Stop Thief!

This last week, one of my officers had their account hacked. Twice.

He lost everything, and the guild bank was drained of epic patterns, potions...and fish scales. Not only were most of his characters deleted, the best geared one was transfered off server (note: Not account transfered, as if sold, but server transfered).

My other officers reacted quickly and called both me, to lock down the bank, and the officer, to lock down his account. I removed all access, except deposits, from all ranks. I changed the gmotd to let people know what had happened, and submitted a ticket.

A GM contacted me within about 10 minutes, and I told him what I knew. At the same time, my officer was submitting a ticket of his own. The GM told me that he would start a report, but they wouldn't be able to do anything until they got the ticket from my officer. I asked if I needed to provide them with a list of items or anything, considering my guild would like it's stuff back. He told me no, that the officer hacked could just mention the guild bank in his ticket, and everything would be restored, including the guild bank stuff.

So, I made sure the officer knew what I'd been told, he submitted his ticket, changed his password, and we thought we were shifting into "cleanup" mode.

The deleted characters were restored, and with them a few of the lower level bank items, and all the fish scales. (whew, I wasn't sure how we'd live without those!) No progress with the server transfered character, but at least now he had some of his stuff back, some of his gold, and a character to raid with in the meantime. All the while he's watching his email for word from Blizzard, and scanning his computer for the entry point. An email comes through, where the thief attempted to change the password...to regain access to the account. This is reported.

The next day...the account is hacked again. The second highest character is server transfered. The rest of the characters are once again cleaned out and deleted.

Now, I don't mean to tell Blizzard how to do their job...but if an account has been reported as hacked, and you're in the middle of addressing that issue, wouldn't it be wise to flag the account preventing all server transfers, password changes, and maybe even character deletion? Just my two copper...

So, now we're still waiting. My officer is stuck without two of his characters, feeling pretty low, seeing as how this is something he's invested a lot of time and effort into. He's reformatted to hopefully rid himself of whatever hole the hacker crawled in, but they still got away...and a week later, the characters are still sitting on another server.

Word to the wise: Scan your computer. Still have the same password you picked out on launch day, nearly 4 years ago? Perhaps now is a good time to think of a new, safer one.

Guild leaders, preventing an account hack is not something you can really control, but there are still ways to keep your banks a little safer. Put withdrawal limits on every tab. Don't invite member alts without first making them request the invite from their main character (this prevents the pretenders from breaking in) and setup a trail membership period, with very limited (if any) access to the bank, for a reasonable period, so new members can't make off with your stuff.

A Better Community

Bell's post today over at 4 Haelz got me thinking about who I'm playing with. Over the past three years in Annarchy, I've met and become friends with some really great people, both men and women in a pretty wide age range. It's pretty cool when I think about it, these aren't necessarily people that I would have even come into contact with in a real life setting, simply because of that age/gender gap (never mind the actual physical space, since we're scattered all over the world).

It still doesn't just happen naturally though. Given the anonymous nature of the internet and WoW itself, it's still widely accepted that if you reveal to anyone that you are a woman, you can expect to be targeted with immature, and often rude behavior. This can range from the only mildly irritating, "girlz don't play video games!" (yes genius, we've heard it before, you didn't think it up) to the outright offensive "show me your..." The best way to fight this, I think, is if we (I mean everyone, men and women alike) simply stop allowing it. Just don't put up with it.

I chose not to, I created Annarchy with the purpose of being a safe place to play, where that sort of behavior just isn't acceptable. Our rules state that derogatory comments aimed at age/gender/race and religion are just not going to be tolerated. Everyone who joins knows it, and they are expected to conduct themselves in a mature fashion.

As far as age is concerned, it's an issue I deal with as a guild leader, but mostly in terms of trying to make sure that our younger members aren't exposed to language or discussions that they shouldn't be. We're a family friendly guild, and we're serious about keeping it that way. I think a lot of the reason that age (in the way Bell discusses it) isn't an issue with us, is because of the maturity expectation. It truly doesn't matter to me what the age difference is between me and another member, we can connect and play together without it being weird, because we all expect to be treated respectfully, and try to be respectful in return.

I've heard the "It's only a game, I don't let it bother me" argument, rest assured. But I don't buy it. It may not bother you to have someone be rude to you, or someone else, but if you don't speak up...aren't you condoning it? How about the person who wants to play and be accepted as a person, not treated like she's just a great target for jokes and immature comments? Wouldn't it be better if you didn't have to "let it go" and just not be exposed to the behavior at all? It sure makes my gaming experience better.

Public Guild Notes

What's that saying about anonymity and the internet? *sigh*

Another Blizzard "feature" that's currently driving me crazy is the public guild notes. There's a guild control setting that allows you to turn it on and off for each rank, however that means anyone can edit anyone else's note with no log of who is doing the changing. This can be a fun game, or a source of hurt feelings and misunderstanding. Usually for us it's the former, every once in a while, someone tries to be clever and it winds up being the later.

Ideally? The settings would include an option for members to edit only their personal note. Or even their personal note and those of people of lower rank (similar to promote/demote/kick settings).

I can't complain too loudly, given the size of our guild we do remarkably well with avoiding the drama, and overall the membership is pretty mature...it's just that 1% of the time that sends me down that "What was Blizzard thinking?" road.

The solution? Well for now I'll see if a little reminder that "this sort of thing isn't cool with me" does the trick, and if it doesn't I'll turn off the option for a while.