Hacked accounts

Q u o t e:
after being on the internet, for over 15 years, playing several mmorpg's... paying bills and managing my accounts over the internet... why is it the only acct, thats ever been hacked is world of warcraft, and battle.net?

Basically it's a matter of risk vs reward, Gorgwar. There are laws in place to protect your banking and credit card transactions that make it unwise and relatively unprofitable to do. There are no international protections for gaming accounts, thus the risk to the compromiser is relatively minimal.

I can't speak for other MMORPG's but in my experience the effort involved in both advertising currency sales/leveling services as well as the effort in compromising accounts it usually directly related to the value of that product. World of Warcraft is fairly popular so the market is rather large. In smaller MMORPG's the effort may not warrant the number of sales that are possible.

Q u o t e:

it seems as if every since battle.net teamed up with world of warcraft, hackers are at a rampage...

This is usually a matter of perception. The overall percentage of compromises has seen very little change but there has been an increase in the number of new and returning players. It is also important to note that compromise restorations may take a bit longer than they used to due to the increased level of restoration we are now able to provide. We not only work to repair 100% of the damage to each character but we also help with the loss of professions and there are guild banks to consider, something that has caused a layer of complexity to a compromise that was not previously there. Factor in compromises that involve Character Transfers and Faction Changes and you push up the complexity even more.

The Battle.net system, to me, seems more secure then it previously was. Yes, your account name is now an e-mail address but you can easily use an address that is not associated with anything else. Previously if your account name was discovered it could not be changed. Now, you are able to change your account name by changing the e-mail address registered to it.

The debate has raged since Battle.net was introduced and will likely continue to do so but it is important to note that our goal is to ensure the security of all our players. After all since we provide assistance for compromises it is in our best interest to make sure the system is as secure as possible since it affects the amount of work that was must do.