power levelling services are dumb...levelling to 70 is easy :D

K!

Next game is "BloodHills 589"

go go go


err...

First page? =P

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Q u o t e:
We wanted to take this time to remind players that the use of power-leveling services, which generally involves a player paying a person or company to level up a character on the player's behalf, is a violation of our account-sharing policy. The common concern with power-leveling services, and with account-sharing in general, is that sharing access to the account involves players providing their login information (login name and password) to another person. From there, the person receiving this private information is able to do anything they wish with the characters on that account, such as transfer all the gold and items to other players, use the characters in conjunction with hack programs for illicit purposes in the game, and/or delete the characters.

In general, we urge players to refrain from sharing their login information with anyone for any reason, as it's the owner of the account who will be held accountable for all login uses, regardless of whether or not the owner granted authorization or approval. In the event that you become aware of or reasonably suspect any breach of security, including without limitation any loss, theft, or unauthorized disclosure of your login information, please immediately notify Blizzard by emailing wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com.

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ok thats fair enough. People doing this are asking for trouble aside from the fact that they are clearly breaking the terms of use.

However, I have an issue with this sentence:

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Q u o t e:
... The owner of the account who will be held accountable for all login uses, regardless of whether or not the owner granted authorization or approval. ...

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This seems to suggest that even if you do not ever break the terms of use but your account is hacked and used for bannable offences then it's just tough luck.

Now for a start Blizzard's account system is pretty poor in my opinion. The linking of game account data to your management account. The fact that all information is available on the web and requires browser logins and the fact that the forums share the same login and must therefore be used repeatedly, create, in my opinion, a high risk scenario.

It's one thing to ban or blame people for doing the wrong thing, but to blame people for being the target of criminals even if they themselves have not contravened any law or terms of use is pretty poor, short sighted and increasingly, what I've come to expect from Blizzard.

Question!!

That thing on the main page says players are urged not to share info. As in, 'you're allowed to share info, but its your own problem if things go bad' ...right? I mean, obviously i'm not going to PL or pay people to progress my toons, but if my lowbie friend who i trust wants to see what pvp is like at 60, or test out rogue to see if he wants to roll one... that'd be ok? Imo the 'lending' of your main to a friend w/o a 60 shouldnt be against the rules, as long as it's not abused...

can a bloo clarify the rule on that? :O

ps- i would never share my password. EVER :)

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Q u o t e:
Question!!

That thing on the main page says players are urged not to share info. As in, 'you're allowed to share info, but its your own problem if things go bad' ...right? I mean, obviously i'm not going to PL or pay people to progress my toons, but if my lowbie friend who i trust wants to see what pvp is like at 60, or test out rogue to see if he wants to roll one... that'd be ok? Imo the 'lending' of your main to a friend w/o a 60 shouldnt be against the rules, as long as it's not abused...

can a bloo clarify the rule on that? :O

ps- i would never share my password. EVER :)

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You cannot share your account with anyone, ever, at all, period, as defined in the Terms of Use. (The sole exception is with a single minor child in your custody.)

Blizzard is "reminding" us of this in these little posts, since some players either don't bother to read the ToU or prefer to ignore them. It's kind of like those radio commercials advising motorists not to speed or drive aggressively or drive drunk.

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Q u o t e:
This seems to suggest that even if you do not ever break the terms of use but your account is hacked and used for bannable offences then it's just tough luck.

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There is no guarantee that, should your account be compromised, Blizzard can restore it to you. That they are able to do so at all is good will on their part, not any legal or contractual requirement.

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Q u o t e:
Now for a start Blizzard's account system is pretty poor in my opinion. The linking of game account data to your management account. The fact that all information is available on the web and requires browser logins and the fact that the forums share the same login and must therefore be used repeatedly, create, in my opinion, a high risk scenario.

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If you get a keylogger, you get a keylogger. This isn't rocket science. If your computer is not secure, then you're going to lose things a lot worse than your WoW account. Online banking, anyone? Credit cards?

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Q u o t e:
It's one thing to ban or blame people for doing the wrong thing, but to blame people for being the target of criminals even if they themselves have not contravened any law or terms of use is pretty poor, short sighted and increasingly, what I've come to expect from Blizzard.

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People who get computers, plug them into the Internet, and don't learn or bother about security are essentially walking down Main Street, Brooklyn with a wad of cash hanging out of their pocket and a "Mug Me" sign taped to their backs.

Sure, it's illegal to rob them. Sure, the police will try to recover their stolen goods, assuming they're alive to receive them. But isn't it easier not to get robbed in the first place?

I think there should be a reminder sent out that people should not LOG IN to world of warcraft on any other website. Mostly becaue i was on youtube.com today looking at wow videos and many of them have fake links that send you to a log in screen... Yea oops... lol...

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Q u o t e:
This seems to suggest that even if you do not ever break the terms of use but your account is hacked and used for bannable offences then it's just tough luck.

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Which is exactly how it is. Your account security is your responsibility. Always has been. Always will be. It says it in the TOS/EULA and you agreed to it the first time you signed in and with every patch since then.

However, as a pure courtesy, if your account security is compromised Blizzard will investigate it and if they can reasonably prove an unknowing breach actually occurred that was not willingly given they will forgive any misdeeds perpetrated by the hacker and restore what they can or at least give items enough to allow the character to be played again. But they don't make any guarantees as again, it is only a courtesy they extend when they can be reasonably certain of an actual breech.

In the case of a power leveling service though, they would see someone leveling, most likely via botting which in itself is bannable, over a period of time as well as likely sending out spam via /w and/or in game mail for power leveling and gold selling. That is a pretty distinct pattern of behavior and if such was observed, you'd have a hard time convincing Blizzard that someone hacked your account in order to level a character.

And the ones who do manually level a char, are usually based in China which makes it easy to root out when you spend a week or two in China power leveling 22 hours a day and then within a couple hours of hitting 70 are suddenly back in the US playing like a newb for 2 hours a night. And those in the US are usually operated by people who know each other via the internet who work in shifts to do the leveling so Blizz sees you in New York when you log out but in 20 minutes you log back in from San Fransisco, it's again obvious the pattern of behavior again makes it more reasonable that you had willingly given out your account info then you'd been hacked.

And Blizzard can only go by what it looks like on their end. Your word means jack as anyone who has done wrong is going to lie. Yeah, bad hackers, ruining it for the rest.

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Q u o t e:
It's one thing to ban or blame people for doing the wrong thing, but to blame people for being the target of criminals even if they themselves have not contravened any law or terms of use is pretty poor

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If you get hacked it's because you violated the terms of use and did not keep your account information secure. You let yourself get infected with a trojan. You let yourself get infected by a virus. You let someone sniff your password on an unsecure network. You use a pirated copy of Windows and don't use Microsoft Update. And so on. Whatever method used, it only works if YOU let it happen. Keeping your account information secure encompasses more then just not making it your forum sig. And it's YOUR responsibility.

The problem is not enough people know that powerleveling IS wrong so they do it and end up getting banned. If we can get enough people to figure out that they'll get banned if they pay for powerleveling then all the game companies will stop offering it.

Check out http://www.powerlevelingsucks.com there are all sorts of stories of people who are getting banned because of their stupidity.

yea

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Q u o t e:
We wanted to take this time to remind players that the use of power-leveling services, which generally involves a player paying a person or company to level up a character on the player's behalf, is a violation of our account-sharing policy.

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Presumably prompted by the CNet article which just appeared .. the massive number of pitiful losers who pay to cheat is staggering.

Where as this wouldn't work against keylogging software since it records the actual character pressed but, do you think Blizzard you could make your passwords the full alphanumeric range? As it stands now, your login screen does not make a determination between lower and upper case. Many sites that ask you to create a password to access them suggest making a "strong password" or one that's a mix of numbers and both upper and lower case letters. That would be one thing you could do to increase the level of security on our accounts.

For the login name, no, case doesn't matter. The password on the other hand is case sensitive.

You should require active accounts to change their password once every other month or so. This will eliminate possible hacking or guessing of ones password.