Well WoW has been out a long time, and the longer we play it the more you can see how the game is being catered more for the casual gamer as opposed to the hard core.
Back in the day when MMO's first came out, they were pretty hard core, my guildies tell me of epic war stories in the day's of playing EQ (Everquest) and camping mobs for 10 hours, 2 hour ghost runs to pick up your body only to die as soon as you rez and the list goes on.
Well Blizzard must be doing something right as the number of WoW subscribers is still over 12 million people.
So why the change?
Hardcore gamers are said to make up less than 5% of the population, which means the majority of subscribers are casual gamers. Hardcore gamers are on for longer hours which means they are using up Blizz's resources on their servers, hardcore gamers pay the same amount as the casual gamer, see where this is going?
If you were running a business, which gamer would you want to have as the majority of your customers?
Because of this, the game has been catered more for the casual gamer, now more than ever. Although i myself am a casual gamer (hence the lack of posts these last few months) I consider myself a "hardcore" casual gamer, that is i don't want the content so easy it's a breeze through.
It seems in the days of post WOTLK the game has become too dumbed down. I applauded Blizz when they brought in the badge system in TBC they made high quality items available for the casual player, they were not as good as the top tier items from raiding, but they were good, and they took a while to obtain.
Instances were hard in TBC, you had to use the right mix of CC, tanking and healing to finish an instance, and it still took 1.5 hrs. Heroic mode felt impossible at first! Even with experienced guildies in Karazan gear, i remember a heroic slave pens taking 5 hours! The game was a challenge and fun! The casual gamer could get good gear but it took time.
Then WOTLK came, i did my first instance, and the entire instance was multi mob tank and spank, i hit 80 and was scared to go into my first heroic as i was still in purple 70 gear with quest blues, yet it was easy! It was more of the same multi mob tank and spank. The game had been dumbed down to the point where it felt too easy...
Due to the ease of instances and multi mob tanking and spanking, i didn't even attempt stealth runs, i mentally noted mobs before a boss, and it seems they had taken out the need for stealth running, 2 groups of mobs before a boss that could easily be tanked with no cc... this helped me lose interest in running instances and pretty soon i was just running BG's for some gear. Back in those days i had no chance at soloing the old instances, being a moonkin spec with average gear, i wasn't willing to respec every other week.
Although the game is still a dumbed down version of it's former self, a few things have changed. 3.1 has introduced multi specs and new gear. Making it easier for the casual gamer to gear up, and go do some "fun" stuff.
"Fun" stuff being, i've heard of people attempting to solo old 40 man instances like MC and AQ.
Or solo mount farming in old instances like ZG or Magister's terrace.
I'm looking forward to getting some better gear, having a second spec that's good for soloing (or duoing) and having a look at old instances i haven't been to for years.
I know there are a lot of new players in the game, and it's also a great opportunity for them to look at some old content that helped make this game so popular.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
OMG WTF I BEEN HAXORED!
I'm going to talk about a topic that can unfortunately affect any one of us, and that is how to recover a hacked account.
Shortly after getting home from my trip i found my account had been hacked. It's depressing to try and logon and receive a message your account has been banned, and for those of us that it happens to for the first time, it can be frustrating and a bit bewildering.
I've heard of other people being hacked, and had guildies been hacked, but in the back of my mind, i've always have the thought, i'm careful and it won't be me. With the proliferation of kiddie scripts, and "how to" guides, hacked accounts are becoming more and more common.
At first i was pretty depressed, the quickest recovery i had heard of was 2 weeks, and that person lost all of his gold and most of his gear and Blizz weren't able to recover it! I've heard of nightmare stories of people not being able to recover accounts at all! And thinking of how many hours we put into this game, you do get emotional attachments to your characters. Enough to make people just plain quit.
Now i enjoy this game a lot, and i was considering what would i do if my account was not recoverable, i enjoy the Druid class very much (much more than my rogue, hence my rogue is still in the 50's....) But would it be time to reroll?
So of course when i was at work, i was very productive, and looked up how to recover my account.
Some of the help topics on this out there on the net are unfortuantely outdated or just not correct.
So i will share with you my experience, so if unfortuantely it does ever happen to you, at least you will have some idea of what to expect.
Most accounts are compromised by the following ways.
A friend who's got your account details and has just decided to sell you out.
A Trojan on your computer that's keylogging your account details.
A Trojan on a computer you've played WoW on (Netcafe, friends house)
A hacker that has gotten into your email and been able to get your password from there
First off if you find your account is compromised, make sure it's not your email account that was compromised, otherwise once you recover your account, it will be hacked again.
Log onto the Blizzard website http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ and reset your password from a computer that is not compromised! (Very important to know the answer to your secret question)
If your account has been banned in the duration it was hacked, you will need to get Blizz to unban your account, thankfully in today's day and age, Blizz are now accepting electronic submissions (in the past they only accepted faxes and snail mail)
To unban your account you will need to download a form
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Recovery.pdf, fill it out, and also scan some form of ID (drivers license being the popular choice)
The email submission must be under 3mb, and the scan must be clear enough for them to read it.
Email the submission to wowaccountrecovery@blizzard.com
You will receive an email from Blizzard resetting your password.
So now you can log into your account, and see how much damage the hacker has done.
Most hacking is done by thieves who are mainly after gold so they can on sell it for real cash. So after logging on, of course i found all my characters naked, well almost naked, surprisingly, the hacker must of been in a hurry, as he left me 50g, and missed 1 bag with some blue gear in it in the bank. If your character is an enchanter (as mine is) the hacker will DE all your BOP items, as shards are still worth a bit of gold.
Luckily none of my characters were transferred across servers (at least i haven't noticed yet since i only have one main) hackers do this to sell gold across different realms.
Once i had my account back (it only took them 1 day to unban my account, and this was done over the weekend, great job Blizz!) i logged a call with a GM, admittedly the GM took a while to respond about 4-6 hours, and honestly there's not a lot you can do with a semi naked character (luckily i had some PVP gear that could neither be DE'd or sold).
Once the GM responded to my ticket, he referred my ticket to a "character specialist" and it only took Blizz less than 1 day to restore the majority of my stuff. The majority being all of my gear, i was short on a lot of consumables like pots and water, and missing gold and enchanting dust.
I was quite happy with the turnaround time, my character was once again "playable". The restore of gold took a little longer, i received an email about 2 days later saying they had finished their investigation and restored 90g.... i was :( since i had over 8k gold.
I wrote them an email politely asking them to investigate further and to investigate if i could get my enchanting dust back, as i had a lot, then a couple days after that i received another email stating they had returned a lot more gold and enchanting dust.
I was very happy with the service i received and the speed of the turnaround, approximately 1 week, i pretty much had everything back to normal, i was still missing some miscellansous consumables like pots, buff food, but that was very minor in relation to everything i got back, so i was one happy camper.
Now i understand not everryone is going to have as smooth an experience as me, and although i was frustrated i did remain calm throughout the whole affair, after all it's not Blizz's fault my account got comprosmised, and i'm sure screaming or swearing at a GM is not going to get you very far.
So moving forward, what can be done to protect your account?
Well i must admit for me, i'm still not sure how i was compromised, but i can put it down to one of 2 things. I was in a netcafe recently when i went on my holiday and played WoW, so it might of been compromised there, my home computer was being a little strange when i got back, so it might of gotten a trojan.
I've since reinstalled my entire OS, and have also installed a Virus Scanner (supposedly most of the WoW trojans are easily caught by a decent up to date Virus Scanner) and i've also installed a personal firewall, Sunbelt offer a free firewall that's easy to use.
I've also been lucky enough to receive a gift of a Blizzard authenticator off a good friend who sent me one from Europe after hearing my woes (ones purchased in the Europe store work with US servers, so i'm pretty sure the authenticator's are not region specific) and for the price of $6.50 USD i would say it's a very cheap investment to protect your character. What's a Blizzard Authenticator you ask? It's a small electronic token that you can hang off your keychain, you press a button, it flashes up a number, that you need to input when you log onto your WoW account, the downside is, if you lose your token, you will need to contact Blizz to get back into your account, the upside is, it provides a lot more protection. (similiar to VPN tokens from work, or some banks have tokens to login to your online banking account)
Blizzard Authenticator FAQ
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.
Make sure you keep your OS up to date with the latest patches (Microsoft make it very easy to update your PC, not sure about Mac or Linux)
Don't share your password!
Only download mods from reputable sites, manually extract the zips into the addon folders and check for .exe files
Stay Safe!
Shortly after getting home from my trip i found my account had been hacked. It's depressing to try and logon and receive a message your account has been banned, and for those of us that it happens to for the first time, it can be frustrating and a bit bewildering.
I've heard of other people being hacked, and had guildies been hacked, but in the back of my mind, i've always have the thought, i'm careful and it won't be me. With the proliferation of kiddie scripts, and "how to" guides, hacked accounts are becoming more and more common.
At first i was pretty depressed, the quickest recovery i had heard of was 2 weeks, and that person lost all of his gold and most of his gear and Blizz weren't able to recover it! I've heard of nightmare stories of people not being able to recover accounts at all! And thinking of how many hours we put into this game, you do get emotional attachments to your characters. Enough to make people just plain quit.
Now i enjoy this game a lot, and i was considering what would i do if my account was not recoverable, i enjoy the Druid class very much (much more than my rogue, hence my rogue is still in the 50's....) But would it be time to reroll?
So of course when i was at work, i was very productive, and looked up how to recover my account.
Some of the help topics on this out there on the net are unfortuantely outdated or just not correct.
So i will share with you my experience, so if unfortuantely it does ever happen to you, at least you will have some idea of what to expect.
Most accounts are compromised by the following ways.
A friend who's got your account details and has just decided to sell you out.
A Trojan on your computer that's keylogging your account details.
A Trojan on a computer you've played WoW on (Netcafe, friends house)
A hacker that has gotten into your email and been able to get your password from there
First off if you find your account is compromised, make sure it's not your email account that was compromised, otherwise once you recover your account, it will be hacked again.
Log onto the Blizzard website http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/account/ and reset your password from a computer that is not compromised! (Very important to know the answer to your secret question)
If your account has been banned in the duration it was hacked, you will need to get Blizz to unban your account, thankfully in today's day and age, Blizz are now accepting electronic submissions (in the past they only accepted faxes and snail mail)
To unban your account you will need to download a form
http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/WoW/other/Account-Recovery.pdf, fill it out, and also scan some form of ID (drivers license being the popular choice)
The email submission must be under 3mb, and the scan must be clear enough for them to read it.
Email the submission to wowaccountrecovery@blizzard.com
You will receive an email from Blizzard resetting your password.
So now you can log into your account, and see how much damage the hacker has done.
Most hacking is done by thieves who are mainly after gold so they can on sell it for real cash. So after logging on, of course i found all my characters naked, well almost naked, surprisingly, the hacker must of been in a hurry, as he left me 50g, and missed 1 bag with some blue gear in it in the bank. If your character is an enchanter (as mine is) the hacker will DE all your BOP items, as shards are still worth a bit of gold.
Luckily none of my characters were transferred across servers (at least i haven't noticed yet since i only have one main) hackers do this to sell gold across different realms.
Once i had my account back (it only took them 1 day to unban my account, and this was done over the weekend, great job Blizz!) i logged a call with a GM, admittedly the GM took a while to respond about 4-6 hours, and honestly there's not a lot you can do with a semi naked character (luckily i had some PVP gear that could neither be DE'd or sold).
Once the GM responded to my ticket, he referred my ticket to a "character specialist" and it only took Blizz less than 1 day to restore the majority of my stuff. The majority being all of my gear, i was short on a lot of consumables like pots and water, and missing gold and enchanting dust.
I was quite happy with the turnaround time, my character was once again "playable". The restore of gold took a little longer, i received an email about 2 days later saying they had finished their investigation and restored 90g.... i was :( since i had over 8k gold.
I wrote them an email politely asking them to investigate further and to investigate if i could get my enchanting dust back, as i had a lot, then a couple days after that i received another email stating they had returned a lot more gold and enchanting dust.
I was very happy with the service i received and the speed of the turnaround, approximately 1 week, i pretty much had everything back to normal, i was still missing some miscellansous consumables like pots, buff food, but that was very minor in relation to everything i got back, so i was one happy camper.
Now i understand not everryone is going to have as smooth an experience as me, and although i was frustrated i did remain calm throughout the whole affair, after all it's not Blizz's fault my account got comprosmised, and i'm sure screaming or swearing at a GM is not going to get you very far.
So moving forward, what can be done to protect your account?
Well i must admit for me, i'm still not sure how i was compromised, but i can put it down to one of 2 things. I was in a netcafe recently when i went on my holiday and played WoW, so it might of been compromised there, my home computer was being a little strange when i got back, so it might of gotten a trojan.
I've since reinstalled my entire OS, and have also installed a Virus Scanner (supposedly most of the WoW trojans are easily caught by a decent up to date Virus Scanner) and i've also installed a personal firewall, Sunbelt offer a free firewall that's easy to use.
I've also been lucky enough to receive a gift of a Blizzard authenticator off a good friend who sent me one from Europe after hearing my woes (ones purchased in the Europe store work with US servers, so i'm pretty sure the authenticator's are not region specific) and for the price of $6.50 USD i would say it's a very cheap investment to protect your character. What's a Blizzard Authenticator you ask? It's a small electronic token that you can hang off your keychain, you press a button, it flashes up a number, that you need to input when you log onto your WoW account, the downside is, if you lose your token, you will need to contact Blizz to get back into your account, the upside is, it provides a lot more protection. (similiar to VPN tokens from work, or some banks have tokens to login to your online banking account)
Blizzard Authenticator FAQ
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/24660.
Make sure you keep your OS up to date with the latest patches (Microsoft make it very easy to update your PC, not sure about Mac or Linux)
Don't share your password!
Only download mods from reputable sites, manually extract the zips into the addon folders and check for .exe files
Stay Safe!
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