As officers, we’ll have to be on alert for freeloaders once our guilds have leveled up a few times.

Reviewing applications carefully will be critical. Most guilds ask, “Why do you want to join?” If you don’t ask this question on your application, you should, because the answers are often quite telling. It never ceases to amaze me what players will say. I’ve seen players write things like, “so I can gear up with you and then apply to [ultimate hardcore guild X]” or “because you guys have the Lich King on farm and I really need the sword from him.” Such replies make it very easy to filter someone. I have no doubt that someone, somewhere, will eventually answer that question with “because you guys have all the perks.”

Rarely will it be so obvious, however. Here are other warning signs:

* The player doesn’t have a clear idea what your guild is about or what you do.
* The player doesn’t seem interested in participating in guild activities.
* The player doesn’t know anyone in your guild, and no one in the guild has heard of him or her before.
* The player lies about their experience or accomplishments. You can check achievements and such using the Armory.
* The player hasn’t belonged to any guilds in the past. You can check his guild history via Warcraft Realms.
* The player is also applying to six other guilds on the server, or the player has applied to a series of guilds who have turned him or her down. Check the websites of your server’s other guilds.

If you suspect a player of trying to freeload, a quick conversation with him or her can often tell you all you need to know.

The lore of the region, the design of the quests and landscape, the whereabouts of Azuregos and the general concept and story behind the zone of Azshara are all addressed, as well as a peek into what went on behind the scenes to actually redesign the landscape into a functional, fun and still hauntingly beautiful place to level. Check out the official Cataclysm page for the full article — and while we’re on a nostalgia trip, take a look back at Azshara quests that you should finish before the new expansion hits, and check out the gallery of Azshara as it exists today.

Gallery: Azshara
Azshara map (pre-Cataclysm)Talrendis PointShadowsong ShrineHaldarr EncampmentValormokSouthfury River Falls
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it; nothing will be the same! In WoW.com’s Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW’s third expansion, from brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.

Tags: azshara, cataclysm-game, cataclysm-guide, cataclysm-news, cataclysm-preview, craig-amai, dave-kosak, expansion, expansion-three, next-xpac, third-expansion, world-of-warcraft-cataclysm, wow-4.0, wow-4.0.2, wow-cataclysm, wow-expansion, wow-guide, wow-third-expansion

I have no doubt that, such astute and learned people as hunters tend to be, you are all well aware of the Cataclysm alpha leaks that have been piling up. If you were to follow your curiosity in hopes of getting a better mental picture of how we hunters will turn out, you would be sorely disappointed. Well, first you’d be disappointed, and then you’d probably get lost looking at pictures of new zones and old zones made new again for far, far too long … But then some hours later, you’d remember why you went there in the first place and return to being disappointed.

Unlike some classes whose talent trees have been showered with presents in the leaks, our talent trees appear mostly unchanged at the moment — in fact, they’re still filled with our mana regen and mana reduction talents. However, there were a couple of little nibblets of hunter goodness hidden in there — the actual tooltips for our new spells, Camouflage and Cobra Shot.

This is not official. The beta has not even started, and even if it was official it’d be subject to all kinds of change at any moment. This is stuff that, frankly, was never meant for our eyes to see. Also, these are spoilers. If you don’t want to know anything about Cataclysm until it’s released, don’t click to read more. In fact, you really shouldn’t go any further, if you’re being good. If you do click to read more you will be rewarded with naughty goodies of secret hunter info. So those of you feeling just a bit naughty, join me after the cut.

Yeah, I thought you’d be here. Don’t worry, you’re in good company.

Camouflage

Camouflage is a new ability that will become available to us at the new level cap of 85. It gives us some small amount of ninja-like abilities, to sneak around and pop out big opener damage when coming out of our camo state. Here is what the official class preview had to say about this ability:

Hunter Preview

Camouflage (level 85): The hunter enters an obscured state that prevents him or her from taking ranged damage. The character would still be subject to melee or area-of-effect attacks, and dealing or taking damage will break the Camouflage effect. The hunter can move and set traps when under Camouflage, and will receive a damage bonus when attacking while under Camouflage (which will then break the effect).

Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.

source

Some follow-up discussion on the forums from blue posts suggested that the hope was to have the camo hunter have a shimmering, “Predator-like” look, which I think we can all agree is bad-ass. Now let’s take a look at the tooltip as it appeared on the alpha:

Camouflage

45 Focus

Instant cast 1 min. cooldown

You camouflage, causing you and your Pet to blend into your surroundings. After 3 sec., you will enter a stealthed state. While stealthed, you and your pet’s movement speed is reduced by 30%, but the damage done by your next attack is increased by 30%.

You can lay traps while under the effect, but any damage done by you or your pet will cancel the effect. Cannot be cast while in combat.

There are a couple very interesting things here. First of all, we actually see them use the word “stealth,” which in WoW terms means a very specific thing. Stealth is different from invisibility, for example. Stealth is what rogues do, and in some of the follow-up discussion to the class preview we were lead to believe that we would not be getting Stealth — we’d just get the cool Predator look and the ability to pop out for a bunch of damage.

Are they actually giving us Stealth? I mean, if they are, even on a 1-minute cooldown, three seconds to take effect and costing half our focus bar, holy ninja PvP goodness! I’m also very, very pleased that they included our pets in the stealthing. I’m reminded of the recent Children’s Week holiday when I was doing some battlegrounds. A Horde rogue was trying to flee my unstoppable hunter might in Warsong Gulch. He vanished, but he had his orphan companion pet out, letting me see exactly where he was and where to send my flare to expose him and finish him off. So yeah, I’m glad our pets will be stealthy with us.

The tooltip stresses that we can lay traps while stealthed, but it’s probably safe to assume that we can do just about anything that doesn’t cause damage. In a PvE environment, I’d expect to be able to use Misdirection while stealthed to get our big opening shot, and probably Hunter’s Mark as well. (I certainly hope so — I love the mental image of marking a target on the battlefield and knowing that the opponents are thinking, “Oh crap! There’s a hunter here somewhere … Could be anywhere within 100 yards … Oh God, I’m dead.”)

Certainly Camouflage remains primarily a PvP ability, but if it really is Stealth, it will be an excellent tool for those hunters into extreme soloing. We’ll finally be able to make like the rogues and just sneak past all the trash on the way to our nefarious schemes. But for PvE, this ability remains, as predicted, something that will impact our play about as much as Eagle Eye.

But again, this is alpha, and we don’t even know if they really mean Stealth when they say “enter a stealthed state.” We’ll have to see, but the PvP implications are delightful to ponder.

Cobra Shot

This new shot is given to all hunters at level 81. It is a shot that duplicates the Steady Shot role in Cataclysm — a free shot that improves our focus regen. Our filler shot, in other words. It is not a flat replacement for Steady Shot. Some specs may prefer Steady Shot to Cobra Shot, some (like BM) will prefer Cobra Shot, and for others it may be situational: Steady Shot on the squishies, Cobra Shot on the plate wearers, for example. Here’s what we learned about it in the class preview:

Hunter Preview

Cobra Shot (level 81): A new shot that deals Nature damage instead of Physical damage. This ability will share a cooldown with Steady Shot. This will give hunters an alternative to Steady Shot on heavily-armored targets, and we will have talent incentives in the Beast Mastery tree to make this a signature shot.

* Beast Mastery hunters will have a new talent called Careful Aim, which increases the damage of the next Steady Shot or Cobra Shot, but also increases the cast time of these abilities. The intention is to make the combination of spells into a decent damage opener, especially in conjunction with the new ability Camouflage.

* Beast Mastery hunters will also have talents that make Cobra Shot superior to Steady Shot, such as Longevity reducing the cast time of Cobra Shot to 1.5 seconds.

source

Blizzard is stating very clearly here that BM is being designed to want to use Cobra Shot rather than Steady Shot. It’s not exactly a signature shot, since every spec has access to it. It’s certainly no Chimera Shot or Explosive Shot, but it seems they want BM to get more benefit from it than any other spec. MM will probably continue to prefer Steady Shot since they have the armor penetration mastery bonus, but SV may prefer Cobra Shot as well, especially if their elemental mastery bonus applies to nature damage.

Here’s what the alpha tooltip for Cobra Shot looks like:

Cobra Shot

5-35 yd range

1.5 sec cast

Requires Ranged Weapon

Deals unmodified weapon damage plus RAP * 0.1 + 951 in the form of Nature damage and increases the duration of your Serpent Sting on the target by 176 sec. Generates 9 Focus.

Okay, first of all, you see that part where it increases the Serpent Sting duration by 176 seconds? That is clearly a placeholder number. What’s intriguing is the notion of extending the duration of Serpent Sting at all. A more realistic number there might be three seconds — one tick — or possibly even less. But it certainly lets you imagine situations where you want enough Cobra Shots in your rotation to prevent you from ever having to re-apply Serpent Sting.

In fact, perhaps BM will benefit so much from Cobra Shot that they’ll have an excess of focus, which will then allow them to use the really expensive shots (like Aimed Shot) in their rotations much more often than other specs. It’s intriguing, as all focus stuff is to me, and you can really see how it could breathe some much-needed life into the BM rotation.

For reference, here is the current formula for Steady Shot damage: weapon damage + ammo + RAP * 0.1 + 252.

Of course ammo is going away, so it’ll just be weapon damage. On the surface, this makes it look like Cobra Shot will do more damage than Steady Shot and be unaffected by armor (since it’s nature damage). This is not the case! This is the level 80 Steady Shot, and we have no idea whether the Cobra Shot formula we see is level 81 or level 85. Regardless, we can be confident that our new Steady Shot formula will do more damage than Cobra Shot — it has to, since it’s affected by armor, especially since Sunder Armor won’t be reducing target armor by as much as it does now.

But it is interesting that the coefficient is the same for both shots and that base weapon damage is included. Honestly, I kind of expected that Cobra Shot would not use base weapon damage, as magical damage-dealing shots tend not to (Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot, etc.).

We still don’t have any more notion of the really big hunter question of how our focus is going to work in Cataclysm, beyond what we learned from the class preview. As much as I delight in contemplating any kind of hunter information that’s out there, what I really want to know is all about focus. How much focus will all our shots end up? Will some of our long-cooldown abilities have no focus, as Ghostcrawler implied? Will Serpent Sting or Mend Pet have a focus cost? What is the haste focus regen conversion rate? Exactly what are the new focus-related talents?

Cataclysm is still a ways off, and there’s lots more news to be had!

Oh come on, everyone knows that — well, evidently everyone but you, poor rookie. Ever felt like a chump for not being aware of some game feature or function that would’ve made life so much easier, if only you’d known? Aww, it’s OK. You’re not alone. As accessible as designers strive to make games like WoW, it’s easy for even a few basics to slip by, especially when you’re brand new, thrashing about trying to find your quest objective and attack the monster and talk to that other player all at the same time.

Blizzard’s tutorial tips help make sense of a lot of that under-the-radar knowledge. Still, players write in to WoW Rookie every week asking questions or offering various nuggets of acquired wisdom. Time then for another info dump — the latest in our collection of frequently requested, handy things to know.

Unlearn your profession Finding the place to drop an unwanted profession has got to be one of the more annoyingly obscure functions in the game. Go to your character info, then the skills tab, and then click on the bar that lists the profession you want to get rid of. Now look at the bottom third of the skills panel; you’ll see another bar listing the profession, and to the right of it, a small, red icon of a circle with a slash through it. (Check out the screenshot at the top of the post.) If you click that tiny red button, you’ll get a pop-up confirmation box that asks you whether or not you’d like to drop that profession. (Whew!)

Some disenchanted evening Been automatically smacking the disenchant button every time an unwanted blue or green drops in your instances? You may be doing yourself a disservice … The item’s vendor value may in fact be higher than the value of the enchanting material you just won. Enchanting mat prices vary widely from realm to realm, but many economies are seeing vendor prices overtaking mat prices in certain level ranges. Pro tip: Visit the auction house and take note of the prices for mats at the level of whatever instances you’ll be running. Then before you choose to roll DE or greed, check the tooltip for the item’s vendor value to ensure you’re selecting the best deal every time.

(On a related note, if you only seem to receive the disenchant option for some items that drop in your instance, it may be your group enchanter’s skill level that’s the issue. If your enchanter is light on skill points, he — and therefore, your group — might be able to disenchant green drops but not blues or epics.)

Lost and found Can’t remember which way to head around the darned loop in Undercity to find your trainer? Ask a guard. Guards that show a map symbol when moused over will offer a menu of destinations if you right-click to speak with them. Once you’ve selected your destination, a red flag icon will appear in your map and minimap to mark the location.

Where’s the flight master in this town, anyway? Speaking of finding important figures, the tracking button on your minimap allows you to find flight masters and other useful resources such as mailboxes, armor repairers and innkeepers. Right-click the tracking button on your minimap. (If you don’t see one, you probably have an addon that’s blocking it. Try disabling your addons to see.)

Pop that trinket If you’ve poked around with macros at all, you may be stumped at how to use a trinket in a macro. Here’s the trick that will direct the action to your trinket slots:

/use 13
/use 14

You can find a list of the corresponding numbers for every gear slot at the official site (or, you know, just look over yonder to the side), along with a slew of other tips on making macros.

Is my character still there? If it’s been weeks, months or even (/gasp) years since you last played World of Warcraft, will your old character still be there when you log in? Yes! Unless you physically delete your character (which requires typing “DELETE” into a big confirmation field — not something easily accomplished by accident), your character and all their goodies will still be there. The only thing that expires is mail left in your inbox for more than 30 days.

Speaking in tongues Click on the chat bubble icon on your chat box and scroll to the language option in order to change the language your character speaks. Language changes will show up in say, shout, guild and party chat, but not in general chat, trade chat or whispers. (Pro tip: Speaking obscure languages in guild chat is a good way to annoy guildmates and get yourself put on ignore.)

Your name not in lights Yes, it is possible to take screenshots without character names in them. You can remove your UI entirely by pressing Alt+Z (pressing Alt+Z again restores it). To remove those stubborn names: Go to your game menu (escape), select Interface, and scroll down and select Names. You can uncheck as many names as necessary for the effect you want. (Just remember to turn them on again afterwards!)

Make sense of it all Do you find yourself sucked in by the lore of Azeroth and hungry to learn more? Read up: Lore 101 will set you straight.

Wondering if there’s an easier way to do something? Maybe you’ve gone and figured out the method to the madness all on your own. Send us your questions, tips and discoveries (lisa at wow dot com), and we’ll collect them for a future tips and tricks edition of WoW Rookie. Meanwhile, check our website WoW Rookie Guide for everything you need to get off to a good start as a newbie, whether you’re a new level 1 or a fresh level 80.

The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com.

Remember back during the holidays, when we had a nice cozy Breakfast Topic chat about the fellow who’s been spotted schlepping his entire iMac to the local Panera Bread to play WoW? Sharp-eyed reader Paul discovered a followup article at Gizmodo, featuring five questions with the Panera Bread WoW Man. It’s no headline news, but it’s an interesting peek into how a fellow WoW player gets his fix.

Let’s open up The Classifieds …

Recruiting

• Starting from scratch: <Whiz Bang> (US Staghelm-H), founded by two Vanilla/BC/Wrath vets, is leveling a new set of characters to 80 and invites aspiring raiders age 18+ to get in on the ground floor; a little further along are <Riders of Unholy> of EU Dragonblight-A, now recruiting all classes for a new raiding team.
• Second 10-man team and building for 25-man: <Unabashed Noobery> on US Kilrogg-A is looking for DPS and healers; <BLITZ> (US Aman’Thul-A) is building from two 10-mans up to a 25-man team, recruiting all classes and roles.
• 10-man: <Two Percent> (US Uldaman-H) is looking for mature raiders, especially healers, for its established team; <the massacre begins> of US Nesingwary-A is looking for more.
• 25-man: <Internet Dunk Squad> is seeking ranged DPS and healers for progression raiding Friday through Sunday nights; <Chilling with my Gnomies> on US Maiev-H is looking for healers (shamans or druids preferred); new guild <Naked Singularity> of US Uldaman-A is building a hardcore team for applicants with minimum of iLevel 200+ gear.

Downings

• <Two Percent> US Uldaman-H has pushed past Marrowgar, through Lady Deathwhisper and the Gunship Battle to stare Saurfang in his tusked visage. Nice work, guys!

Guild Rankings
World rankings as of Tuesday evening.

• 25-man Progress
• 25-man Achievement Nine guilds lead the world rankings this week with 1330 points.
• 10-man Progress
• 10-man Achievement 67 guilds have managed to total up 1285 points.
• 10-man Strict Progress Fourteen guilds are working in The Crimson Halls.
• 10-man Strict Achievement <From Chaos> and <Vox Immortalis> are locked at the top with 1285 points, followed by <Saoirse> and <Three> with 1255 and <Elysium> with 1205.

Community News

• While WoW.com doesn’t encourage marathon gaming sessions (rested XP is more effective in real life, too), we do support charitable efforts. A trio of WoW players is supporting Child’s Play (the charitable organization that brings games, books and cash to sick kids in children’s hospitals across North America) with a nonstop, livestreamed WoW session planned for some time in February. Catch the deets, make a donation or lend a hand at 3DaysofWoW.com.
• In behind-the-curtains silliness, we hear that the GM of <Helkpo> (EU The Venture Co-H) (who we also hear is the lead singer of London’s smash hit Mumcuss) is singing for his supper — err, for guild kills. Evidently, the 10-man strict guild was having a hard time with Anub’Arak one night recently, when Helkpo stepped in with music to soothe the savage beast. While we can’t vouch for the musical excellence of this recording, we will say that it’s certainly representative of impromptu guild morale-building at its best. Keep having fun, Helkpo!
• Interested in helping get a documentary on raiding off the ground? The Raid, a film about raiding from Kevin Michael Johnson, is seeking financial supporters. Check out the project details at Kickstarter.com.

Obviously today’s news from Apple of the iPad is the hottest thing since, well, the iPhone. One of the big things Apple was showing was the OpenGL 3D games on the iPad. OpenGL is the technology that allows advanced 3D graphics and games to function (DirectX is the Microsoft Windows equivalent, although OpenGL works on Windows too). For a long time people have been clamoring over the ability for WoW to run on an iPhone, and the iPad looks like the ideal touch device to let it run on.

And many of you began writing into us as soon as the iPad announcement was made, asking if we knew about WoW running on the iPad.

The answer is no, we have no information, and there is no indication that WoW will run on the iPad. The armory app should work automatically (as well as all your other iPhone/iPod Touch games), and there is certianly room to make the armory app even better on the iPad — but we don’t even know if such a plan is in the works yet.

The iPad, especially with its dirt cheap data plans for $14.99 and overall cheap starting price of $499, can obviously have an impact on guild websites and keeping abreast with WoW news, but that’s all that the WoW community will get from it, for now.

So again, just so we’re clear: No WoW on the iPad right now.

It’s fortunate that Edtin of Ysondre is a shaman. He’s fallen into a water tank while running heroic Steamvault, and without Water Breathing, he’d be sunk (horrible pun intended.) Still, he’s going to eventually run out of fish scales, and then we’ll get to see whether those saltwater tanks preserve corpses as well as formaldehyde.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

Savras of <The Keepers> on Wyrmrest Accord captured this tender moment in Booty Bay, about to be completely ruined by the blood elf ninja pouncing down from above. The stale fish on the dock can’t be too much of an aphrodisiac either. How many years have those things been sitting there?

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.

One of the reasons I like playing draenei and tauren are connected to the classes I like to play: shamans, warriors and DK’s are the only classes I’ve consistently gotten to max rank, and in all of those cases I tend to play large characters. When race change became available I agonized over it (silly as that is) even though I’d always said I’d go draenei because I’d grown so accustomed to the way my human character moved, and watching old avi files of Burning Crusade fights I’d tanked really brought it home to me. In changing my character’s race, I’ve changed his silhouette, I’ve changed the way he swings a weapon, I’ve changed the way he looks in every aspect of the game. I don’t do that spinning one handed smash when I tank anymore, it’s much more of an arching, down-angled slash. My Shield Slam is different.

Granted, I’m okay with that. But it got me thinking about why I choose the races I do and the classes I do.

One of the things I love about the warrior class and the races I’ve chosen to play is the sense of raw mass you get. Draenei are as big or slightly bigger than an orc who stands up straight, and tauren are even more enormous.Warriors just have a feeling of inexorability, of grinding, relentless and deliberate forward progression. There’s just something in me that deeply enjoys the almost ponderous yet graceful way tauren move, to the point where I honestly have a very hard time playing any of my horde alts that aren’t tauren. I’m looking forward to Cataclysm because I expect it will save my poor, lonely belf paladin: one race change later and I’ll have a paladin I can finally endure leveling. Likewise, switching away from human cost me the moves and emotes I was familiar with, but it also cost me a freakish upper lip.

I know there are plenty of people who enjoy completely different aesthetics for their characters… I have a friend who swears by undead for her rogues and warriors because she loves to see the female undead combat animations (which are, I have to admit, impressively frenetic) and I’ve actually grown to enjoy the way an orc shaman looks as enhancement: orcs seem tailor made for going totally buck wild with two fist weapons or axes or maces, it’s really almost poetic the way they just shred things. And when I was on the test server I grew tremendously fond of watching my gnome proxy tank via continous hurling of his body into the air and overbalancing every weapon swing or shield slam. Each race (and even gender within each race) has detailed casting animations as well… I’ve always thought troll females just looked the most exuberant in the way they go about casting spells, although I’m not much of a caster myself.

For me, I always come back to characters I can identify with, and that tends to be big, almost cumbersome toons who take up a lot of space, who specialize in physical roles. I’m just not comfortable as a caster (healing was the closest I could get myself to go in that direction) for whatever reason, it just feels wrong. (I also kind of suck at it, but hey.)

So now I ask you: how much does the look of a character affect you? Do you even care? Did you pick your race for the racials and your class without regard for how it goes about doing whatever it does?

Reader comments — ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Is it just us, or does it seem a little warm in here? The news was popping here at WoW.com at the tail end of the week, and the reactions in [1.Local] were explosive. In what turned out to be a freaky Friday indeed, WoW.com posted not one but three articles peering behind the scenes at account security concerns. Those of you who like to know how the movie ends before you even take your seat can cut right to the final scene — but for those who prefer to savor the whole, winding saga over a bucketful of popcorn (with plenty of butter and salt), let’s take it from the top.

	Blizzard giving serious consideration to mandatory authenticators It all began on Friday with a post uncovering that Blizzard is giving serious consideration to requiring authenticators on all accounts: “According to our sources, while this policy has not been implemented yet and the details are not finalized, it is a virtually forgone conclusion that it will happen.” The comments floodgate opened. Many players didn’t want to have to click one more button to log in; others were afraid they’d lose their authenticators. Players in Europe and other locations outside the United States, along with soldiers using APO addresses, reported desperately wanting to use an authenticator but finding that their locations were ineligible for shipping. Still other players were simply irascible. devilsei: They want to make them mandatory? Fine. But they damn well better hand them out for free. Don’t give me the iPhone/whatever bull either. I’m not interested in some hyped-up, useless piece of tech that will cost me 100+ to get a free authenticator program. I got hacked recently, and instead of completely restoring my items, they gave me back my gear, along with a good portion of my main’s inventory. They gave me 2.5k gold, 70 badges of triumph and 14 frost badges as a way of saying “we’re even.” Nice, yeah, unless you take into account my bank alt had her entire bags emptied. … Best part, though? My computer was abso-frackin-lutely clean of viruses and such. I double-, triple-, and quadruple-checked. … Call me crazy, but maybe Blizz fakes these hacks to try and make those who don’t have authenticators get one. Hell, it was around Christmas. What better time to make someone completely paranoid about their account? Agony: “Call me crazy, but maybe Blizz fakes these hacks to try and make those who don’t have authenticators get one.” …you’re joking, right? Right? No? Damn… lay off the meth. Some guilds already require authenticators for all their members. Radioted: Everyone in my guild is probably getting one soon, after our GM got hacked. Meanwhile, seems to me the best thing to do would be to include one in the Cataclysm box, if they feel they can wait that long. If not, they should deduct the credit you the cost in game time. Allison Robert: My guild is considering the same policy. We’ve had two members hacked recently, and one of them was one of our two off-tanks with the highly specific +Block set needed for Heroic Anub-25 adds, which wound up being a a bit of a problem, as you might expect. If you don’t have an authenticator yet, what do you think about the prospect of having them become mandatory?
	Account restoration woes Next up in the Friday account security trifecta was a story that took readers behind the scenes of Blizzard support. WoW.com learned that Blizzard managers have been instructing account administrators to urge hacking victims to accept “care packages” before bringing up account restoration options. (Jump ahead to our update on how the story was resolved — or keep reading, and we’ll keep the popcorn coming …) loug1016: That is ridiculous. While I can accept the gold (gladly!) what I want is my character with all of my stuff on it. Mark: Then if you get hacked, decline the offer. They’ll restore your stuff. Netherscourge: Blizzard should give restored accounts a free authenticator and tell them that from now on, you will be responsible for your own account security and no further restorations will be provided. Mark: It’s a choice. Players can choose the package, or they can choose to wait in queue for a restoration. This isn’t slowing down restorations — if anything, it’s speeding them up by getting people who feel like 2500g and some badges will get them back on their feet as well as a full restoration. You write about this like it’s a scandal being perpetrated against the players. Hyacin: I think you’re missing an important part of this: “Instead, account administrators are being told to give people a “care package” and get them to accept the package in lieu of total account restoration.” What that means in corporate terms is “get them to accept it by any means you can, including but not limited to hiding the fact that restoration is still an option if they flat out refuse this package.” Similar to how when you call the cable or phone company to cancel, they have the “option” to offer you a term of free or discounted service, but this is an absolute last resort and if they think you are bluffing they won’t even mention it, up to and past the point of you actually cancelling. And the revelations continued …
	Blizzard billing department flaws exploited The final account security story to hit uncovered lax training in Blizzard’s billing department that allows unscrupulous exploiters to game the system for gold and high-value game items. (Again, you may click ahead to the final resolution, or keep reading for more commentary.) Chad: Wow, you guys are really taking the anti-fanboi stance today. Who pissed in your Grape-Nuts? (cutaia): Haha … When wow.com defends an action by Blizzard, someone always has something to say about that, too. You can’t please all the people, all the time … but you can sure as hell always piss off at least one of ‘em. Chad: You are correct, sir. Just seems like today they really have it out for Blizzard. I’m not a die-hard fanboi, so I don’t really have an issue with it. Just WoW.com *usually* defends every one of Blizzard’s decisions, right or wrong. (cutaia): The only issue I see with that theory is that every time wow.com defends a Blizzard action, people come along to accuse them of being too chummy or butt-kissy with Ghostcrawler and friends. In those instances wow.com never fails to say, “Look … We’re obviously not biased. We report on negative things, too.” Why then is it taken as Adam Holisky just having a bad day when they DO post about a Blizzard problem? … Adam Holisky: There’s really nothing special about today. Today was just the day we decided to publish this material. It all fits together nicely, and makes a good series of post. We could have published it on Smarch 30th (damn that Smarch weather, for reals). As far as everyone liking me … Well, whatever I post is going to get 50% negative reaction and 50% positive reaction. Two years of writing here and I’ve learned that’s one of the few truths. Kylenne: You must not work in the corporate world if you think Blizzard management doesn’t know this article exists and is not, as we speak, scrambling to have meetings on the subject. There will be a memo by the end of the day, mark my words. Especially considering how large a site wow.com is, and given that this is the third article in 24 hours about account security policy at Blizzard. … As it turns out, Kylenne had the right idea …
	Blizzard reacts with policy changes Like a quest with an unexpected cinematic waiting at the end, the day concluded with fresh developments and a resolution to the entire situation: “WoW.com has learned through sources close to the situation that after our series of posts describing some questionable internal policies at Blizzard concerning account administration and security, as well as the likely introduction of mandatory authenticators, a few of these policies have been changed this evening. First, the abilities of billing representatives to directly roll back characters to previous states has been more or less removed, preventing the onioning exploit we spoke about earlier. … Second, the care package deal has been sweetened.” Briory: It is good to see that they responded so quickly. It really shows that they listen to the community — and maybe not just the forums. T: Holding Blizzard’s feet to the fire through a series of critical blog posts that are, in some respects, embarrassing for the company is not the same as “listening to the customers.” Blizzard should be given credit for their fast response, but how many of these changes would have occurred if you personally had complained, or if even you and a thousand other people had complained at the same time? And I’m not asking that rhetorically. We’ll never know. What we do know is that WoW.com laid out some very thorough posts that have probably been among the more informative things they’ve done in quite awhile. Credit is due to Adam Holisky and the staff of WoW.com, who have done a tremendous job.

Speaking of a tremendous job …

We couldn’t resist leaving you with this zinger of a random e-mail that left most of the WoW.com staff utterly speechless. We’ve been accused of a lot of things, but we weren’t quite sure what to do with this particular missive.

Name: [redacted]
URL:
Subject: enough with the Saronite!

Why do you just care about saronite huh? Its just armor. Didn’t you guys play in the burning crusade? That place was full of fel influence. The stuff corrupted beasts and killed people. You fed fel glands to orcs to kill them and cought fel infected fish for making shark poison. Yet as soon as you got there herbalists began picking fel weed and mashing it into pots. I think all the noobs are just people brain damaged from fel weed abuse 60-70 in their potions. I mean any food ate in hellfire peninsula had to be some kind of radioactive.

Umm … yeah. Radioactive. That’s it.

Until next week!