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You bought a license to use the art assets with their servers. This is actually in the World of Warcraft EULA:

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/c...

Specifically 2(f).

Same -- never been asked for previous salary.

I know at one point Blizzard used to -- which was an instant fail.

Doesn't blizzard distribute its update using bittorrent?

Sounds like it is : http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/c...

My point is that copyright law gives video game publishers the power to set restrictive policies. Your point appears to be that most relevant publishers have not chosen to assert restrictive policies, and that their policies can change and have changed. But they can change in both directions.

It turns out Blizzard has a video policy that as of today grants essentially blanket noncommercial rights and specifies when a "content use license" must be negotiated. But it doesn't give any examples of how much such a license is likely to cost or whether the conditions that Blizzard imposes on licensees qualify as a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) regime. Another page implies that a commercial license is not available to individuals: "Blizzard Entertainment® does not enter into licensing agreements with individuals." It also supports the point that policies can change: "we reserve the right to revoke this limited use license at any time, for any reason, and at the sole discretion of Blizzard Entertainment®." And here's a story from 2015 about Blizzard takedowns. Finally, Blizzard's parent company also publishes Guitar Hero, which contains third-party music to which more restrictive policies have been applied.

A post by a moderator implies that Capcom also grants blanket noncommercial rights. In fact, both Blizzard and Capcom have announced that they are working with the noncommercial YouTube community to resolve copyright strikes.

But to me, the "sports" ecosystem includes broadcasting the events on subscription or ad-supported television. A blanket noncommercial license does not cover such commercial use. So I'm still confused as to how much an organizer of a video game tournament shown on TV should expect to have to pay for a nonexclusive license to stream each event or what other conditions a promoter will be expected to follow.

My point is that copyright law gives video game publishers the power to set restrictive policies. Your point appears to be that most relevant publishers have not chosen to assert restrictive policies, and that their policies can change and have changed. But they can change in both directions.

It turns out Blizzard has a video policy that as of today grants essentially blanket noncommercial rights and specifies when a "content use license" must be negotiated. But it doesn't give any examples of how much such a license is likely to cost or whether the conditions that Blizzard imposes on licensees qualify as a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) regime. Another page implies that a commercial license is not available to individuals: "Blizzard Entertainment® does not enter into licensing agreements with individuals." It also supports the point that policies can change: "we reserve the right to revoke this limited use license at any time, for any reason, and at the sole discretion of Blizzard Entertainment®." And here's a story from 2015 about Blizzard takedowns. Finally, Blizzard's parent company also publishes Guitar Hero, which contains third-party music to which more restrictive policies have been applied.

A post by a moderator implies that Capcom also grants blanket noncommercial rights. In fact, both Blizzard and Capcom have announced that they are working with the noncommercial YouTube community to resolve copyright strikes.

But to me, the "sports" ecosystem includes broadcasting the events on subscription or ad-supported television. A blanket noncommercial license does not cover such commercial use. So I'm still confused as to how much an organizer of a video game tournament shown on TV should expect to have to pay for a nonexclusive license to stream each event or what other conditions a promoter will be expected to follow.

The IRS contract is NULL and VOID via Blizzard's Terms and Services which _directly_ states you do NOT have ownership. If you don't have ownership then neither does the IRS.

No Ownership Rights in Account.

Not withstanding anything to the contrary herein, you acknowledge and agree that you shall have no ownership or other property interest in any account stored or hosted on a Blizzard system, including without limitation any BNET account or World of Warcraft account, and you further acknowledge and agree that all rights in and to such accounts are and shall forever be owned by and inure to the benefit of Blizzard.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/c...

--
"The /. lameness filter is lame."

Welcome to The Hive Mind
You are Sarah Kerrigan, former Queen of Blades. Once the most feared entity in the galaxy, you now wait in a cell in the depths of a high-security research laboratory. Before the murderous forces of the Terran Dominion close in, you must plot your escape to the dark reaches of space and reclaim your living empire at the Heart of the Swarm.

it eventually installed a US version. However, the account/whatever my kid has is European, and for that reason it refused to work. Or something in that neighbourhood.

You should download the European version then. The European sites for WoW are www.wow-europe.com and www.eu.battle.net and you probably went to www.worldofwarcraft.com or www.battle.net. Here is the correct link: http://dist.blizzard.com/downloads/wow-installers/full/World-of-Warcraft-Setup-enGB.exe

Getting Windows 7 from a shop is surprisingly expensive

He didn't even look. NewEgg is selling it for $99. A 30 day WoW subscription is listed on the Blizzard store for $15. So your OS costs less than 7 months of playing just one of the games you listed - tell me again what's expensive?

Information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.

An account name or server IP address does not meet these requirements. The only way for it to be linked up with an individual is with the help of Blizzard. From their privacy page:

For some activities, we may ask you to create a username and password and/or to provide other, non-personal information such as your age, date of birth, gender, and/or game and platform preferences; and, combine such information with your personal information.

And what, exactly, is it in the TOS that they might be breaking that warrants this anyway?

Since the account name feature hasn't been used since the launch of the Real ID service (enabling you to communicate with your friends across all* of the Battle.net games instead of having to add them per character per game). Older titles such as Diablo 3 wouldn't feature this for example. This would apply to Wrath (2008/9ish) NDAs and perhaps situations involving pirate servers.

A megacorp acts like an asshat and reveals personal data online via photo watermarking

Personal information?

Information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, biometric records, etc. alone, or when combined with other personal or identifying information which is linked or linkable to a specific individual, such as date and place of birth, mother’s maiden name, etc.

The embedded IP address is the IP address of the server you're connected to. IP addresses are not personal information. The account name is not personal. If I follow this logic your email address is personal information, and so is your license plate? From their terms of service:

For some activities, we may ask you to create a username and password and/or to provide other, non-personal information such as your age, date of birth, gender, and/or game and platform preferences; and, combine such information with your personal information.

I've come to expect ALL megacorps act like asshats nowadays. It's a challenge to find one that doesn't.

What do you expect, they're made up of people. I can see this really impacting someone who signed an NDA not to disclose things which they willingly agreed to in the first place. I'm sure you've never played Wow for any period of time because if you had, you'd realize when updates happen to their Terms, they present them to you and require you scroll through them and agree to them before you'll be able to access the game. I don't have some hardon for Blizzard but none of what they're collecting is personal.

You know it's not a console game, right?

Yet the game could be a console game. Blizzard has also been tossing around the idea of releasing a console version. They are looking for a Game Systems Designer (Console) Diablo III. It's clearly no proof but still something they are considering.

There is a ton of stupid SHIT being posted here on the slashdot comments. I don't blame the commenters one bit, thought. Why? Because the article was a regurgitated rehashed pile of shit in comparison to the actual Blizzard press release... which was really hard to find, ya'know, being the top post on Blizzard.com after all... A very key detail, the usage of SRP, is completely missed by the article, which is leading to the majority of the confusion here and elsewhere.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html

Real links here: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html
http://sea.battle.net/support/en/article/important-security-update-faq

The important thing to note is that the passwords were encrypted with Secure Remote Password protocol, meaning that Rainbow Tables are ineffective since each password is individually encrypted instead of using a common hash. Also, the process is CPU expensive so brute forcing is highly unfeasiable for reasonably length passwords.

Found it. http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html URL in the article is wrong.

They messed up the link in the article.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/securityupdate.html

I have no idea if this accusation of Linux users being banned for using WINE with Diablo 3 is true or not, or if we have all the facts yet or not, but one thing seems quite clear to me - if your account is banned, you can't play the game AT ALL - not even single-player, since D3's single player still has to be played via their servers.

So if, through a fuckup of their Warden software you are marked as a cheater despite being nothing of the sort, you probably won't get any recourse. I mean, why would they bother investigating? Here's the TOS: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/termsofuse.html

"BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU"

This crap isn't unusual, it's actually very common and will become increasingly pervasive as more service-dependent games are brought into the world. And some people wonder why I don't fucking use Steam/Origin and only go with Humble Bundles, GOG and other non-DRM outfits.

It's May 15th and I'm going to rant, and you know why: Diablo.

I have a love/hate relationship with Blizzard. I love Diablo, but I absolutely LOATHE Blizzard as a developer.

First: Go here and page down to the Diablo section: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/legacy/

Do you see the PSone version listed? No. And you won't see the PSone version of Warcraft II listed either! It's not as if those games got bad ratings either, both got ABOVE average ratings at the time. It's like Blizzard doesn't want to admit one of their premier franchises had a console release at all.

And for those who don't know, this is the PSone version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv5dQwCFWoQ

It actually plays better (and faster) with direct movement control. And it's the ONLY version to have French language support, not even the PC version has that. (also German and Swedish even in the US version)

Then they did Diablo II...which I've never played because it never got ported. This is D2 as it's called:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea8Ma7qqQaQ

Like D1, it was isometric 2D and since it came out in 2000 the PS2 should have been able to handle a port easy. But Blizzard never did it, and I think the following is the reason why:

2001's, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srBRB18mHEs

Notice how in the review, Diablo is mentioned? BGDA is a Diablo clone, and a very good one, with a true 3D engine with a rotatable camera. It was a VERY popular game. The company that made it, Snowblind, licensed the engine out and there were more similar games made a LOT more. Good times, good times. Blizzard simply couldn't release D2 on consoles with Snowblind having trumped them with their engine.

And as always Blizzard said, "Oh were not doing Diablo III yet, it''l be ready when it's ready"

And my thoughts were, "yeah, if you were still had theconsole developer get-up-and-go like in the old days D3 would have been out in 2002! Because the sequel comes out in 2 years or less or heads will roll. Lazy Bums."

It didn't come out in 2003, or 2004, or 2005, or 2006, etc etc. Really what were they doing? It's not like a developer can't develop an MMO AND single player games at the same time......Square-Enix did....twice.

So eventually D3 was announced in development, and eventually video was released in 2008.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NR6XNYs8f4

When I was that video my first thought: "Did Blizzard buy Snowblind's engine, because it looks EXACTLY like a snowblind engine game on the PS2."

in 2010 they posted job listings for people with console experience for a Diablo-related concept. So I expected the game to be cross platform from the start But then Blizzard executives said things that implied that a console release wasn't certain, very very stupid things
One was reported to say that D3's gameplay "might" work on consoles. Might? It's rather funny that he said, "Might" Since
the original Diablo game was released for the PSone... in 1998. Doesn't he remember?

He also said that the controls might be an issue. Well now, considering D1 was released for the pre-dual shock PSone
I don't think that's a problem at all. Heck, the modern consoles have USB ports so a keyboard+ mouse control
option could be thrown in alongside a traditional controller one. In fact, having played both the PC and PSone versions of
Diablo, I can say that the control pad suits the game better because it's less stressful on the hands. I can play the PSone
version for far far longer without crippling hand fatigue/pain.

In an interview Alex Mayberry is quoted as saying: "We want to give console players the Diab

how does your ISP handle "I can't play World of Warcraft" complaints?

Presumably by referring the user to official information: "In the event of such a restriction, you may be redirected to a direct download. Due to the nature of direct downloads, you may experience a slow transfer if redirected in this way."

Now wait a minute.
Assume I am that developer and running those ads. Now Facebook comes and says "listen dude, we have blocked your ads. We are sorry. We feel your ads are negatively impacting us. Please either change them or run them elsewhere. Yes, we know it's not nice; yes, we know we might lose a bit of cash; but please understand our motives". Now I would be a bit pissed at them but I would understand.
I would even appreciate their approach.
But what they did is piss-poor judgement and reaction. Disabling the account altogether for clouded (yet duh!-style obvious) reasons? "We can't tell you why"? That's utter bullshit.
See, that's the difference between "some company nicely trying to protect their business" and "some company stomping on you head-on to protect their business".
Many, many EULAs say "we can disable your account for any reason or no reason" (anyone playing World of Warcraft? Yes? read it: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/termsofuse.html - "BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU."). Sorry for caps, guys, it's the original shit.
And guess what. They actually DO it. Whether you hear of it or not is a different story. Most people don't publicly complain, and if they do, they don't gain momentum unless they're celebrities.
I was playing a rather crappy MMO and in our group's internal chat we were typing in Romanian. Now the game masters had no issue with private chatrooms using non-english languages; but they had a problem with their filtering bots. See, Romanian has a word (translated to English, it means "How") which is spelled "cum". And their filter reported me numerous times for abusing this word. So my account got banned (one game master actually was pressed enough to mention why). Needless to say, the account never got reactivated.

Anyway, the point is that companies AFFORD to be unethical. And they got your agreement to be so. Kinda sad if you think about it.

From the FAQ I read:

Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player.
In-game access to public chat channels unavailable. Players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper.

Nearly every PC game made doesn't really need admin privs at install

I thought PC games had to write to the %ProgramFiles% folder, which requires administrative privileges, in order to install. For example, the support page for World of Warcraft states that "We cannot support the game on a non-administrator account." Or should programs be installing themselves in %APPDATA% instead?

I still play Diablo II as well. The varied characters and their diverse skill trees make for high degree of re-playability. And it looks like Diablo III's characters and their skills will be just as diverse. I'm already salivating over the Demon Hunter.

You are not RSA's customer, people like Blizzard and PayPal are their customers. You are a customer of their customers.

Blizzard and PayPal are VASCO customers. More likely US govenement agencies are RSA customers.

You are not RSA's customer, people like Blizzard and PayPal are their customers. You are a customer of their customers.

Yes, that Blizzard. It was an April Fools' joke, but it's still valid.

You're probably joking about his account being hacked monthly, but you can get a Blizzard Authenticator for a very cheap price. You have an added advantage in that if you ground him from the game you can take the authenticator and he can't login behind your back. Also, if he's getting hacked that much, teach him how to work with phishing emails and to keep his Adobe Reader, Flash and Java up to date.

Blizzard could single handedly make linux a gaming platform. They already release OpenGL versions for the Mac so technologically, they are a short hop from a linux client rather than a giant leap

The Source engine does OpenGL on the Mac now too, so Valve is in the same position. The Steam client partially runs on Linux (natively, that is, not under Wine) too, although Valve is denying there's an actual Linux client for end users now. (Of course, Michael Larabel of Phoronix claims otherwise.)

Time will tell if it will come to pass or not. In the meantime, write an email and express your interest.
http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/contact.html
http://www.valvesoftware.com/contact/
Protip: writing a physical letter carries a whole lot more weight. Do that if you can. ;)

They've already announced that all of their classes will be playable as either male or female.

It's one of the first questions in their FAQ.

My biggest gripe, and the reason I have not yet purchased SC2, is their region locking and the inflated cost of the Australian version.

The price of the US version is currently USD$59.99. The australian version, AUD$89.95 (USD$87.38) a 45% markup.

Give Blizzard a break... they had to spend a lot of money translating the game into a language you drooling cavemen could understand.

My biggest gripe, and the reason I have not yet purchased SC2, is their region locking and the inflated cost of the Australian version.

The price of the US version is currently USD$59.99. The australian version, AUD$89.95 (USD$87.38) a 45% markup.

during last night's marathon session of Starcraft 2: Liberty (the RELOADED release)

You know, you can say you pirate things because it's a civil matter. However if you out what you pirate, like in this case, the copyright holders can sue you. You have already admitted you pirated and seeded the newest Starcraft 2, so I have personally wrote to the copyright holders to let them know that and everyone should do the same.

The addresses to contact are

Blizzard: https://us.blizzard.com/support/webform.xml?locale=en_US
Activision: http://www.activision.com/index.html#contact|en_US
BSA: https://reporting.bsa.org/usa/internet/edit.aspx
FBI: https://tips.fbi.gov/

"Apple has used so few GPUs... Where does the 9400M and the 320M fall in that list?"

TFA:
"Mac Recommended System Requirements:....9600M GT or ATI Radeon® HD 4670 or better"
Usually I'd agree, it can sometimes be hard to figure out if a 4890 is better than a 5750, etc, but in this case they made it pretty clear. A 9400M is not as fast as a 9600M, so while it'll play on minimum it isn't the recommended GPU.

FYI if you ever want to check just google "(BLANK) vs (BLANK)". Chances are you'll find a review comparing the two GPU unless one of them is so old it's not even worth comparing it with the other GPU.

Here's a great example: "PC Recommended System Requirements:... ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better"

So I googled: Radeon 3870 vs 4770 and found this review which shows the 4770 scoring 30%+ better framerates than the 3870.

I wish I was checking /. on Tuesday instead of posting on the WoW forums. As far as I can tell, Slashdot has completely missed the point here.

The forums have virtually nothing to do with it. Blizzard could delete the forums tomorrow and it wouldn't affect the community much, aside from having no way of talking with developers / tech support / customer support. We'd all happily migrate over to mmo-champion overnight--it's not that big a deal. Forcing real names on the forums to "prevent trolling" is a total red herring. What this is really about is Activision's recent deal with Facebook. Face-Lizzard-Vision is not something that people want to see.

Of note: In the past when Blizzard has announced major changes to this game that they felt would make this game better, official posters have been very active on the forums posting to clarify concerns, and outline why they see this change as being beneficial. Aside from a couple posts clarifying major misunderstandings, there have been *NO* posts from official Blizzard posters in the last 40,000 posts in the official threat (plus probably at least 10,000 posts in threads that have been locked and/or deleted).

What does this tell you? Blizzard is not behind this change. This change has been forced down the pipe by Activision to attempt to monetize the player base with ad revenue from the facebook deal.

If you're interested, here's a rough timeline of the changes:
September 2009 interview with Activision's CEO where he says that he will attempt to exploit all Activison's franchises for maximum revenue
May 5th, Blizzard announces a deal with Facebook for Facebook integration with WoW
Two weeks ago, RealID is introduced as an optional feature to chat cross server with close friends and family only
On Sunday, an exploit is discovered which makes anyone with an AddOn installed (virtually everyone) vulnerable to have their name identified in game by anyone.
On Tuesday, Blizzard announces that RealID is no longer an optional service, and will now be required for forum use.
A few hours later, a Blizzard poster on the EU forums clarifies this has been in the works for over a year, and that outrage was expected and planned for.

Can you connect the dots? Here's a hint: the purported purpose (slapping down trolls) could be just as easily be handled by requiring forum goers to select a unique handle, or only one WoW character, with which to do all their posting... you know, like, every single other major forum on the planet? The only reason that first name and last name specifically are required are if you make the connection to Facebook!

Additionally, in the patch two weeks ago, changes were made to the Terms of Use (unannounced) to include a subsection on gathering user data for use with a third party advertising partner.

This Real ID changeover has also been planned for over a year, and Blizzard posters have made no attempts to clarify how this proposed system will improve the forums (after all of two minutes it took forum posters to suggest the alternative solution of merely requiring a unique forum moniker.) Blizzard is clearly not behind this change. This is a done deal, by Activision, to sell out WoW players to advertisers, sharing their personal information with the world, through Facebook.

One WoW fan has co

A) A history of letting you not need the disc in the drive anymore after a patch is NOT really a friendly way of stripping away DRM once the "hype" dies down. Besides, people are getting the dates wrong here, Starcraft removed needing the disc with patch 1.15, which was released almost ten years after the game debuted. Requiring online activation of a unique code is apples-to-oranges with keeping a disc in the drive.

I said this elsewhere, but I'll repeat it here: Blizzard only removed the CD-check on the games they now sell digitally through their online store. That is: StarCraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo 2. And their respective expansions.

It clearly doesn't apply to all their games, since WarCraft 2: Battle.NET Edition was released after StarCraft, using the same game engine, but has no no-CD patch... and not sold digitally through said store.

Please document this claim.

See the Patch 1.12 section: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21358

As of last week it still asked me for the disk.

learn2read patch notes. You need to copy the MPQ files from the Diablo II discs to your local installation folder or it will still ask for the CD.

Honestly, I think this may be fake.

Is Blizzard's site a fake?

I think I can safely say that Blizzard said it will be released on July 27, 2010.

For completeness, here is the press release on blizzard.com.

Honestly, I think this may be fake.

Is Blizzard's site a fake?

I think I can safely say that Blizzard said it will be released on July 27, 2010.

For completeness, here is the press release on blizzard.com.

Not strictly.

StarCraft/BroodWar are supported through WINE with Blizzard's tolerance on BattleNet.

The NoCD patch (official, not a crack) for SC/BW (currently at 1.16.1) works OK in Linux.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=21149&rhtml=true

Of course, it there were to be an "official" native release of SCII for Linux, I would probably drop my current boycott of the title for lack of LAN play.

At which point prices will have to drop significantly because you're no longer selling a game; you're selling a subscription to a game.

Aha. Think a PC game can't cost you $50 *and* $15 a month? Sounds like you don't play Warcraft. (Never mind the exclusive DLC items that cost up to $25(!!!) each.)
Which is why the publishers are so happy to be supporting third party infrastructures like OnLive and Gaikai. We pay them for the subscription to stream games to our screens, so the publishers don't catch any flak for double dipping. We still pay the publishers whatever premium they wish to set for playing their AAA title at launch, vs. six months later, vs. pay-per-play. Full profits, full lockdown, and no physical product to be manufactured or stocked. They are hoping to hell that OnLive works out.

Funnier Blizzard April fools joke

Except... Warcraft is 100% open GL.

Is it? Or better yet, start the same client two times at the same time and see it complain about DirectX.

World of Warcraft. Don't know if it is being sold through steam though...

(Activision-)Blizzard has been trying to get their own piece of the legal game download market through the Blizzard Store.
I think it actually has a chance of taking off. Steam got big through Valve's big titles: Half-Life 2, CS:S and other source engine games.

Blizzard has even bigger games: World of Warcraft and soon Diablo III and Starcraft 2. Those three titles alone can turn the Blizzard Store into a well-known and credible platform.
Once that has happened they can move in the newest Activision titles, instead of offering them on Steam.

From Blizzard's page:

PC Minimum Requirements:

• Windows XP SP3/Vista SP1/Windows 7
• 2.2 Ghz Pentium IV or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
• 1 GB system RAM/1.5 GB for Vista and Windows 7
• 128 MB NVidia GeForce 6600 GT/ATI Radeon 9800 PRO video card
• 1024×768 minimum display resolution
• 4 GB free hard space (Beta)
• Broadband connection

Don't allow users to even see the screen without making receiving a certified letter from the publisher with a secret code. Don't let the user even play the full game. Force them to download large chunks of it from your server after releasing only half of it on disc.

Store integral parts of every level on a master server that can only be accessed by pausing the game and entering the secret code.

Well, it's not quite a certified letter, but if you accept the Battle.net Authenticator as the secret code you need to enter, Blizzard pretty much already does that. Sure, you only need to enter the secret code once per gaming session and not once per level, but that's close enough, I think.

And you forgot the part where you charge your players $15/month for the privilege of downloading the other half of the game.

It will sell trillions of copies!

Well, maybe not trillions, but World of Warcraft is up in the tens of millions.

And you thought you were joking, didn't you?

Also, do they plan on putting them out other ways for free if they try this. When I looked into one you had to buy the thing from Blizzard for like $25 or something.

The authenticator is hardly $25. In the US, it's $6.50 with free shipping, and in the EU it's EUR6.99 also with free shipping. The price covers the cost of the physical unit and (obviously) the shipping. Blizzard's hardly making a killing on these.

For mobile authenticators, the Blizzard Website has more detail. The short version is that the Mobile Authenticator is available on a wide range of phones, depending on provider. Support isn't universal, though.

That said, the only time Blizzard could make Authenticators mandatory would be at a game-changing event, like the release of the next expansion. If they go ahead and do that, they'd probably throw Authenticators in the box, to automatically have near-total distribution. Their biggest concern is probably whether they can source a few million of them.

The long and short of it is that account theft is a big problem, both for Blizzard and for people who play WoW. Not everyone has a locked-down system, and phishers are using tactics formerly reserved for actual banks to try to get account info. Players have to deal with having their account possibly stolen, Blizzard has to deal with perpetual requests (some possibly fraudulent!) to restore characters/items, and the game as a whole suffers from the RMT that goes on.

I, for one, welcome our Keyfob and Mobile-Authenticating Overlords.

Also, do they plan on putting them out other ways for free if they try this. When I looked into one you had to buy the thing from Blizzard for like $25 or something.

The authenticator is hardly $25. In the US, it's $6.50 with free shipping, and in the EU it's EUR6.99 also with free shipping. The price covers the cost of the physical unit and (obviously) the shipping. Blizzard's hardly making a killing on these.

For mobile authenticators, the Blizzard Website has more detail. The short version is that the Mobile Authenticator is available on a wide range of phones, depending on provider. Support isn't universal, though.

That said, the only time Blizzard could make Authenticators mandatory would be at a game-changing event, like the release of the next expansion. If they go ahead and do that, they'd probably throw Authenticators in the box, to automatically have near-total distribution. Their biggest concern is probably whether they can source a few million of them.

The long and short of it is that account theft is a big problem, both for Blizzard and for people who play WoW. Not everyone has a locked-down system, and phishers are using tactics formerly reserved for actual banks to try to get account info. Players have to deal with having their account possibly stolen, Blizzard has to deal with perpetual requests (some possibly fraudulent!) to restore characters/items, and the game as a whole suffers from the RMT that goes on.

I, for one, welcome our Keyfob and Mobile-Authenticating Overlords.

Also, do they plan on putting them out other ways for free if they try this. When I looked into one you had to buy the thing from Blizzard for like $25 or something.

The authenticator is hardly $25. In the US, it's $6.50 with free shipping, and in the EU it's EUR6.99 also with free shipping. The price covers the cost of the physical unit and (obviously) the shipping. Blizzard's hardly making a killing on these.

For mobile authenticators, the Blizzard Website has more detail. The short version is that the Mobile Authenticator is available on a wide range of phones, depending on provider. Support isn't universal, though.

That said, the only time Blizzard could make Authenticators mandatory would be at a game-changing event, like the release of the next expansion. If they go ahead and do that, they'd probably throw Authenticators in the box, to automatically have near-total distribution. Their biggest concern is probably whether they can source a few million of them.

The long and short of it is that account theft is a big problem, both for Blizzard and for people who play WoW. Not everyone has a locked-down system, and phishers are using tactics formerly reserved for actual banks to try to get account info. Players have to deal with having their account possibly stolen, Blizzard has to deal with perpetual requests (some possibly fraudulent!) to restore characters/items, and the game as a whole suffers from the RMT that goes on.

I, for one, welcome our Keyfob and Mobile-Authenticating Overlords.

They're $6.50.

http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000822

blizzrd have never said they will protect your privacy, you've just assumed it.

Gee, here we are in a thread discussing Blizzard's privacy policy, the one where they give a list of special cases where they are allowed to disclose your information and giving it up on a general request by law enforcement was not on the list. Seems like a pretty straightforward promise to me.

in their terms and condidtions they have a clause stating they will co operate with law enforcement.

Ah, so now we have a case where the privacy policy contradicts the terms of use. That's interesting.

Even more interesting is that the "Last Updated" date on the Privacy Policy is newer than the Terms of Service (January 14, 2009 versus July 29, 2008).
Seems to me that the most current document is the controlling one since Blizzard says they can change the terms of the ToS at anytime.

So I guess that means you are "BAM" out of the game, doesn't it?