I was going to link to the real story, but the fake Steve version is more fun.
(tags: Apple)
Ok - I really just might quit this whole MMO thing if I cannot get some satisfaction. I am usually one to put lots of fun links into posts and make sure my obscure references are known to all, but I just threw up my earlier post prematurely so you all could get the full picture on my adventures as an MMO hacking victim…
I finally heard back from Blizzard a little over 30 hours after I submitted my original petition to have my items and characters that were sold/deleted. Blizzard kindly informed me that my account was under final notice and was suspended for 72 hours for breaking the terms of use and allegedly exploiting the WoW economy. Sooo… I am a little lost for words at this point - I call Blizzard, they tell me to read the e-mail and inform me the only way to get assistance is by e-mailing them - so I did.
Waiting for a response now from Blizzard, but I am almost at the point where I want to give up and catch up on Mass Effect - I read the Mass Effect prequel book over the holiday (which was pretty good) and actually want to dive back in soon… but I digress.
I am sure you can see the irony of the problem - I tell Blizzard that someone hacked me - stole my stuff - and obviously they sold the items for cash or they wouldn’t have done it in the first place. As a result they just suspend me. In fairness, I am sure they figured out a whole ring of accounts were compromised and froze them all until the situation could be resolved… it just doesn’t make me any happier about the whole thing.
More updates as they become available… you will probably see me post more about Mass Effect than WoW though - Blizzard is really on my bad side right now.
It has been quite a holiday - I have been all over the place and ended up getting back into WoW after the glow of my PS3s latest Blu-Ray disc faded. Funny enough, I have been renting more HD-DVDs than Blu-Ray, but I digress…
I had taken about a 6 month hiatus from WoW and finally made the long journey from 66 to 70 - my first foray into the end game of WoW. Funny enough, the guys at Penny Arcade jumped back in a few days after I did - I guess it was that time of year with the holidays and all. I have to say it is pretty fun in the end game though. I geared up a bit - I had taken the phrase green is the new purple a little to literally until I got to 70 though - fortunately my gear is a nice shade of blue at the moment.
With my gear up to snuff and my obsession with leveling all but a memory, I jumped into the arena with some guildmates, did some PvP, and ran a few instances. My level 70 Pally can be a pretty good healbot now - I was even starting to accumulate some extra cash for a flying epic mount… until yesterday that is…
So I get up to check my auctions and cannot log in. It turns out that the UI Central program which automatically keeps WoW interface mods up to date comes with keylogging malware gratis. Some guys stole my password and sold most of my stuff during their 8 hour joyride while I was sleeping. About a day later and I am still waiting for Blizzard to rectify the situation, but it caused me to spend the day changing passwords, running virus checks, and generally appreciating the virus-free nature of Mac OS.
See - I had been playing WoW on the Vista side of my MacBook Pro - seemed like a good idea at the time. Now that I am thoroughly scared of getting another keylogger I am playing WoW in Mac OS X in relative safety. The framerates are actually quite good compared to boot camp.
In any case, I will provide a few updates as Blizzard investigates my hacking situation. In the meantime, beware of downloading any EXE files - especially ones related to WoW. This particular site was fairly reputable in my opinion so I didn’t worry about it. After a few searches I discovered they had a major security breach and never told their users. None of the WoW blogs I read reported it either… you have been warned.
For now I will be hiding away in the safe confines of Leopard - since yesterday I feel like every time I type a password on a Windows computer a gold farmer is stealing my hard earned virtual cash.
I have been following the various posts for Xbox Live status for a while and the latest from Major Nelson’s Twitter and the Xbox Live support homepage says things are back up and running. However, I am down here in Florida and still cannot recover a gamer tag from XBL - keeps saying the Xbox Live sign-up is unavailable. When you don’t have a working gamer tag you pretty much can’t do anything.
So, for me this is really annoying. The thing that irks me the most is they are saying the service is up and running when it is clearly not. Check out this forum thread - tons of people having issues recovering gamer tags. Over 1200 posts since Thursday and counting. I am looking for a refund of some kind for sure in the near future…
Update: Looks like Engadget noticed the problem and Major’s twitter is in a flurry with updates on the situation. Sounds like the Xbox Live team is having big time issues. At least the gamer tag issue is now listed on the main status page. I hope they sold tons of 360s at least…
Update 2: Gamer tag recovery is working a bit better today (12/30) - I just recovered without incident this morning. I can’t really comment on everything else on XBL though…
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