World of Warcraft

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Hacked! It is not fun, and it happens more than anyone would like to admit. Gear, gold and pride, all pilfered by some stranger.
It starts with a simple email from Blizzard. Hmmm, it’s my [...]

Blizzard announced via the customer support forum that it will take proactive steps to quell some of the unsavory behavior on Moon Guard (US), a server notable for its infamous Goldshire inn naughty shenanigans. After a father posted about canceling his son’s account because of the general and trade chats on the Moon Guard server, [...]

We’ve talked before about using parental controls to opt out of Real ID and we’ve talked about the new Battle.net site, but we haven’t actually talked about setting up an account for your child … until now.
The gallery below is a walk-through on what settings are available and how to set them up for your [...]

For a while now, account thieves have been putting authenticators on their stolen accounts to buy more time for their scumbaggery. Blizzard has recently made that more difficult by requiring email confirmation when an authenticator is added to a Battle.net account. Rather than just logging in and putting in the appropriate information, you now have [...]

Nethaera (Blizzard community manager) posted answers to some of the common Real ID questions and concerns on the forums today. With the PR disaster that was Blizzard’s original Real ID on the forums concept, a follow-up aimed at easing tensions in the community — even after the retraction — was to be expected. While Blizzard [...]

Update: The ESRB has since issued an apology.
During the recent Real ID catastrophe on the forums, many players decided to appeal to an industry source that might have been able to sway Blizzard to change its mind. These players contacted the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) as a Better Business Bureau-type middleman in this situation [...]

Yesterday, we learned that the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) accidentally emailed the names of people who had complained about Blizzard’s potential use of Real ID names on the official Blizzard forums. The ESRB has since sent out this apology:

Yesterday we sent an e-mail to a number of consumers who wrote to us in recent [...]

One of the sadder parts of this job is reporting on the numerous scams that sweep across the World of Warcraft landscape. It’s no secret that your WoW account is valuable to thieves — the entire gold-selling industry is built on a foundation of hacked accounts and stolen items.
Their latest scam vehicle? Our inherent desire [...]

During the recent Real ID catastrophe on the forums, many players decided to appeal to an industry source that might have been able to sway Blizzard to change its mind. These players contacted the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) as a Better Business Bureau-type middleman in this situation with their concerns. The ESRB itself [...]

This is not a discussion of the good (yay, crossrealm chat!) and the bad (boo, privacy fail) of Real ID. This is a guide for how to truly opt out of this feature and how to adjust the settings if you do participate in game.
To be clear, everyone who does not have a parentally controlled [...]