One can get a refurbished smartphone. Unlocked depending how much you want to spend anywhere between 50 dollars up to 500 bucks
And can throw a mint mobile 15 dollars sim in it…
And if one is that destitute,there are federal programs will give you a free smartphone. And they are 5g.
You say that like the issue wasn’t that the company that people flew to see a convention for, famous for their computer games was taking a beloved ip and shoving it in a phone game made by another company and wasn’t expecting backlash for it. People heard diablo looked for a computer game and got an announcement for a money siphon after buying plane tickets. And the response those people (who likely did have phones) got was “do you not have phones?”. It was supremely out of touch.
I haven’t had a landline in 15+ years.
I can’t authenticate with SMS. I live in rural Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There is no cell service across most of where I live. So do I just cancel WoW or what?
You’ll still be able to play WoW, you just can’t have a TOTP-based authenticator anymore (which is provably more secure than a SMS-based one, anyhow). So you lose all the perks like guild bank access (if your guild requires it).
But let’s be real - with this and the Overwatch 2 debacle, we all know where this is headed eventually. They’re going to require SMS to even log in, soon. Yes, I am only speculating, but with past shenanigans Blizzard has pulled - how wrong can you really say I am?
Sure if you want a authenticator, if not just play as normal… life’s not fair granted not every place has a cell signal but, The vast majority do…
I’m all for account security and protecting players.
But making it so you can’t use custom titles or descriptions in LFG without an authenticator just plain sucks. Many players logged in one day after a patch in SL to find a feature that had been part of the game, for years at that point, had been taken from them unless they go through extra steps.
The restriction on players being able to create custom LFG postings is bad for the game. If I remember correctly, the reason given for the added restriction was to cut gold/boost sellers from spamming the listings with sell offers. Because those accounts didn’t have authenticators on them. (whether they were compromised accounts doing the posting as rumored I don’t think any confirmation was ever given.)
Do we really still need this restriction on LFG postings?
Guess I can remove the authenticator, but man is it annoying to have to due to what seems like an unnecessary change for who knows what reasons.
I guess it’s annoying to some, but let’s face it. The last study that I’ve seen was June of 2023… And one percent of. Americans Don’t have a cell phone And 2 percent. Rely on a landline. And the vast majority that just have a landline only is 65 and up.
Sure it’s a small percentage, but the current system allows 100% coverage so why change it?
Assuming its easier for blizzard
^ This. Exactly this.
Why change something that is already more secure than your proposed “alternative” that only hurts people?
Unfortunately, at home, I have to have one. Wifi calls on a my cell are terrible and I have zero service on Verizon in my area.
Key word here lol.
This is the entire point. Current system’s been in place for years, I would like to know what happened to cause this inconvenient change. I don’t think it’s too much from customers, some of which have been around for 2 decades.
Scream it from the rooftops!!!
I absolutely HATE that they rolled the authenticator into the bnet app. I don’t want to use the bnet app. All I need is the authenticator.
Like it or hate it, I can only assume but my guess is they don’t care if they tick off less than 1 percent of their player base that don’t have a phone…
You know I’m signed up for SMS protect but I haven’t gotten a text message since like… 2013 I think?
I always just get everything through the app thingy.
Or they simply don’t mind the inevitable increase in account hackings that will occur because accounts that once had TOTP protection now no longer do. Even at 1% that’s going to be a huge flood for the CS department to deal with.
I don’t think there’s a big underground market for wow players accounts, granted I’m just going out on a limb on this…
And it’s far better than having nothing which I guarantee you is more than what you realize.
Oh, my sweet sweet summer child …