My StarCraft II beta code came through a few months ago so I decided to log in to my Battle.net account to add the code.  As I tried to log in, the site unexpectedly asked me for an authenticator code.  Blizzard authenticators are devices that are associated with a Battle.net account that produce a code that you have to type in to the web site in order to log in – you may use a similar device for logging in to your online bank account.  As I hadn’t associated an authenticator I was very confused.

I rang Blizzard Europe and discovered that my account had been hacked and that the hackers had associated their own authenticator with my account, preventing me from accessing it.  After they were happy with my identity, they removed the authenticator from my account and advised I associate my own.  They then also advised me that one of my US accounts had been banned and that I had to ring Blizzard US to explain the situation.

To protect my account from further security problems, I decided to download the official Blizzard Mobile Authenticator to my iPhone and used that.  Problem solved, right?

Nope… There has since been a software update for this little iPhone application that has caused it to wipe it’s settings.  This has basically once again left me locked out of my account.  I’ve tried contacting Blizzard Europe by e-mail but I’ve had no response yet.  I’ve tried by telephone and they’re so busy that they’re not even accepting new calls in to their queuing system!

The most annoying thing of all is that the login name for Battle.net accounts are e-mail addresses.  So if you tend to use the same password for various things, such as forums, and someone gets hold of that data then they can look at your e-mail address and the password you used and just use that info to log in to your Battle.net account.

If I can’t rely on the authenticator to work properly then the best idea is going to be to change the password to something I don’t use for anything else at all, and also make it relatively complex since the username doesn’t need to be guessed at all!

Dear <username>,

You have been issued a temporary ban by one of our moderators.

Category: Free Servers
Span: 11/02/2009 – 11/08/2009 23:59:59 [7 days]
Reason: Discussing or advertising unofficial servers or emulators for MMOs is not permitted on the MMORPG.com forums. These servers are against the ToS of the original game, and violate the intellectual propriety rights of the game’s publisher and developer.

This temporary ban was generated from the following post on our discussion forum:

Thread: Wanted: ability to turn back time
Below is the content of the post:

————————————————
[snip]

————————————————

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/3188255#3188255

Note: If the thread or post has been deleted you will not be able to view it. The above link might not work.

Thank you,

The Staff
MMORPG.COM

If you believe you received this in error or would like more information please respond to this message or send an email with the details to community@mmorpg.com

The forum post I responded to said this…

Is [sic] SWG: Pre-CU was as “amazing” as people say it was… there would be an emulator by now and private servers running it.

I have a very strong theory that SWG Pre-Cu was NOT this amazingly perfect MMORPG that ushered in the golden age.

My post was this…

http://www.swgemu.com/

This has been in development for a long time.  Reverse-engineering a game that doesn’t exist any more has obvious added difficulties.  Personally I don’t think I’ll ever play on one of these emulators simply because I don’t think the quality will be there when it comes to support and hardware costs… then again support in SWG was always a bit LOL.  IIRC 1 week response time on tickets was considered fairly good at the time.

Your “very strong” theory (way to self-promo btw) is of course correct.  SWG was never a perfect game.  It was riddled with bugs from silly harvester animations not working to more serious problems like bugs in the skill trees and jedi defense stats not doing what they said on the tin.  It also had a terrible lack of content but because it was a sandbox, players could always find something to do.  It was also ridiculously incomplete at launch and they brought in stuff like animal mounts long before vehicles which wasn’t very Star Wars like.

However… it was hands down the best sandbox game I’ve played and I am one of those sad people that try them all and usually end up disappointed.  SWG needed fixing but it was unique and had a good community.  SOE could have spent a fraction of the cost of the rebranding to fix the problems and they would have had an absolute winner.  Instead they tried to make it more like WoW, somehow missing the obvious in that if SWG players wanted to play WoW then they already would.

Sorry but imo it is one of the worst MMO crimes of all time and I’m glad SOE felt the burn of their customer base leaving in droves afterwards.  It was a punishment they deserved… that said, if they brought back Pre-CU (or even pre-NGE), I think we’d all return in droves.   Bitter but grateful.  There is currently no game out there that is even remotely close to what SWG was.

As you can see I wasn’t trolling, acting childish or blatantly making a pain of myself.  I was just taking part in a discussion that had already been started by someone else.  I think mmorg.com were wrong to ban me over this.  They could have given me a warning or just edited my post to remove the link if they didn’t like it.  I e-mailed them back with my opinion on their actions which I’ve copied below.

Dear MMORPG.com,

I thought I was taking part in an intelligent discussion on a forum that encouraged it.

I didn’t even know there was a rule for that. A warning would have been much more appropriate since it was obviously innocent and blatantly not advertising if you read the content of my post – I even said that I would not use a 3rd party server for concerns on service levels.

My terms of service with a game that I no longer play are between Sony Online Entertainment and myself. They are none of your god-damn business and they are most certainly not law – Not in the US and not in my country. Even if you were somehow responsible for enforcing SOE’s terms of service, you’ll quite clearly find I’ve not broken them as no game company would have the audacity to try and ban freedom of speech on a 3rd party web site.

Bollocks to you and your moderator. Please upgrade my ban to a permanent one so I’m not tempted to try and engage in any other discussions on your site. What a ridiculous rule that is. When Darkfall was trying to release, you were all slagging it off so much I’m surprised they didn’t sue you for liable as you most certainly DID have a serious impact on how potential customers viewed their game, and yet I can’t innocently mention a 3rd party emulator in a discussion that was already about it? Hypocrisy!

Stick your censorship right up your arses.

Rob.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A_tHT8D1kM

My wife and I bought the Aion collector’s edition and managed to get in to head-start before the main horde of players joined in later on in the week. It’s a great game so far, I must say. The attention to detail is very nice and the fights feel fast paced and dynamic.

In many ways it’s like most other MMOs in that there are a lot of “collect 10 of these”, “kill 5 of those” type of quests but it’s extremely well polished. It’s really nice to see a new MMO that actually feels finished. There’s a reason for that of course -- it’s been around in South Korea for quite some time now and is only new to the Western World.

What makes it different from other MMOs?  Well, it’s not repeating the same tired old orcs, elves and dwarves formula.  This time it’s basically angels vs demons where everyone gets to play celestial creatures… and we get to fly!  Not only fly but fight while flying!  The game seems to be quite PvP orientated, although I’ve had no experience of that myself.  I think they officially call it PvPvE in that there are 2 player teams, the Elyos and the Asmodians, and also an NPC team called the Balor.

Unfortunately we’re really struggling to play the game in Europe at the moment.  NCSoft have woefully oversold their capacity and it’s impossible to play unless you want to queue at login servers for anywhere from 2 to 4 hours!  I’m not kidding either.  For some reason they don’t have to queue in North America, China, nor Korea.  It seems Europe has been handed the shitty end of the stick on this one!

What’s even worse is that we can’t get any official replies from NCSoft staff as they’re currently unable to respond on the forums due to another technical issue, although individual NCSoft employees have apparently managed to get a few messages out on Twitter!

I have one other gripe as well.  The Aion support hours end at 8pm.  It’s like the GMs just go home and they don’t even leave a skeleton crew or even a means to leave messages.  If you try to send in a petition in these out of office hours, you’ll be asked to try again later.  This means that the general chat channels basically turn to hell after 8pm.  I’ve seen people nattering about child pornography and all sorts of inappropriate topics and nobody can report them!

Perhaps in other places in the world they just don’t have the same dire behaviour from their youth that we, in particular Britain, suffer from and so perhaps it’s not been a problem for them until now.  But it’s something that needs to be addressed very quickly in my opinion.  Some people have suggested using the ignore feature but I consider that a complete cop out.  People like that need punishing, not ignoring.

Anyway in short, Aion looks to be a great game but the quality of service that NCSoft is currently giving European players is awful.  I really hope it doesn’t turn too many people away from the game, but unfortunately the forums are jammed full with “Screw you NCSoft!” and “That’s it, I’ve cancelled!” type of threads.

Each key has a 48x48 pixel 65,536 OLED display, meaning the keyboard can be made to display any letter or image on any key! For example if it detects it’s plugged in to a Windows PC then it can display a Windows keyboard, and for a Mac it can display an Apple keyboard.  Need an ancient greek layout?  No problem…

Realistically you’re probably not going to want to keep switching languages and plugging it in to different machines but there are extra keys down the left hand side that could be configured to launch your favourite applications, as well as all the function keys along the top.

Where this can really come in to it’s own is with games!  For example, opening your backpack in World of Warcraft wouldn’t have to be the ‘B’ button anymore -- it could be a picture of a backpack!  You usually press ’1′ for Frost Bolt?  How about you just press the button with the Frost Bolt icon on it?  The possibilities are endless.

Yes it’s completely unnecessary and horrendously expensive but damn cool.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=svjLIZKAHQI

The level cap has only been raised by 5 levels to level 85 but that’s cool with me. I hate levelling and I’d much rather devs put their efforts in to real game improvements than more of the same old stuff.  I assume they’ll be obsoleting a ton more content as usual!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyDrlyiIv9w

You can learn all about it at their web site but here’s a quick run down of some of the features.

Two New Playable Races
Adventure as one of two new races--the cursed worgen with the Alliance or the resourceful goblins with the Horde.

Level Cap Increased to 85
Earn new abilities, tap into new talents, and progress through the path system, a new way for players to improve characters.

Classic Zones Remade
Familiar zones across the original continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been altered forever and updated with new content, from the devastated Badlands to the broken Barrens, which has been sundered in two.

New High-Level Zones
Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj’ir beneath the sea.

More Raid Content than Ever Before
Enjoy more high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.

New Race and Class Combinations
Explore Azeroth as a gnome priest, blood elf warrior, or one of the other never-before-available race and class combinations.

Guild Advancement
Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds
Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.

Archaeology
Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
Explore Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like never before.

My favourite class is druid but I’m stuck playing Horde unless I want to play on my own.  Maybe I’ll try a troll… I have to say that the Worgen look way cooler though.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em0Sd60iI2w

I wasn’t really a Guild Wars fan but I think I’ll try this one.