Another comic inspired by events played out by our guild. I’m sure more than a few of you have gotten those really poorly worded tells about how you’re going to get a mystery gift, or a free celestial horse or something…its OBVIOUSLY fake, but I have to wonder if people actually do fall for it, and if they do, I feel really bad for them…anyway, I don’t have to say it but don’t go to these sites, because *Pictured Above* is gonna happen! Also, I feel its my civic duty to link the Blizzard Account Security Page, just in case, and I do fully advocate Authenticators! They help a TON!
Also, like to give a shout out to Immamoonkin who volunteered her Night Elf Druid character to play the part of the random newb featured in the comic this week. No, this did not happen to her, and in no way would she click one of those links! If I ever need incidental characters, I’ll be putting an APB out on Twitter for volunteers, so make sure to follow fyreuni to hear my ramblings and such!
I gotta say! Its been a pretty good week for me! If you do follow my twitter, you’ll already know that my guild, Havoc has FINALLY downed the LK, in the most retarded and roundabout way ever. It was one of those lightswitch moments where we just said “do this” while we’re fighting him, everyone did it, and we won. We actually one shot him this week…I always said our first pull is the best. It as messy as hell too, with 3 people dead (including our MT) for most of the last phase. We just kept going then all of a sudden it was over, and we were like “bwah?” Anyway, it feels good to finally down that guy. We also 1 shot 3/4 new heroic enocunters this week too. (We have someone in our guild who xfered, and had killed LK before, so we did have access to hardmodes)
AND! I’m very happy to inform you all that I have finally landed a permanent full time position using Flash here in Calgary! I’m so excited that I’m finally employed again! I start on the 25th, and I can’t WAIT! My only concern is that I’m not going to have a ton of spare time to do the comic anymore, as I still have my part time job designing mascots. It might be a little hectic while I get used to my new schedule and figure out where my time to do the comic will be, so bear with me!
The bear is always with you! ;)
That being said, yes I was sadly laying down on the job for the last 20% of the Lich King’s downfall…..I blame Vas! Muhahaha
Lol love the look on Imma’s face in the second panel. Oooooo!
I always hate those tells! I could be talking to a fellow player then those tells pop up! It’s like “Dude…if I didn’t go there the past 1000 times, what makes you think this time is any different?!” Great comic though! ^^
Congrats on the job! I was unemployed for about 6 months myself, so I completely understand the stress and the relief of the whole process. Also, yes, authenticators, authenticators, authenticators! Don’t forget that iPhone and Android phone users can download the official Battle.net authenticator app for FREE. Yes, FREE. And you still get your Core Hound Pup, I think, too! Keep up the great work!
Grats on the job! Though I have to wonder if this means you might be putting off more commissions for a while. <_<
It’s rather sad that so many people wait until AFTER they’ve been hacked to decide to get an authenticator.
I guess it’s worse though that anyone would actually believe those fake mails and whispers, especially since they’re typically far less well worded than the one in your comic. There have to be people out there believing it though; otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it.
newb in ulduar gear?… seems kinda out of place
Gear does not a newb unmake!
Isn’t that the truth.
you should do a kindergarden episode or w/e its called about how not to get hacked like you did about the shapes =D
PS my guild does it different main target skull second target X and use the other shapes for CC and etc.
Poor elfy, I know far too many guildies who’ve been hacked (primarily the quartermaster). :(
I get sent similar things in whispers on my blelf: “We has scanned your account and found you have been doing things you can’t remember doing, but you have anyway because we say you have. Go restart your account at http://www.wow-scam.com.in or your account will be suspended”
While we’re at it, know were I can buy some really cheap gold and power-leveling service? >:D
wow. my friend was just hacked last night. he is saying he has not played in 6months. but then again two other friends were hacked recently as well. i have an authenticator but i should buy a new one soon. nice comic though. almost fell for a scam through in game mail once. someone sent a wrapped gift and cod’d it. was when i first started to play. asked my guild why it was charging me. they said to send it back
…I fully support the stripping of Night Elf females.
Seconded.
Seconded
nightelf female overrules the motion XD
I got one such tell that became a bit of a legend in my guild. If I saved a screenshot of the tell itself, I’ve unfortunately lost it, but it was the standard gibberish about how Blizzard was supposedly so happy with how awesome I was that they’d reward me if I visited this website. The brilliant bit was the gibberish phrase: “System pumping to the lucky players.”
We were sitting outside Festergut, laughing about this for several minutes, when one of the other shammies (who was clearly not up to speed or paying enough attention) said in a very serious, very cautionary tone, “Don’t go to that link, it’s a keylogger.” As though he were saving from certain peril, because clearly I was moments away from going to that site and compromising my account. The joke had already started to die down, but several of us just about died from the shaman’s “advice.”
We still throw around “It’s a keylogger” every so often, but the event mainly lives on in our burn phases: “/y System pumping to the lucky players!” has been macro’d into my Heroism ever since.
He he he… :-)
My newly-rolled alts always seem to get at least one of those scam tells around level 5 or 6. Unfortunately none were quite as entertaining as the one you got, alpha!
The gold spammers and account thieves must spend some time sending out those things right? The must work on somebody cause why else would they do it?
i only know one person on wow that fell for that and he changed his stuff and cleaned all the spy were out of his computer
Oh I’ve gotten so many “mystery gifts” and mounts…often several a day… and this one time I was told my account was suspended… guess the so called “blizzard-employee” didn’t wonder how the heck I was still online if that was the case.
I just report them every time I get a tell like that:p
Oh yes, I’ve seen those a few times. “Your account has been suspended. Go to [scammer site with "blizzard" (often misspelled) in the address] for more information.” Umm, if I’ve really been suspended, shouldn’t I be getting d/c’d right about now? :-)
i usually get mailed that stuff same with other people on my server horde side guess where just not worth whispering too or something
Was talking to a GM when i got one of those that had the blizzard emblem on it 0.0. She logged into my account to look at it and was like “well this one looks well made lol”. She was helping me with some quest in fjord that didn’t want to complete >.<
How appropriate! I was spammed by a player named Wowblizzcon today telling me that Blizzard had detected 3rd party software and to log onto “you’re a fool if you do this dot com” to prevent my account from being frozen…
Who falls for this? Anyway, great site. Many thanks to Nyxian for telling me about it. =)
And grats on the job!
with an authindicator you account is near hack proof the only way it can be hacked is if the hacker can get physical contact with your authindicator or by some F’ed up method i dont no about
PS 1 1/2 years w/o getten hacked wewt
There’s absolutely no reason not to get an authenticator. And if you don’t have one, do like Raven did and choose a ridiculously long and complex password until you can dig $6.50 out of your couch cushions. (seriously, it used to take me a full minute after opening WoW to get to the character select screen.)
Oh… and a useful tip for removing those “Lucky players” and “Impending Frozen Account” whispers: There’s an addon called GnoMoreSpam that will automatically block incoming messages, trade chat and yells that match certain keywords.
My favorite was from the totally legit [Wowblìzzard] who told me “I am becoming lucky player. Three days later, you went to wowblizzaard.org and retrieve lucky prize”
The last part was so cool, like he was reading a “Choose your own adventure” to me.
Lol the Sad thing is I know ppl that have fallen for this . nun uf them are in the guild but i know them lol
God my spelling is horable
Omg I laughed so hard, I get these letters all the time! I can’t stop laughing!!!!
I’d love to do ICC, but alas i shall wait till cataclysm and do it when it’s easier… and when there arn’t ‘gear requirements’ and know tacticts etc…
And grats on the job Fyre!
Authenticators are worthless! They don’t help at all, at least claims someone who ‘works in the business’ and keeps telling me that they’ll be the end of WoW the instant someone breaks the algorithm and has access to all of the WoW accounts.
How exactly they’ll have access without account names and passwords I don’t know, but according to someone ‘in the business’, it will happen!
~_~ Funny post, otherwise!
The authenticator is corporate level security that no other game offers and most companies can’t afford to implement. I’m not really sure how people can stand up and talk them down, but I hear about it all the time, too.
I’m fairly certain it’s just an RSA hash. Everyone knows the algorithm; it’s publicly available. What they don’t know is the seed, or private password, for your hash.
Which, considering there’s there’s potentially billions of them or more, is the real catch and where the security comes from.
I used to work for an outsourced call center of America Online technical support that used these things for employee logins and such. They’re serious business.
I have to disagree. My guildie got hacked (fortuately, she got all her stuff back after talking to a GM) and was kicking herself for *not* having an authenticator. I immediately went to Blizzard’s store and ordered one. I don’t really care about gear, but just having the peace of mind that the characters I’ve devoted (probably too many) hours of my life to are safe is more than worth a lousy $6. Plus, the Core Hound helps to feed my small pet addiction.
Did anyone else read ‘feed my small pet addiction’ and get a very wrong mental image of violet’s avatar image eating sauteed Core Hound Pup with a side of Egbert omelet?
noooooo…. *backs away slowly*
Bwahahaha >:D
Just stay away from my chickens, and lamb, and pumpkin, and Pig… STAY AWAY FROM MY MINI PETS!
Oh god! I get these daily now!
I love your depiction of a NE! Cute… For an Ally that is…
I get those all day on my server too, and the only ICC 25s that happen are GDKP runs. OH MY GOD! Idiots buy gold to do those runs, get hacked my server is full of fools and hackers now!
HEY!
I SEE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS!
They wouldn’t be able to sell that Ulduar gear! It’s badge loot!
Also that’s some sexy underwear. I wish you could get the bottoms like that in game!
Its could be offset gear. Plus the Goldseller is being a dick and just getting rid of everything to make a point.
Disenchanting. Convert the equipment to shards and sell off the shards. According to the forums that’s what they do.
Goldsellers.
They’re only hacking you and stealing your shit to teach you a lesson. It’s for your own good. Really.
actually, they can just delete gear because they feel like it, but the lesson here is that you need to be more careful about how you handle your account and what you click on. If you missed that then well, *shrug* That was the point of the comic anyway.
I was just making a joke. I know what the point of the comic was, the statement you just made seemed like you were saying the Hackers were trying to teach people lessons. =P
And I know how big of dicks hackers can be. I’ve had 4 level 80s get deleted once when I was hacked. The hacker needed to make room for low level gold selling and spamming alts.
People do fall for this. Three people in my guild got “hacked” in the same week and then admitted with some reluctance that they thought they were gonna get a free gift and whatnot. The funny thing is that one of them actually thought Blizz hacked them and was begging everyone else to spam them with tickets so he’d get his stuff back.
…. Is it alright if I call them an idiot? If not I’m going to continue thinking it very loudly.
Gartz on the job…!
About the topic of the strip: What really bothers me is that you shouldn’t need the authenticator. Yeah, they work really well and the pet is cool…I’m not disputing that..but, the only way a scammer is going to get both your account name and password that they didn’t know from the start, would have to be A) A gullible enough person that enters this in fake/malicious websites and B) Addons or malware that keylogs this information, which is usually (to those half-computer literate) very obvious from the get-go. No add-on should require the use of “installing” via an application (*.exe for example), etc etc. It’s why, when I hear someone get “hacked”, I facepalm, and it’s a very loud facepalm.
That’s not always the case, though. When one of my accounts was stolen it was before the Battle.net merger and when authenticators were just starting to become a popular security method.
I was out of town at the time (visiting Fyre, in fact!), and I was logged into my second account getting set up for our instance grinding. I’m neither a victim of the scam mentioned above or an unwitting victim of an obvious keylogger.
It’s not always as cut and dry as “you shared your information, it’s your fault” which is why the authenticator is such an incredible addition to account security.