TL:DR Those four new “locked” squares in the backpack are expletive-inducingly obnoxious and should be removed.
Before some overzealous moderator pulled it down, I had posted a topic in which I complained about the addition of four padlocked/unusable squares in the backpack. These squares, along with the little green (+) icon appear to those who have not paired their blizzard account with the authenticator mobile app. For those of us who 1) Don’t have a compatible cell phone 2) Rely on a landline 3) Just refuse the app for any number of reasons, this change results in a permanent eyesore and nuisance. Every time we log in and open our bags we are presented with an aggravating reminder - a note from Blizzard saying “We don’t want to make it “mandatory,” but we are not going to leave you alone until you do what we want.” This is not a benign potential “reward,” it is a bullying-purposefully-conceived-in-bad-faith-ham-fisted degradation of our play experience and it should be removed.
Replies to the original post typically fell into a handful of categories, supportive/agreement, potential work-arounds, and “‘hurrr durr’ why don’t you have a better phone.” To the first, I’d like to say thank you, it’s good to know I’m not the only one who finds this change offensive and heavy-handed. To the second, I’d also like to say thank you, and please feel free to re-post some of them down below as some may find them useful. However, I’d just like to add that we should not have to resort to addons, emulators, or other work-arounds to defeat the authenticator because this situation should not exist. As for the third group… I don’t have a compatible phone because my 7.5 year old Blackberry still runs about as well as it did when I bought it, and while most apps are no longer supported, it still works for what i need it for. Also… you know… get bent.
There was one last category of replies and that was the “restoring accounts costs blizzard money.” To which I offer the following responses:
A) Blizzard is not “doing you a favour” when they restore your account- they’re trying to retain a client - it’s the same reason why they’ll restore characters you deleted the last time you “quit.” Furthermore, WoW is a subscription service (+upfront fee for the given expac), and as such customer service is part of the deal. Blizzard seemed to understand this when WoW first launched, but in recent years, customer service has suffered as the company has obviously skimped in this department. The responses you get from tickets are so frustratingly bad you have to ask yourself: “did they even read my ticket? Wait - was that a canned answer?” Heck, just opening a ticket is now a pain as you first have to navigate through circular menus that were clearly designed to stop you from ever getting to the text/submit-box. It’s been over a decade since I had an actual conversation with a GM about an issue.
B) Security was not as big a deal when a Wow account was its own separate thing. If your account was hacked your toons and your gold might be lost, but not permanently, and that was it. The game didn’t have the launcher, and so your account getting hacked didn’t automatically mean all of your Blizzard games were exposed. In their desire engage in cross-selling, blizzard introduced the launcher, and with it a new set of vulnerabilities; they may reap financial rewards from this, but they should also accept the costs.
C) Think about other services that do not require a 2FA app - email, console account, steam account, amazon, walmart, grubhub, bank account, government tax account. All of those are more important, and I would actually consider something like an authenticator for a couple of them. But suppose every account you owned demanded you check a special app just to log in. Throw in VPN usage for extra prompts, and it would rapidly become ridiculous. We’d end up getting nagged into implanting those “mark of the beast” rfid chips that the crazies have been ranting about for decades.
D) I have had this game since launch and I’ve never been hacked - maybe it’s just dumb luck, or maybe it’s because I never click on email-links, give out my password, fall for scams written in poor English, visit dodgy websites or engage in piracy… at least not on this PC… or on this network… I’m not endangering my account or those of others. Why should I be punished? In the event that I am ever hacked… see the next point.
E) If the cost or restoring an account is such a big deal, I would happily commit (in advance) to paying an “account/hack restoration” fee to cover up to two hours of a GM’s time in exchange for getting rid of those padlocked squares. So… what does activision pay these guys? $15 an hour? So that would be… USD30. Sold. Unfortunately, I doubt more user fees would prevent the company from crying poor and resuming service-cuts… and then we’d be right back where we started.
F) I doubt Blizzard would ever introduce point D as an option because after all, Blizzard does not want to introduce barriers that may prevent a player from continuing their subscription because… well… see point A)… In the end this is still a pay service and players should not have their enjoyment of the game degraded every time they open their backpack.