f13.net

Just a heads up.

http://www.wow.com/2009/10/12/battle-net-accounts-required-by-november-11/

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?sid=1&topicId=20433765714&ST=US-4647695-bDVuiWq14uwWPNyJRQ3dBQnjmTrqcPkiCKg

Fucking lame.

I figured this would happen eventually, which is why I did this months ago  :awesome_for_real:

Can someone clarify for the stupid among us what exactly this means?  Like, they want us to make a B-Net account, ok.  But what if we don't?  What if we're currently unsubbed to WoW?  What if we haven't logged on to our B-Net account in like eight years and can't remember the info?

go to www.battle.net

create an account using the giant button on the main page.  Add your WoW product key(s) to your games list.  There might be a special "merge WoW account" type button in the account management page once you are all signed up.  Its really not a big production to do, and it was pretty much just follow the on screen instructions when I did it.

What you're forced to do:
It takes 15 minutes to set up. You create a new b.net account and then you attach your wow account into the new b.net account.

How you use it:
You now log in to your WoW account using the your b.net login (which is whatever email you used to create the account with, so it shouldn't be a long one) instead of whatever account name you used initially.

What it gets you:
A free penguin pet in WoW
The ability to continue playing WoW :)
You can d/l the free b.net authenticator for the iphone (and other smartphones I think) and use it for additional account security.

I have the feeling I'm getting screwed, and I'm not sure how yet.

Only change you'll notice is logging in with your email address instead of your login name.  You're getting screwed out of an insignificant amount of time it takes to set it up all up.

Heh, I think I did this the day they announced it was available.

It's probably a warmup for the release of battle.net 2.0 along with the star2 beta.

I didn't sign up with the Battle Bots promotion because I didn't want the accounts linked.

On the one hand, people are less likely to be selling or giving away an account linked to their e-mail.  This can be gotten around by using a throw-away address.  What I don't like about it is that if someone hacks my WoW account, then they've also hacked my b-net account and possibly my e-mail, which they now definately know.

I don't like this because when I pirate Starcraft 2 it'll catch me somehow.

I signed up and when it told me to check my email so I could proceed, nothing came up. Not in the inbox, not in the junk folder. Yay. I love having to sign up for bullshit corporate identity "I hope you forgot to uncheck the 'we can spam you' box!" garbage.

Doesn't Guild Wars use an email for the account name? I converted mine a while ago. I was inconvenienced, but the omgdrama fails to register.

Apparently you can change the email address associated to the account whenever you want. There's a link in the b.net account maintenance page.

I don't see how to get the penguin though.  I want a penguin!

Just have done the conversion of your WoW account before some date yet to be announced.

They will auto mail you the penguin on a specific date (i believe the November 11 deadline), assuming you have already merged your account.

If you are late to merge, they will auto mail you your penguin up to a certain point as soon as you do the merge.  They basically said that anyone who merges their account before the deadline or shortly after the deadline will get the pet.

Evidently I did this already, too.  I don't know why I did it and I didn't remember doing it when I started to play WoW again a couple of months ago.  It took me fucking forever to figure it all out.  This is one of the reasons why change is bad!

Yeah, when I switched over I invested in of these things just to be safe: http://us.blizzard.com/store/details.xml?id=1100000622

The authenticator is not currently available for the iphone. Something about 3.1 or somesuch broke it.

Hmm... can you add a US wow account to an EU bnet account? I don't mind switching to a central account (NCsoft's plaync.com is similar), but I don't want to get regionlocked or anything...

Mildly annoying for me because I've got 2 wow accounts on the same email address  :oh_i_see:

You can be "nameyouwant@plaync" or something similar if you want.  It doesn't have to be your e-mail address.

Considering how many people I've known to get hacked, some of which were competant computer users, I would rather be the one to make that decision than Blizzard.

I don't want my accounts linked.  I don't want people following me around from game to game unless I ask them to.  I especially don't want to my WoW account (and all the catassing therein) banned when I get caught running Pindlebot2.0 in Diablo3.

So to keep all my shit separate, I need to go make up a new bullshit e-mail address for every account I want to have in every blizzard game I play?  That's certainly not the end of the world, but what worthless hassle.  Really, what is it with the kids and this social networking crap?  I don't WANT everyone from any game I've ever played to know my character name in every new game I play. 

Your avatar has never seemed so appropriate!

It's the only complaint I have about the merge (which I had to do before to claim my BlizzCon pet anyway). Maybe I don't want my guild to know I'm ignoring them because I'm playing Diablo 3! Well ... maybe I don't want them to know for SURE. I am pretty sure they'd suspect anyway.  :grin:

EDIT: Shit, oops, this is Sjofn. PLEASE HOLD.

My computer broked and I am using Ingmar's while he is at work and I am a tard.  :drillf:

How would they know?

The basic understanding I took away from Blizzcon is that battle.net is going to become basically like Xbox Live or Steam - you'll be able to see what people on your friends list are doing, send them messages, etc.

(Real Ingmar this time.  :oh_i_see:)

You say that, BUT HOW DO WE KNOW.   :ye_gods:

I'm sure Blizzard will build in something to avoid any account based association if wish to avoid it.  Back in the day I'd have paid micro-trans to find out the identity of certain board trolls.

Bwaaaahahahaha!  :why_so_serious:

Seriously, my dead computer sucks. :(

Yeah, cause we haven't worked out you knackered your PC playing Sims 3 during your recent bout of FORSAKING US.

They've handled this.  After you login with your e-mail address, it gives you a list of your WOW accounts to pick from before the character screen shows.   At least that's what the FAQ said when I converted over months ago.

Side note: Not a single damn login server hiccup since converting.. even when all the other folks were bitching about the login being down.


This is my complaint as well.   Login name and password are a 2-part security measure.  You've just given up half of that security for no real reason.

This is why.  http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/recaps/battlenet-panel.xml?rhtml=y

And with all due respect to the social recluses among us I am very much looking forward to this change.

Fake Edit: Oh, and  if they do it like CoX you will have the option to either add a persons character OR account as your friend.

There better be an option to turn all that shit off. I used to keep an alt around specifically to log onto when I didn't feel like listening to guild bullshit. Now I have Blizzard cramming a bunch of "Who gives a fuck?" Xbox-wannabe bullshit features down my throat. I don't want to be part of some online gaming destination blah blah social blah blah garbage, I just want to play my MMO.

It was pulled down for about two weeks. It's back in the app store.

re: two accounts on one email: As was said, they account for this. You end up adding them both to the battle.net account and get a dropdown when you logon via your email.

Pretty painless, actually.

I wholeheartedly approve of this move.  Although I do think there should be a way to opt out of the social thing.  Like an invisible mode or something.

Except for not remembering what I did and trying to log in with my old info when I started the game up again, I don't see any real issue with it.  Maybe there is.  I'll have to think about it more.  Ouch.

One of my Sims was totally about to throw a birthday party for himself when my computer died. :( Now he will NEVER SEE ADULTHOOD.

Think of it as him gaining eternal youth.

I used my yahoo mail account, which is my expendable spam mail. And I got an authenticator. It's up to about once a month one of our guildies gets hacked. And so far it's always been someone with a deactivated account who's on break.

Oh that's cool, thanks for the info.

Edit: OK, it's actually *easier* now because now I've merged I only have 1 account name and the drop down box thing works great  :awesome_for_real:

Or is it not a coincidence and they're just sitting on the password for signs of inactivity so that they can hijack the account without user interference?

I think these days if I knew I was going to be taking an extended break from the game I'd have all my guilded characters demoted so in the event of a hack, it's only my crap that needs sorting out rather than the Guild Bank's contents too.

I think a big  chunk of the guild is going to be playing Diablo 3 anyway.

Re: hacking. I really can't recommend the Blizzard authenticator enough. It's six bucks and you're unhackable. Very worth it.

Convenient that they will sell me the solution to the problem they just created for me.

 :roll:

What? They've been selling these long before this apparently sky is falling account merge.

The battle.net mobile authenticator is free from the App Store and I think it is available for lesser devices as well. (http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_GB&articleId=35970&parentCategoryId&pageNumber=1&categoryId=4301)

I have been using the authenticator from last year's Blizzcon, since I seem to go through iPhones at a rate of about 4 per year.

As much of a social recluse as I am, people being able to find me in other games doesn't bother me.  If they're doing it to be jerks, I'll ignore them.  If they are people I played with before, it will be utterly fantastic if they find me again, in all likelihood.  I've certainly lost track of enough people in the MMOs I played in the past, with very little chance I'll ever run into them again.

What is so hard to understand?  Just as I dislike using the same password for accounts, I like having separate accounts using different account names.  It's not that hard a concept to grasp considering I'm a LAN Administrator for a living.  It violates the security policies I lecture my users on.

The "selling me" quip was just the flippant response to some of you not getting why this matters to me, and it IS technically accurate.  Two days ago I had no problem, now I do, and your solution to it is to pay for the privildge of fixing it.  Which all it does is help protect my WoW account, it doesn't unlink the account name from one of my e-mail addresses.

I don't care if YOU think it's a minor issue.  To me it's about security which is a big deal to me.  In summary, fuck you.

Also they don't list my version of the RAZR, just every other version, on their app list.

I'm sure someone of your technical prowess can set up some separate dummy b.net accounts to handle the incredibly pressing security issue you're facing.

edit: But honestly, does anyone really think a WoW gold-farming hacker gives a crap about your email address?  So they can possibly hack your email address and intercept your attempt to recover your account?  Will they really go to that much trouble or take 2 seconds and log onto to one of the hundred other accounts they've hacked?  Heh, and a keylogger at some point has probably already gathered your email address. 

To me it's not about hacking my e-mail address.  I could give a fuck about that as it's a yahoo address.   However, they've just handed the keys to half the kingdom over to the hackers.  It's easy enough to buy e-mail addresses from companies.  Buy them from a game company that doesn't care about selling them and you've got a great list of probable, not just possible,  B.net logins to hack.

Also, since gold sellers own most of the info sites, they now have a hell of a lot of login information they can exploit, since forum registries require e-mail addresses.  Are you keeping a separate e-mail for your forum logins vs your site logins vs your bnet login?  I'm guessing not, and even if you are you're an outlier.   Hacking guild forums will also prove a wealth of login data and this provides a hell of an incentive for gold sellers with 0 scruples to buy up the free hosting sites as well. 

It's a horrible, stupid format that creates more problems than it fixes.  There's no real reason the B.net accounts couldn't have had an account name that WASN'T an e-mail address.

Yeah this is the core of it.

Eww, that could be nasty.  Good thing I never register at those sites and my wow password is unique compared to others I use for my email address.

Still, I have an iphone.  Could easily protect myself from whatever pro manages to pierce my paranoia.

Now that I know you're someone who should know what they're talking about, I'm even more confused.  When I thought you were clueless it made a lot more sense.
 
 - what's to stop you from merging each wow account to a separate b.net account, and therefore email? Then you will have multiple accounts which is the same thing you had before.  And none of the email accounts have to be your "real" one.  I guess it's an inconvenience that you can't link your wow account to your main email address and feel secure.  But in the past, if they had your account password, they could also login to wow.com and see the email linked with the account in the account info.  So what's changed, other than the email address being front and center?

- how is selling/giving an authenticator selling you the solution to a problem they created? The underlying problem is the perceived high value of WoW accounts, not the changes in how the accounts are set up.  Unless I'm missing something.


fake edit: OK, I read your latest post and I'm still a little confused. Harvesting email addresses gives them half of each account's info - I get that. But the path of least resistance, to me, still seems to be keylogging and phishing rather than trying to brute force the passwords to these millions of accounts they have the account name to. But I will concede that IF they have a way of harvesting good, current, wow-playing email addresses, it is a little less secure.

real edit: I heard that you're some high percentage less likely to be hacked if your account is tied to a bnet account.  Anyone else heard that or have a source? I don't know the reasoning behind it.

Bitch, please. Lantyssa is a *LAN Administrator*. You better get out the way.

I assume by wow.com, you meant worldofwarcract.com, as wow.com is the wowinsider blog. Based on that assumption, you could not gain the email address by logging into account management. the email address was actually masked, like a credit card would be.

While I don't actually have a lot of fears on the change, I do understand that it's not the best solution, and there's not really any reason not to just have an "account name". Though, I suppose the comparison to XBoX Live should be brought up in this respect too, as it also uses an email address, as I recall.

Exactly. There are a million and one games that use an email address as the account name. There are a million and one more to find your email address out. Guild Wars is another example and one which had a huge scamming problem for a long time. The sky didn't fall, the earth wasn't rent asunder and email accounts weren't hacked. Use a different password and email address. If it's that scary, unsub.

Yes I meant worldofwarcraft.com.  I didn't want to type it out. But you forced my hand!  I forgot about the email address masking, good point.

A million and one games aren't WOW though.  A wow account is more high-value than other MMOGs because the raw numbers of people keeps the price of gold from entirely crashing. There is always some sucker, no matter how easy they make it to acquire gold.  And I don't think "unsub" is the solution Blizzard wants people to move toward  :oh_i_see:

So in summary, I now agree with Lantyssa, though I think it's less of an issue than she seems to.

The risk is a bit higher with WoW. It is probably fairly hard to monetize a stolen Live account; WoW is pretty easy, hence why there's so much more of that sort of activity around WoW.

Is the sky falling? No. Is the risk to your account/information higher after the merge? Yes, by an amount that is not negligible, even if it isn't tremendously large. It is cool that Blizzard offers two-factor authentication, but they are definitely sacrificing a little security for convenience on the account name side.

It is worth being more careful with your info after the merge, and I've seen enough people I know in game 'hacked' to say that it really isn't paranoid to do so.

Fuck off.  I was explaining why I don't like it.  If you want to spread your account information to the wild go nuts.

Making a billion fake e-mails isn't a good solution either, since you have to track them in some fashion.  See Morat's and wife's recent fun because they missed the e-mails that would have told them something was up.

Maybe I don't play those games?  Maybe they don't have the popularity which makes them as high a risk?  Macs aren't any more secure than PCs, they just have less users to make anyone give a fuck and bother trying.

If all accounts are bnet accounts then that will change.  It won't stop hacking.

Buy an iPhone, problem solved.

I don't think the world is ending, I just feel it added a non-negligable amount of risk to a large number of people.

The hostility is because of the attitudes that blew my concerns off, and continue to tell me they're not valid, not because of my intense passion of the issue.

Are you paying for it? :-P

Spreading what information to the wild? I use a different email account, I use a different password, I use an authenticator to protect my ingame stuff itself. That's Internet Version 2009 Basics right there. There are simple, concrete steps consumers can take to protect themselves and if they don't, tough.

Yes.  My b.net email address was used specifically for b.net.  Nowhere else on the net is it used for any login info anywhere.  But that's just me...

Make your dummy e-mails, link them to the main using parental supervision features.  Problem solved.

I have no doubt this is what's happening. So while I don't plan on taking a big break soon, I have in the past, and I feel much better with an authenticator attached to the account for when that happens.

I don't think she's asking for advise, I think she's pissed off that if you want to maintain your sub it's mandatory to put yourself in a position of less security, however negligible you might think the risk is.  Did you read her posts?

I wouldn't mind buying an iPhone, although I have little use for the actual phone aspect.  See:  Social recluse.  I am way too reluctant to lay down anywhere from $60+ dollars a month so I can replicate the functionality of a $7 dongle that'll do the same thing... and hell, having an iPhone authenticator might freeze out my account for two weeks if Blizzard patches.

It's entirely fair to be worried about the email aspect giving away half the game, although I suspect the problem of information site or guild username harvesting already exists.

It's easy to detach an authenticator from your account.

How easy?

It's in the account management stuff on the Battle Net site, which of course requires you to use the authenticator to login. So, someone who has gained your login information you can't disable it, if that's what you were wondering.

You have a point. If you lose your phone and need to detach, it's annoying, you have to call them up and do an account recovery type deal where they ask you questions.

Which would be a huge pain in the ass for anyone except blizzard who has great customer service. Instead, it's just a pain.

Worth it for me, since we've got 100k in the guild bank and probably double that in mats and so it's not going to be MY fault if we get cleaned out.

Yes, and they're wrong.

Her concern is specifically brute-force hacking working from a known username, which presumably can be phished from a guild forum, Wowhead account, or whatever.  The solution to this is to make a new email address and make that your username, rendering it as brute-force resistant as a conventional username/password setup unless you name the account something really retarded (Lantyssa_BNet_account@______) which she criticized as cumbersome to manage.  This is solvable with parental controls, allowing access to the dummy email without needing to remember the name or password.  As a side-effect, you can presumably now change your username on a regular basis because it's linked to your email.  Ergo, B.Net accounts are more secure if you're actually concerned about security.

Which is almost completely beside the point, because spyware is currently the most common form of account security breach, and neither setup offers any defense from keylogging.  I've heard people suggest using Copy/Paste, but that only works if the keylogger doesn't monitor the clipboard and is also cumbersome.

Is it my concern?  I said I don't like it.  I didn't make a list of my specific concerns.  You're making a lot of assumptions, some of which are already wrong just from what you wrote there.

But if the app is broken, how do you log in to manage your account?  I was just curious how the "easy to detach" and the "broken app" went together.

I imagine you'd have to call customer service, but I've never broken my app, so I wouldn't know from personal experience.

The app briefly broke during one of the patches; I think 3.1.  I'm pretty sure that would only prevent it from working with the ingame login, not the account management. 

Okay then, you're going to have to elaborate the difference between selecting a random username unknown to any and selecting a random username unknown to any with @hotmail.com added to the end of it, because I'm just not following here.

I got my penguin yesterday. He looks a little evil.

I just got my penguin.  OMG.  It was so cute it gave me a sugar rush.  It's the cutest pet ever.

So, I picked up the authenticator app for my iphone a couple of days ago.  Kind of interesting.  But this morning, I logged on to do some dailies.  Time for the code.  I punch it in, hit enter.  Noticed I did not type the first 0 in the code, figured I would get a no dice message.  Nope.  Got right through.  I wonder how much of the code you need to put in to get it to work.

Didn't it use to have red eyes?  Thing really looked evil then.

EDIT: Sorry that's the 'exalted with the Walrus People' penguin.
(http://www.warcraftpets.com/wow.pets/images/pets/pengu.jpg)

Leading zeroes and computers tend to be problematic if the authentication process is just a simple integer comparison, or if a company assumes it's users will simply cut off the leading zero.  Calculating the complexity of a password is the same as calculating the maximum range of a hexadecimal or binary number.  Permutations/Range = Base^Digits

A-Z, 1-0 = Base 36
Digits = 6

So normally the number of possible permutations is 2 176 782 336, with one less digit it's 60 466 176.

Oh god I just remembered I need to get my girlfriend to do this account merging thing too. She'll kill me if she doesn't get a penguin!

But if the app is broken, how do you log in to manage your account?  I was just curious how the "easy to detach" and the "broken app" went together.
[/quote]

As was mentioned a bit above, it shouldn't affect the web login. (From what I understand, of course. There's always the opportunity for something to break, however slim, as you know.)

They were going to change Pengu's eyes to the same colour/style as Mr. Chilly's (Oswald, damn it!) but I'm really glad they didn't, they seem much more unique now, it's clear Mr. Chilly has an entirely redone texture.

Heh, if not for this thread I'd not have known this was coming. On the off chance Cataclysm draws me back, I went ahead with this. Took all of 2 minutes.

I already had the Authenticator. No reason to not have one really. And I'd much rather have that sitting on my desk at home than on the iPhone that travels the world with me.

What guild?  I am sooo lonely since Burning Region is 100% me now.  I even started my own guild.  With just me.  Help?

Oh, and Today is the deadline.  Servers down. so finally "converted."