Project Lore

The folks over at Topless Robot recently held a contest for their readers asking people to give their most traumatic video game related stories. Before I give you the link, it does contain some spoilers for Final Fantasy VII and some content on the racy side, but fair warning has been given, so here is Topless Robot's contest. There were a couple of WoW related stories in the comments, which is quite understandable. World of Warcraft takes internet anonymity, combines it with social interaction and great value placed on in-game goods, which creates opportunities ripe for emotional trauma. The most interesting WoW story was one by a person named Jason. He wrote:

My video game of choice for the past seven years has been World of Warcraft. To say i play a lot would be an understatement. At level 60, and that was several years ago, i had two chars that were both at over 100 days of active playtime. As of today I have 3 level 80's with one of them haveing over 300 days played. For those of you that do not play wow that means i had spent over 300 days logged into the game on that char.

Now for my story.

I go to bed Christmas eve with my char wishing all my guildies a merry Christmas. I logged out In Dalaran wearing my full Christmas costume. Fast froward 14 hour. I get back from my grandparents where i just spent all morning acting like was excited about a new sweater vest. Now i go to log in, and i notice something is wrong. My char has no clothes on. A sense of dread floods over me. I go to log in as my main, a prot warrior just recently 80 and almost in full heroic epics. The zone loads and here i am standing in Westfall. Thats when it hit me, i had been hacked. Later my wife will tell me i kept muttering oh no oh no oh no.... Sometime in the middle of all of it i get sick and throw up... also my fist ends up going through a wall.

When everything is tallied up, gone is all my gear, gone is all my gold on all my toons. 9k of my own hard saved gold, gone. Gone was hundreds of days of gear. Then it really hits me, i am GM of my guild. I run to the flight master, the bastards even deleted my hearth stone. I get to the flight master with no gold to buy a flight home. So now i mount up and run to stormwind. I get into the bank to see it empty. 5 Tabs full of mats and boe gear gone, the 12k in guild bank funds gone. I become sick again. I get back to my computer and then the worst part of all of it hits me. I get a whisper from one of my guilds officers asking why i kicked him. The thief kicked everyone from the guild, leaving myself alone in a shell that once held 200+ members.

At the total cost the thief stole close to 50k gold worth of gold and mats and left me alone in my guild, all on Christmas day. 5 years worth of effort undone in mere hours. Traumatic doesn't begin to describe the loss of 7 years.

This is a very sad story. Losing everything in the World (of Warcraft) on Christmas Day? It doesn't get much worse. Unfortunately, it was also posted on the internet in hopes of winning a contest. The cynic in me, which is a very big part of me, wants to ask how true Jason's story is (and just did). It's hard to lose seven or even five years of work when WoW has only been released for four. There is no real way of knowing how true this story is, but this type of thing happens all too often. How many of you have similar stories? I've talked about mine, so tell us about yours!

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Look Activision-Blizzard, you can even pull in some extra ad revenue while raising security!

If there is one thing worse than scammers in World of Warcraft, it is the hackers.  I was just recently informed that one of the rogues I have played with for years lost his account in this fashion.  Generally you have a good shot at some sort of recovery from this predicament, but not for him.  The failure to recover rest entirely on his shoulders.   His Secret Question was apparently too secret - he forgot the answer - and his serial number was lost during a move.  With the decision made for him, he said he is quitting WoW unless he can find a cheap way to get back in.  A new Battlechest with Wrath in it would likely do the trick. I have seen a lot of buddies get hacked, and sadly most of them were taken advantage of by people they thought were friends.  Those personal hackers have it made, the trusting users actually gives them full access to their account and all its contents.  Half the time looting wasn't their intent, but the temptation is just too great.  The more traditional hacker has it a bit hardier. Blizzard has been combating keylogging, viruses and other computer security based hacking attempts since their MMORPG went live.  First, it was just reminders to not share your account data with anyone, including people claiming to be employees of Blizzard.  Then it was the addition of the "Remember Account Name" check box at the login screen.  Blizzard's latest attempt, the hardware-based Blizzard Authenticator, has been marred by their inability to keep it in stock.  Not to mention the facts that it isn't a flawless system, is optional and costs a few bucks more. I can't remember which MMORPG it was, but they had another anti-hacking measure that should be very easy for Blizzard to implement.  An on-screen keyboard for the password.  Teamed with a saved account name, any keylogger would have a hard time cracking our passwords if we entered the entire (or the same section) of our passwords via an on-screen keyboard.   Even if they did have half of the password, they would simply move on to the next sucker who didn't use the keyboard and yoink all his gold, potions and enchanting goodies. It is sad that we gamers have to go to these measures to stay safe, but the fact of the matter is with people willing to pay for gold, accounts and leveling services, the black market becomes inevitable.  Unlike my buddy, keep your computer clean of spyware and viruses (AVG Free), stay off the shady sites, keep your information to yourself, and for the love of the gods, remember to save your serial digitally and make the Secret Question easy enough that you can remember the answer! Security be with you.

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