I ATEN'T DED!

This might be a really bad idea. For those of you that don't know (meaning you haven't been following me on twitter and listening to me incessantly complain about it)  I am suffering with RSI in both arms that makes using computers right now painful,  hence the blog being so quiet... but:

Pratchet Lego! Awesome

So with rumours of my demise cleared up, what's been going on in Azeroth while I've been away?

"How many QQ's in Authenticator?"

So the big news seems to be that blizzard has/is launching a function that checks your computers 'finger print' upon login and uses it to determine if it needs to ask for an authenticator code or not,  so if you regularly log in from the same machine, chances are you won't need those magic six digits to play. This seems quite clever to me, and a good use of technology they already had working anyway. I imagine Blizz' thought this would stop some of the moaning from the community about authenticators being an extra hassle for them, HA! No... instead the vocal minority has found something new to complain about... 'this will lead to more hacking because it's just you're IP address and that can be spoofed' ZOMG! ... Well, as it turns out it's officially 'a bit more complicated than that'. 

I assume that means things like when/where you are coming from your ISP/IP/OS version possibly even hardware stats and MAC addresses could feature, but this makes me worry: What data does Blizz have on us that we don't want getting out? With LulzSec hacking everyone from the CIA to Minecraft, and even causing Eve to 'cut the hardlines' as it were... Is Blizzard immune? Sony and Sega were not... If my hardware addresses/system specs could be stolen along with my billing info and credit card numbers... well it wouldn't be my gold I'd be worrying about!

Voices in the community has already called for an opt-out option, and as much as I applaud Blizzard for trying to encourage use of the authenticator system, I have to say I think I'd prefer to punch in those numbers.

A 4.2 on the Metzen scale

We all know Blizzard love The Horde more, they can haz exspanshunz... and Mr Metzen loves him some Thrall.

What?

I'm trying to announce that patch 4.2 trailer is out, stay with me.

So colour[sic] me /confused... Firelands is going to see the heroes of Azeroth re-growing the sacred Night Elf area of Mount Hyjal and driving the elemental molten front back, all under the direction of Malfurion... Even the long thought lost Aspect of Time will be showing up! So you would assume old Rag'y is going to threaten and mock the Cenarion circle and the assembled aspects, that the Twilight cultists might be seen conspiring still in the reborn Hyjal, and Shaman and Druids desperately trying to heal the scorched earth... nope. Instead More Thrall™ The evergreen shaman is trying to get the earth spirits on the blower but gets cross connected to lava legs instead, and so Ragnaros threatens a dude who's hundreds of miles away from the actual front line... As the good fellows over at wow insider said, it was at least a chance for Chris Metzen to argue with himself.  Go watch the trailer though,  it is awesome!

Frostingmorne within his grasp

As the Godfather of WoW Podcasting Medros announced over on the Dawnforge Productions show; Group Quest, this week, he is nearly at his target of donations needed to make the epic wedding day cake cutting that we posted about earlier, a reality! If you can help him out with the final push,  give an early wedding present at sword.allthingsazeroth.com

Don your tinfoil hats of +8 interlect

While we're talking WoW Insider; I've been keeping my last dose of sanity and getting my WoW fix with the many great blogs and pod-casts the community puts out, so imagine my delight when, while going over the recent news and developments in Azeroth having been 'disarmed' and unable to log in, I discover that a question I posed many moons ago has become the subject of a Shades'o'grey know your lore! Over here be the article in question, it's very interesting and gets my mind wondering further. I originally emailed All Things Azeroth before Catalysm dropped asking if the Spirit Healers had anything to do with the Val'kyr -basically because they looked a little alike- (I hadn't levelled my Lore knowledge back then). There didn't seem to be any clues to my question and my own searching of WoW's back story didn't reveal anything either, but now, fresh off the back of explaining every kind of magic in Azeroth, and writing a guide to the entire cosmos on the side, the Aspect of Bacon (...sorry!) has given us insight into the most regularly observed seen blue ghostie NPCs in Azeroth (well, most seen if you PvP like me) 

So! Click over to the great KYL that's been put up the last couple of weeks, pass me the painkillers(!) and...

...Swear Allegiance