New Blizzard "Security feature"Follow

I'm having troubles with (and I'm sure others are as well) one of Blizzard's new "security features".

And an edit: I HAVE authenticators.

It would seem that Blizz's system needs to "learn your login pattern". (Sounds like Blizz is controlled by Skynet... but anyway)

I have multiple accounts, with which I dualbox, from the same location. I don't travel. I don't play at internet cafés. I never take WoW over to a friend's place to play there. it's always on the same two computers, on my desk, in my office, in my house.

Shortly after patch 4.0 (I think that's the one. a few months ago, yes?) I started getting locked out of the game when trying to log in.

It would give me a message about "unusual log in pattern" or something. of course, all that meant was that my dynamic IP had changed during the night or something because of power fluctuations either at my ISP or in my own neighborhood.

I haven't been playing many hours a day for quite a while now - too much work to do, not enough play time.

I'd get this lock-out message maybe once a week, sometimes twice. And at its worst, I was getting it twice a day.

This meant I had to reset my password(s) every time.

I know my account is not compromised. Nothing is changed (or they are the absolutely dimmest, braindead hackers in the world and don't know what to do with what little I have in my accounts?), nothing is missing, my toons haven't moved an inch from the last time I logged in, nothing is gone from guild bank.

And scans of my computer always come back clean.
As well, one of the two computers I use is ONLY used to access WoW. I don't browse with it, never "go online", don't even get email from it. it's basically a big expensive Xbox. all it does is play WoW. So it certainly can't be infected with anything. (and yes, it also has firewalls, anti-virus, anti-malware, etc... on it)

On the other hand, I know many people who are having the same issue as I am: being locked out of WoW for "unusual login activity" (or whatever the message is).

I contacted Blizz, and they removed that feature from my account. However, I was told it would only last a few weeks. The "security functionality" would be back after that brief period.

I just don't know what to do. I can't afford a static IP address (my ISP charge a fortune for those - they consider them "commercial" products). And I dread logging in and getting that damned message again.

Does anyone have any proposed solutions to this?

I am, at this point, seriously considering dropping WoW if this starts over once my "grace period" is over.

Edited, May 12th 2011 10:07am by capcanuk

That is odd. I haven't had the security thing kick in since January (where I used a hotel connection to log into wow for a few days). I do have multiple accounts and use two computers to log in (as well as log in to battle.net from my netbook while at work.) As far as I know, my home connection uses a dynamic IP too.

an acquaintance on another WoW forum is having the exact same problem.
so I know it's not isolated to just me :)

OK... this is a feature they should have implemented when they started out. This would have removed well over 90% of the hacked accounts. The majority of accounts are hacked from areas well outside of your IP block (can anyone say China Gold Traders?)

Rift STARTED using this feature. If you log in from a different IP than normal, the ask for an identification code that they just sent to your registered e-mail.

I play from 2 locations (at home and on Fridays at our friends house). I defiantly prefer them being PRO-active on security as I have been hacked once before (been in IT for 30+ years so I DO have a secured system, but the odd Flash Hack that was running a key-logger caught it).

This is a great approach and if you leave, I'm sorry to say, but other games have started this same approach as it WILL lessen the amount of hacked accounts.

Thanks for all the feedback, peoples.

I sort of wish that Blizzard would follow Rift's lead on this one.

If all they did was send an email with an additional code to use, that would be ok.
The problem is Blizzard makes you change all your passwords, and THAT is a lot of ******* around. Particularly when you have multiple WoW accounts (I have 3).

I was getting this when I went from logging in on Wowtunnels then logging in without. I think it is a fantastic security measure, but there is no way in hell it should be ******** with you (or me) when we have an authenticator. Having to hold up a raid for 10-15 mins while I change passwords because I was lagging with WoWTunnels is very frustrating.

Well, it's worth a shot to try again. Be persistent. Not everybody in tech support knows the fix to every problem.