Comments on: Another Blizzard Rant

By: flosch

flosch — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 16:31:42 +0000

It makes sense, in a way. It totally makes sense within one business unit. Even though I still would probably be annoyed if I had multiple accounts and needed multiple authenticators, with tags, preferably, so I knew which authenticator would be for which account.

It just absolutely surprised me that it worked cross-atlantic. Because generally, as far as Blizzard is concerned, there is a deep chasm between the two continents, which nobody ever crossed, and it’s terra incognita on the other side.

But I’m starting to rant again. It’s fine. I’m over this worst experience in my MMO history. Completely. So over it! Ahem. 😉

By: Wilhelm Arcturus

Wilhelm Arcturus — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 16:57:53 +0000

Without any real evidence, I am going to guess that this is more to annoy hackers than you. A little while after authenticators came out, hackers started using them to lock people out of their accounts. They would get into a compromised account and add an authenticator, using the same authenticator over and over on hundreds of accounts.

The easy work around for Blizz on that would be to only allow an authenticator to be activated on a single account. The same would be true for SMS authentication.

Anyway, that is my theory. Doesn’t make the situation less annoying, but at least you can shake your fist and say “Damn hackers!” in addition to “Damn Blizzard!”

By: flosch

flosch — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 18:47:33 +0000

I’m… not sure I buy that explanation. Either you can exchange information between business units, or you can’t. If you can do it for authentication information, then you can for other data, too. You might not want to for some byzantine reason, but you can’t say it’s impossible if it obviously is possible.

Or let me rephrase that: I can believe, no problem, that there’s a technical reason for it. But not that there’s a good technical reason.

By: Talarian

Talarian — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 18:36:29 +0000

There’s a good technical reason for that. Authentication servers are separate from data servers. You can tell when authentication goes down (nobody can log in), but those already in are fine.

However, explaining that to an end user is def. confusing.