World of Warcraft gamers can get pretty possessive of their online characters—after all, they’ve put countless hours (and we mean countless hours) into crafting their online alter egos, building up experience and treasure, and (of course) paying a subscription fee for the privilege.
Blizzard makes reasonable efforts to make sure World of Warcraft accounts are secure, but in a world of keyloggers, network sniffers, Trojan horses, and plain-old bad passwords, it’s not exactly uncommon for a WOW player to have his or her account accessed without permission, then find that everything their in-world character had that was remotely sellable was…gone.
To help combat the problem, Blizzard has announced it plans to offer a Blizzard Authenticator token for World of Warcraft accounts: the token will generate a short-term six-digit security code whenever a user presses a button. The user must then use that code along with their normal account name and password in order to log into the account. The token doesn’t replace the security questions Blizzard associates with each account, but helps ensure that only users who physically have the correct token can access an account.
“It’s important to us that World of Warcraft offers a safe and enjoyable game environment,” said Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime, in a statement. “One aspect of that is helping players avoid account compromise, so we’re pleased to make this additional layer of security available to them.”
We’re all for safety when it comes to mayhem. Blizzard plans to offer the tokens in its online store for $6.50; they’ll first be available at the Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational in Paris this weekend for €6.
No word on how Blizzard plans to support users when the batteries in the tokens run out and they can’t get their six-digit numbers anymore.
