So this past weekend Blizzard released the new Blizzard Authenticator. It is a little keychain size device that generates a random 6 digit number. This number is needed to log into your WoW account. With all the account hacking and key loggers out there, people have been getting their accounts stolen and all their items sold off for gold, presumably for the resale of the gold for RL money.
What you will do with this device is log into your WoW account in the normal fashion, but then you will have to push the button on the authenticator, and then enter the code it generates in order to get all the way logged in. This makes it impossible for anyone to ever log into your account unless they have the item…including YOU! So don’t lose it!
The cost is just $6.50. Should it be free? Probably. I can see it taking a blizzard a few man hours to investigate an account hack, and then figuring out what was stolen and then having to restore that account back to how it was. More than $6.50 for sure. But not all 10 million accounts are going to get hacked. I myself have ordered one. I would have liked to have seen blizzard give these away to loyal paying customers. Ones that have stuck with WoW for 1 or 2 years. But then again – $6.50 to protect your account that you have invested literally months of time developing isn’t too bad.
So now, how many online games, online worlds, and bank accounts will follow suit? Are we going to be stuck with 10 different number generators we need to use each day? I’m thinking we need a standard! But then, as we approach that, will that just make it easier for the hacking world to clone our device and break into all our accounts. 10 years from now, will we be needing to do a biometric scan of our finger, then a retinal scan, then a random generated code, then a password just to log into SL? Woot! fun fun.
