Countless people lose control of their World of Warcraft accounts on a daily basis, whether through good old-fashioned hacking, falling for phishing scams, clicking on bogus email links, etc. In answer this ever-growing problems, Blizzard released the World of Warcraft Authenticator at an extra charge, offering participating players a solid layer of security between their passwords and WoW account. Up till recently, the WoW Authenticator proved robust and secure, but has since been the target of a successful hacking attempt.

Blizzard suspects a keylogger may be involved. A Keylogger is a nefarious bit of code that sits on your computer and reports all keyboard interaction, ultimately ratting out your passwords so a hacker.

MMOCrunch article:

So the Authenticator is not a fail safe way to keep accounts safe but it is still a very good investment. If you want to check to see if you have the virus just search for the file “emcor.dll” on your computer. If you have it then your account most likely has already been hacked.

Tools like the Authenticator can only do so much. It is really unfortunate that people are getting hacked even with this security measure but it all comes down to the user. Safe browsing habits, a good anti-virus, common sense (against phishers) and things like an Authenticator can make your account virtually hack proof.

Going outside. It’s quite dangerous. Just ask a World of Warcraft player. Gang fights, turf disputes, trade swindling, imposing authorities, Mr. T. – and we’re not even talking about WoW yet.

So imagine what happens when you mix those things, rampant drug and alcohol usage, internet anonymity, a cross between GTA-style violence and Harry Potter-style witchery, 13-year-olds, and good old FPS teabagging. You get a rather dangerous place called a “PvP Realm.” Roughly translated for those who haven’t yet mastered WoW-speak, it means “open season on your ass.” But since Blizzard has yet to debut its patented in-game butt cup (available soon for only $10, limit one per account) to shield your character (aka toon) from unwanted posterior intrusions, you’ll have to settle with my $5 “Don’t-even-think-about-going-there” tour guide, provided to you free of charge.

So, without further adieu, I bring you, ranging from “hunting guide for Dick Cheney” to “sparring partner for Chuck Norris,” the top 10 most dangerous world PvP areas of WoW.

[A quick note to WoW players not yet accustomed to the sheer lunacy of PvP realms:

PvEers - pretend every zone not exclusively controlled by your faction is simply one of those magical places you call a "battleground," only with flight paths.

RPers - replace "you" with "thou," and "teabagging" with "a sampling of ye olde family jewels."]

#10 – Karazhan

Above: A typical Tuesday night outside Karazhan in 2007.

The old level-70, 10-man raid instance from Burning Crusade may be responsible for many things – starting a new approach that made making raid instances more accessible, causing Blizzard to incorporate 10-man options for all of its raid content in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion – but it will always be known for giving us one startling revelation above all: meeting stones and ganking go together like hookers and the clap.

Sure, Karazhan may not be much of a hot spot anymore, what with the level cap being raised to 80 and all, but back before WoW’s second expansion launched you couldn’t hover around the instance’s meeting stone on a weekday night for more than 10 seconds (let alone during the weekend) without getting gang raped by numerous members of the opposing faction.

The fact that both Horde and Alliance had to summon their raid members face-to-face while some dickweed rogue decided to run his own Sap-a-thon would often cause an arms race that rivaled the Soviet/American nuclear weapons buildup during the Cold War. The first side to amass a full 10-man group – or simply a larger group during more pressing moments – instantly waged full-scale war on the other side.

Beer, weed, energy drinks and A.D.D. all combined with impatience over waiting on that last raid member who just wouldn’t seem to get out of Warsong Gulch no matter how many times you told him. And when more raid groups started showing up, it simply boiled down to who wanted it the most, and who simply wanted some Tier 4.

But assuming your raid somehow succeeded in neutralizing all nearby hostiles, you’d still end up waiting on that supposed second tank your resto druid said he found in trade chat over 30 minutes ago. Thankfully, you could always fall back on dueling your guildies while you waited.

Chances of teabagging: medium.

I try out every MMO that comes along and Aion was no different. I managed to get my character, a Chanter, up to level 32 before finding myself completely bored. Gold-sellers clogging up chat channels, more automated ‘bots than actual human players, and a near total lack of cohesive content at the mid-to-high-end levels meant the game quickly degenerated into a gruelling grind-fest. Not my idea of fun.

Apparently I am not alone, evidenced by this excellent editorial at MMOCrunch.

The Grind

It seems you can’t read anywhere about Aion without reading about the grind, and this blog has been no exception to that.  That being said, it has to be mentioned because this is probably the first of several pitfalls that is going to be cause people to throw in the towel.

This is a graph that fairly accurately plots the experience points curve in Aion at each level that was made by a member of the community here.  As you can see by the graph, right around level 35 the amount of exp needed literally makes the graph look literally like a wall.  Often times when you read on various forums about people saying the grind is fine, make sure you put it into the context of what level they have made it to. Now to be fair, the amount of exp needed by itself is not necessarily the problem as you start to enter your 40’s, but the way in which questing starts to play far less of a role.

When I hit level 42, I quickly completed all of the new quests and looked down at my 60 million exp bar to see only about 10-15% of it had been filled, leaving the remaining 50 million to be obtained by pure mob grind.  Now I am well aware of an upcoming patch slated to increase the quest exp and mob exp, but I think the problem goes a bit deeper than that.  There is a real lack of quest content that becomes painfully obvious at the higher levels.  Quest content is very good at masking grind in other games, so the lack of it in Aion at this level range really only adds to the pain and tedium.

Source: MMO Crunch

So, Sam Raimi is slated to direct a movie based on World of Warcraft. Half of me is excited at the prospect, the other half is pretty confident the movie will suck. As a fan of the first two Evil Dead films and a moderate fan of the first Spider-Man movie, there is hope that Raimi can find some point to a Warcraft movie.  I quite enjoyed his latest movie, Drag Me to Hell, but that had independent sensibilities that found Raimi in his element.

But World of Warcraft? Ugh. As an inspiration for a live-action film, I find World of Warcraft comes up pretty short. Its plots, characters, quests and backstory are pretty derivative and generic. Nothing I haven’t read before in countless fantasy novels. Whoever has been given the thankless task of locating a valid plot-thread in World of Warcraft and translating said thread into cinematic gold has a hell of a hill to climb.

But there I go again, thinking Hollywood cares about making a solid movie with a good plot. This isn’t about plots and characters. This is about cashing in on a huge fan-base, nothing more. It’s about milking the World of Warcraft brand. If you’re a fan of WoW, then you will have to put your full faith and trust in Sam Raimi, but even here there could be significant problems. Blizzard, like Disney, are very protective of their brand and as such, will have tight reigns over Raimi’s creative ideas. Besides, Rami has some real clunkers in his past like Darkman and, more recently, the horrific Legend of the Seeker series. Which Raimi will show up?

For more details, read the Variety article.

It was bound to happen, an unholy union between World of Warcraft and a Twitter Client.

It’s called TweetCraft, a plugin for WoW that can do the following:

• Send/receive Tweets in-game (Immediate sending reloads your UI)
• Queue Tweets to send when it’s more convenient for you
• Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic
• AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement
• Extensible so that AddOn authors can register messages or events to AutoTweet

Download it now!

New players of World of Warcraft will be happy to know the price of mounts will soon be dropping in the next patch.

The scoop:

• Apprentice Riding (Skill 75)
  • 60% land mount speed
  • Requires level 20
  • Cost: 4 gold
  • Mount cost: 1 gold
  • Mail will be sent to players at level 20 guiding them to the riding trainer

• Journeyman Riding (Skill 150)
  • 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 40
  • Cost: 50 gold
  • Mount cost: 10 gold
  • Mail will be sent to players at level 40 guiding them back to the riding trainer

• Expert Riding (Skill 225)
  • 150% flying mount speed; 60% land mount speed
  • Requires level 60
  • Cost: 600 gold (faction discounts now apply)
  • Mount Cost: 50 gold
  • Can now be learned in Honor Hold (Alliance) or Thrallmar (Horde)

• Artisan Riding (Skill 300)
  • 280% flying mount speed; 100% land mount speed
  • Requires level 70
  • Cost: 5,000 gold (faction discounts now apply)
  • Mount Cost: 100 gold

WTF?! is a flash-based, side-scrolling World of Warcraft parody that is worth your time. This isn’t a lame, made-in-an-hour game but a well-crafted, graphically beautiful skewering of all things World of Warcraft. The attention to detail is awesome, the interface excellent and the mindless quests and grinding will make you feel right at home.

Play it here.