Today is St. Patty’s Day (AKA the day that Faeldray spends like every other day because she does not drink alcohol. Shocking, isn’t it? I must be 1 in 1000 at least.) It has also been declared Whiny Post Day. I do love Righteous Orbs’ whiny post.
Now I certainly hope that I don’t whine too much most of the time but you know what? Today’s the one day where I will just not care. So now all of you lovely readers will get to hear me rant about some things that have been bugging the hell out of me. Be warned, there will be some swearing. Let the complaining begin!
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Kazimierz and I decided to roll two Alliance characters a little while back to join Bloodriver’s up-and-coming Alliance sister guild, Obsidian Phoenix. My character Aroqin is a night elf druid and his character Radoslaw is a human rogue. One night we ended up role-playing a little between them and discovered they have some interesting personalities. Then one day we decided to start role-playing with them outside of the game, using Gtalk. It worked out so well that I’m posting it here for all to enjoy. 🙂
The setting is an evening at the Lakeshire inn in the Redridge Mountains.
With her back to the warm stove in the corner of the inn, Aroqin is stretched out in her cat form across the floor. Her eyes are shut and her limbs are loose and relaxed. Only the occasional twitching of her tail gives away that she may not be completely asleep.
Radoslaw takes his ease in a…less sedate manner, draped oddly over the side of a chair and playing intricate spinning games with one of his daggers. He’s almost hypnotized by the whirling emerald glow, and a silly grin is spreading slowly across his face.
The occasional muttered ‘ouch!’ can be heard, accompanied by the thud of the knife hitting the table.
The druid lazily opens a single glowing eye after one of these mutterings, fixing it on the human. “You must want to make your already short life span shorter, boy,” she mutters with a low rumble in her throat. “And one of these days I’ll decide that it’s not worth it to heal you.”
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I normally don’t do service announcements like this but I thought this one might be worth mentioning.
As I’m sure most of you know, the Blizzard Authenticator is one of the best ways to protect your WoW account. Now a malware has come into view that manages to bypass it. Rilgon has a great summary of what it does and how to prevent/get rid of it.
Now before anyone begins panicking, remember this: nothing is perfectly secure. A computer that’s completely free of malware is a computer that’s not hooked up to the internet. And that’s not taking into account files you transfer to it that might be infected.
The authenticator is STILL one of the best ways to help keep your account secure.
Even if you do have an authenticator, you should still practice safe computer techniques to keep your computer clean. Be careful when you’re typing in the address of your favorite WoW-related site. Keep your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs up-to-date and scan with them regularly. Don’t click suspicious links and so on.
There is no need to chuck your authenticator out the door or wrap your PC in tinfoil. Just watch what you do and what’s happening on your computer. Follow Rilgon’s suggestions. If you think that it’s a waste of time, just think of how many hundreds of hours you spend having fun on WoW and weigh it against the handful of minutes it would take to initiate a scan on your computer. Well worth it, in my humble opinion.
Edit: As Rilgon mentioned, MalwareBytes appears to find and kill this malware. From this post on the WoW forums, it looks like that the culprit, emcor.dll, also registers itself in your startup list of programs. Having said that, there are numerous programs that show you what programs are in your startup, including CCleaner. The ever-popular Spybot has an optional resident scanner called TeaTimer that watches your startup list. The program Winpatrol has a feature that does the same thing. HijackThis! also logs this activity. In theory, it should help block emcor.dll’s attempts to start itself up, letting you know that your computer is infected. All of these programs are free and there’s no reason to have at least one of them on your computer. One of the reported symptoms of this malware is a “memory access violation critical error” so be on the watch for it.
Edit 2: More info can be found at World of Raids (along with a list of possible sources) and Bamboobix, an unofficial tech support group for WoW who also have a guide on how keeping your account safe.
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