Is Real ID The WoW Killer?

HowManyOfMe.com

There is person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Every time a new mmo comes out, the question is asked.  Sometimes it is loud, sometimes it's just a murmur, but it is asked.  Will this game kill WoW?  Nothing yet has come close to killing WoW, though some have taken a few subscriptions for a time.  Seems they always come back, or someone else takes their place.

When Real ID was first introduced, it was to be an option, not a necessity.  You could share your email address with whomever you wished, and they would know where you were playing in the WoW universe and what your real name was. Eventually, they would be able to find you in Starcraft, even Diablo, from their Battle.net friends list. This I am definitely a fan of.  I have people in this game I consider to be good friends of mine, that I want to be able to find me should I ever leave, and this is a good way for it to happen.

The recent news of integrating the Real ID system into the Starcraft and Cataclysm forums has my tongue tied.  On one hand, here is me, inconsequential nothing of a person with a terrible credit rating, no items of value, and no job to ruin from anyone knowing that I, Jennifer, posted on the World of Warcraft forums.  From what I can tell, there are more than enough Jennifer Morton's on the internet to gain me a smidgen of anonymity.  However, there are people out there with last names that are rather unique, situations that require them to be a bit more zealous of their personal information's safety.  For them, I am against this addition to the optional Real ID system.  Sure, they have said you can choose to not post on the forums.  Being a social game, I can see where some people would feel that their gaming fun had been compromised by not being able to chat with like minded individuals over their lunch break in the forums.

  I read, thanks to Saresa's snippets in her post, one person's idea of a Real Alias for the Real ID system.  Fabulous idea!  The beauty of this game is to be able to slip on the mask of your character and become them, even for a short time.  It is an escape from Jennifer Morton and her life.  For those that enjoy the social aspect but still need a bit of anonymity, this would solve many problems.  Only Blizzard need know our real names, not the general public.

Will this kill WoW?  WoW seems very resilient, but this threat is from the inside.  I can see them taking a big subscription hit if there are no changes made to their current plans for the forums. I hope that they find a way to make this more palatable, with perhaps a Real Alias system or some other way to protect those who need to be protected. Without any change, I fear for the life of what has been my game of choice. 

HowManyOfMe.com

There are people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Thanks For The Beta Invite, Spammer.

In the interest of adding useful posts to my blog occasionally, I thought I would share some of the great mail messages Gmail has filtered into the spam folder for me.  Before I do that, however, I will show you what a real Blizzard mail message looks like.

Click to see it, but I'm sure you already got one of your own!

 That is one example of a real message from Blizzard.  Another example is of the recent message sent to those of us who manage parental controls for another account.

Bonafide mail from Blizzard, with personal info smudged.(Gmail was afraid, but I know this is the real thing. Someone else in my feed reader received one as well.)

Now, if you click on that image, you will notice that sentences make sense, there are capital letters in all the right spots, and if you have received this email, you will notice that the links go to where they should (best way to check without actually clicking is to mouse over the address that is hyper-linked. It should show where it is pointing to at the bottom left of your browser). 

For your entertainment, I will now post several images of email trying to make me believe they are from Blizzard. These range from fairly convincing to "OMG! Did you really think I would fall for that?".

Ignoring the red bar on each of these ( I daren't move them from my spam folder, they might bite!), you can see that each of these have problems with sentence structure, capitalization, and just failing at any order in their wording to resemble a native American English speaker. If you believed any of these for a second, you're normal, a second is all some people need to click a link. Be smart and take more than a second, calm down, and click responsibly. Know what to look for!  Blizzard will NEVER ask for account information through an email. 

This ends Spam Email Avoidance 101.  For your enjoyment, I have posted below some spam for an Aion account I have never had.  Long live my Gmail spam blocker!

Need A Security Guard? Please Comment.

In my blog reader there have been at least 5 accounts in the last week that have been compromised. I know the number is much larger than that, but 5 in one week on my blog reader seems large. In the interest of helping my little corner of the World of Warcraft community a little safer, I will be choosing one person from the comments on this post to receive one gently used authenticator, from the Blizzcon '08 goody bag. I used it on my account up until today. I just installed the nifty authenticator on my Ipod, so I won't be needing this key fob style authenticator anymore.

So, leave a comment! If you already have an authenticator and still want to comment, go right ahead. Just play nice and let me know in your comment that you do not want in on this raffle, to give others that really need it the chance to secure themselves, free!

Good Luck!

Edit: I forgot to give this an end date. I will have the drawing for the authenticator on Monday, August 3rd. This will give people a week to post comments and find my blog :) I will announce the winner in a short post that same day, as well as on Twitter (my username is Shawndra).

HACKED!

Thankfully, not me, but a good friend of mine from way back in my start in MMO gaming. It's the holidays, and I don't remember seeing much of him, but then, noone has really been on a whole lot lately. Pie>WoW, after all. So, late, late last night, verging on early this morning, my hubby is hanging out in our Ventrilo server with a friend who only can play while his family is unconcious, and another who like to hang out late night, just because he can. Graham mentions that my friend is on, and that he is in the Shadow Labyrinth. He says he tried talking to him in guild chat, then in whispers, but all he got in response to "How are you?" was "hi". I was just getting ready to turn in from a long session at Rock Band, soloing my way to stardom (who needs a stinkin' band anyway?), when he said this, so I logged in to see what I could do.

It started out with the obligatory, "Hey man, how are you tonight?", which, after several minutes, I finally got a "hi"back from. My friend is no one word wonder. He is intelligent, and knows how to carry a conversation. So I shoot back,"What, don't you know how you are tonight?". This time the reply is much faster,"?". I know I am definitely not dealing with my friend, so the whispers stop. I go to the guild page, and remove him from the guild. Oh, that sparks more than a single character response! But it is garbled. Almost as if someone was typing in their native tongue into a Babelfish type translator. I reply to the idea of "Why did you kick me from the guild? Can I come back now?" with,"Until the owner of this account logs into the ventrilo server and asks to be reinstated, no.". Then I open a ticket. Now, I know in the past there really hasn't been much the GM department can do of suspected hacking, but
I figured, it was worth the time it took to type out. As I waited for an answer back, I grabbed my friends e-mail address from the site contact list and sent him an explanation. In retrospect, I should have marked it URGENT! I'm going to do that now....

Alright, task accomplished. Now, today when I logged in, my ticket had been escalated. Still no more than the "we have flagged the account" kind of action. But, better than nothing. Hey, if it gets caught fast enough, my friend could very well be a wealthy man!

On a slightly similar note, A level 74 of the Horde faction was yelling in Dalaran today, in rather garbled engrish,"Port to Shaatha, 5 gold, hurry!" or something along those lines. Sounds like another hacker. Believe it was a shaman. Not surprisingly this comes so shortly after Blizzard warned everyone in a game wide in game mail to do what you can to make your information secure.

Authenticators are inexpensive. Less expensive yet are the safeguards you can employ, for free, to keep your passwords safe. Run a not so ordinary browser, like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. Block Java and scripts from sites unless you are 100% sure they are safe. Keep your information to your own computer ONLY...you don't know where those other computers have been! And, for heaven's sakes, don't buy gold or use leveling services! The price you pay up front is only a small amount of the cost.

I'm anxious. No new word from Blizzard or my friend. I have to log into game now. Please, heed this piece of advice. Lock your system up tight!