login to the game. lol

[Twoflower]

So it's not stupidity, you have to type the password at some point, and if your typing it into the correct place then your doing everything right. NOTHING STUPID! A sniffer can still snif out what your sending.

but where did you get that sniffer ? ^^ i hear about keyloggers sometimes, this is the first time i hear about sniffers. i assume you get both on some fishy pages. That would be a stupid thing right there, even looking at these pages.

but this discussion is not realy going in the right direction, anyway. and i am not realy a expert. to get back to the original post :

how are your withdrawls symptoms ? arent these 72 hours up soon ? did you allready hear something from blizz ?

[ChumleyEX]

but where did you get that sniffer ? ^^ i hear about keyloggers sometimes, this is the first time i hear about sniffers. i assume you get both on some fishy pages. That would be a stupid thing right there, even looking at these pages.

but this discussion is not realy going in the right direction, anyway. and i am not realy a expert. to get back to the original post :

how are your withdrawls symptoms ? arent these 72 hours up soon ? did you allready hear something from blizz ?


A sniffer is something that the bad people have on there end. They sniff the packets that your computer sends and recieves. like someone smelling a pizza, the pizza doesn't have the nose, it just has the smell. They get the packets and then sift through the info on there and somehow pull out the info you typed. Thats why everything you send should be encrypted or secure, but not everything is. Your info is zooming across the net on the same lines that mine is, the packets and how they are directed decree where they go. All I have to do is intercept your packets with your credit card number or wow account info, and I am your new master.

I was owned

oh yeah monday night at 10 I was back on. I couldn't sleep, I just kept thinking about backstabbing noobs in wsg