The September 18, 2006 issue of Newsweek has an article about World of Warcraft: Living a Virtual Life. You can read it online at that link, instead of buying the whole magazine, which is just about my favorite internet benefit: free. I was glad to see that Newsweek talked to Castronova (page 3) because I’d hate to think I’m missing any new information by not buying their magazine, ever.
Last week, I began the story of a recent problem we had with a former guild member — I’ll call her BabbleOn, because she could babble on and on. She was the kind of guild alumnus who just won’t move on to those greener pastures and that fuller, richer real life and as the primary targets of her incessant IM/email/game chat, the raidleader and I decided that something would have to be done … for the good of the guild. Yes, yes, for the good of the guild! Tranquility, security, pursuit of happiness must be preserved.
Now y’all who’re without sin can cast the first stone. With the benefit of hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea … but at the time, my little plan seemed like the solution to all our problems, and the answer to all our prayers.
As the raidleader and I were discussing one day what to do with a problem like BabbleOn, I suggested that he could get rid of her by coming on to her. My reasoning (after a few drinks in a long PVP play session) was that one of two things would happen: 1. She would e-slap him and tell him never to talk to her again or, 2. Her husband would threaten to hospitalize him. I was kind of hoping for 2., because that would be some funny shit.
I forgot about possibility 3: She would dig it.
The Vent convo, pre-raid:
Raidleader: Well, I tried out that little plan of yours today with *BabbleOn’sGameName*.
Me: Really. How’d that work out?
RL: She’s INTO it.
Me: Heh, no shit. What’d you say, specifically?
RL: I said that we should be more than friends.
Me: That’s it?
RL: Ya.
Me: There’s your problem right there. You’re too subtle. What the fuck is more than friends? That’s like best friends forevah? Email pals?
RL: Ok, fine. If it’ll get her to shut up and leave me alone, will be worth it.
Me: Roger that.
Raidleader continued on with his e-flirting, she continued to dig it and I was blissfully left out of it. As far as I was concerned, the plan had worked like a charm. The one day, her husband must have spied on her emails or done some shoulder surfing, because she reprimanded the raidleader for going too far and said her husband was upset. Whatever. He should come kick my ass, was my idea. Anyways.
She only talked to me once during this time and it was to ask me if I’d champion the idea of her and her husband returning to the guild, y’know, assuming they would ever return to World of Warcraft, which they kind of already had since they logged in each night to talk to people. (Ya, I don’t get that either. I’m not that into people that I’d log into a game solely to chat.) I asked her in return, “Why would I even ask since you’ve said several times that you guys would never rejoin?” Her response, “It’s always nice to be invited.” At that point, I escaped into a battleground, frightened that I still had psycho aggro.
The one day, on a weekend it must have been, we were guild PVP’ing. Between matches, I noticed on the Ventrilo server two names I did not recognize in a private channel. Having admin rights, I popped into the channel and asked the intruders to identify themselves. They said they were friends of a guildmate of ours. “Who?” asked I. They made up a name.
Since our Vent server has always been password-protected, although we rarely change the password, this meant that some former member, or a previous guest of ours, had passed along the Vent info to his buddies in case they ever wanted a free, high-quality Vent experience one day … emphasis on FREE. I invited them to leave and the raidleader changed the password immediately, posting the new password on our private guildmembers-only message boards. We joked that this would also solve our problem with BabbleOn logging into our Vent all the time and we could just blame the intruders. Too bad, so sad.
Problems solved.
The official word from the Warcraft forums about The August 2006 Keylogger: “We would like to warn players of a keylogger scam that is getting posted on the forums. This scam puts fake URLs, or hyperlinks, that once clicked will install a trojan to steal your account name and password. It is important that players take caution when being directed to outside websites and update their security on their computers accordingly. […]” Reply #37, by Landragoran of the Draenor realm, summarized the real details (this is what I heard/read also): “just for everyone who doesn’t know, the site currently being used for distribution of this keylogger is tulang1.com (i’m not going to type out the whole link in fear of someone clicking it and blaming me). basically if you see any link with “tulang” in it, do not click the link. so far i have seen the link in a post claiming that DnT had downed the 4 horsemen, SS’s inside, and 2 posts with the title “‘Trial Version’ question”, wherein someone claims they purchased a computer that came with a trial version of WoW and they want to know if installing it will install the full version but only allow them to play for a short amount of time, or only install part of the game. they then provide a link to the “trial version” that they are talking about.” (Furl archive of thread, page 1 — oh well, Furl’s dead now, but whatcanyado.)
