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McAfee report reveals the most dangerous web domains

In an era where clicking on the wrong link while browsing the web could mean your account will get hacked, and one of your guild members clicking on the wrong link means your guild bank could get emptied as well, it's always good to protect yourself and keep abreast of web security issues.

In that vein, it's worth checking out a new report released by McAfee called Mapping the Mal Web Report Revisited. It tested 9.9 Million websites in 265 domains to find out which ones had a higher risk of exposing visitors to malware, spam, and malicious attacks via a red, yellow, and green system.

Continue reading McAfee report reveals the most dangerous web domains

Racism in arena names

I think there are few things more disturbing in the modern world than ill-conceived notions of racial, religious, and sexual divisions. For some reason parts of humanity continue to believe that just because one group or another looks and/or acts differently, they are bad. One of the reasons I enjoy WoW and just games in general is because it allows us to escape the problems this world gives to us, even if only for a few hours a week.

Unfortunately, some people find it necessary to bring their attitudes in game. We've covered some of this before, from border-line inappropriate arena names to sexism in WoW. However while playing an arena game recently fellow writer Amanda Dean came up against a team named "Rosa Parks Stole My Seat," and this name is possibly the most offensive one I've seen. Rosa Parks (for those of you who need a history lesson) refused to go to the back of a bus because of her skin color and continued to sit in the white only section of the bus, despite being told to do otherwise. She represented a key moment in the history of civil rights.

There are 65 arena teams with this racist name.

When Amanda ran into one of the teams she reported it via a GM ticket.

Continue reading Racism in arena names

GoDaddy invades WoW Armory


In one of the most bizarre things I've seen happen to the World of Warcraft in my three years playing, the WoW Armory site today is pointing to a generic GoDaddy.com domain parking page. The screenshot above was taken at 1:08 p.m. CST on March 2nd, 2008. WoW Insider has received numerous reports of this. It seems to be a DNS related issue. The domain name wowarmory.com expires today, and it appears as if a registrant has grabbed the wowarmory.com domain name as soon as it expired.

DNS entries for blizzard.com and worldofwarcraft.com point to cerf.net, while the DNS servers for wowarmory.com are currently pointing to domaincontrol.com. While some of you might be seeing wowarmory.com work correctly, others are not. The ISPs of people who are seeing it work have not had their DNS records updated yet, however within the next 48 hours they will see wowarmoy.com go down as well; unless Blizzard fixes this before then (I am sure they are already aware, or becoming aware of it).

Stay tuned to WoW Insider for the latest on this story.

Thanks to Matthew Rossi and his wife for contributing to the technical sleuthing in this post.

Updated 2:34 p.m. EST: You can access the armory using a sub-domain of worldofwarcraft.com by going to http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/

Updated 3:03 p.m. EST: http://www.wowarmory.com/ is now working again. It looks like Blizzard really jumped on the issue and fixed it.

Name that pet

Picking a pet's name is always one of the decisions I like best in WoW. It's creative and interesting, and if done right, it can bring lots of smiles to you and your friends. Naming your own character is also fun of course, but even in light of the name-changing feature, it still feels so permanent to me. With your pets, you can name more than one, and there's always the possibility that in the future you'll get to find some new and incredibly awesome pet and get to think of a name for that one too. Excellent pet namers even have special synergy between their hunter and pet names -- a creative feat which is at once challenging and simple.

Mania's Arcania has an interesting little feature: in addition to all her other hunter and pet information, she's started a sort of "contest" called "Name That Pet," where hunters can submit pics of their pets for public inspection, and we all get to help them think of names for them. The latest pet in the series presents an great opportunity for hunter-pet name synergy: an owl tamed by the tauren Hawkspirit. In her blog, Hawkspirit's player shows how her owl finally reached 70, but still doesn't have a name, and Mania is here to help her out.

If you're interested in pet names, check it out and apply your naming genus.

Two weeks of paid name changes

It's been a couple weeks now since the paid name change service was initially offered and I've noticed a few people in my guild that have taken advantage of it. While it's certainly personal preference, a lot of the changed names seem worse to me than the old ones. Some of them were obviously chosen for comic value, since they're reminiscent of the guy in the picture over here.

Regardless of my opinions about the specific names, everyone I've talked to has said that the service was quick and easy. I also haven't heard any horror stories regarding sociopathic players changing their names to wreak more havoc upon unsuspecting victims under a new moniker. From my limited experience, it seems like an overall positive change to the game.

Have you paid to change your name? What was your old one and what's your new one? Was your experience with the service a good one?

Will name changes let ninjas run free?

While Robin and I think it's a great idea, some people are in an outcry about the upcoming name-change service that Blizzard is offering. As Monsoon tells Blizzard on the forums:

This is probably the worst ever decision ever made. How are we supposed to track ninjas and retards who may apply to our guild if there is no way to track their name changes?"

Nethaera calmly responds:

Perhaps putting them on an ignore list might help.

The ignore list will be automatically updated once that character's name change gets activated. Of course no system is fool proof, and there will always be someone looking to exploit things, but realistically, is it a terribly big problem if people you consider "ninjas" and "retards" yet are still unwilling to put on your ignore list can change their names once every 90 days?

In my experience, the kind of person who likes to call others "retards" generally isn't very nice themselves, and tends to find new "retards" all the time (with no offense meant to Monsoon here). I don't think it would be possible, even if the ignore list were extended to include a potential thousands of names, for some people to be satisfied that all the "ninjas" and "retards" were sufficiently dealt with and removed from the system

Continue reading Will name changes let ninjas run free?

Finally! Paid Name Changes


Blizzard has announced that they will change your character's name to an available, allowable name for $10 and I say, "It's about time!". This is an administrative service that should have been available from the beginning, in my opinion. Regardless, it's available now (on selected servers) and here are the rules:
  • It's $10 per name change.
  • You can't change your name again for 90 days and your old name will be unavailable for 90 days as well.
  • It has to be available on your server. Captain Obvious says, "Duh!".
  • It will take a few hours while they approve your name change, since it must follow the Naming Policy.
  • While the name change process takes place, your character will be unavailable.
  • The name change is permanent unless you pay to change it again 90+ days later.
  • This function is being rolled out in phases, a few servers at a time.
  • Characters on your ignore list who have had their names changed will remain there with the new name. (Update: edited for clarity)
Blizzard has a FAQ page setup on their Support Site if you have more questions. If this is something that interests you, go to the Account Management page and select Paid Character Transfer (you will have to login).

I actually like my character names, but I reserve the right to change my mind at any time and I'm glad I now have the option.

The official forum announcement with the list of the first phase of servers is after the jump.

Continue reading Finally! Paid Name Changes

What's in a name?

Last night over guild chat the subject of naming our characters arose. Someone asked exactly how we chose our character names. It's a pretty personal question, at least it is for me. Being a writer pretty much all my life, my player character names are mostly names from my writing. There are also those characters that have been created out of jokes, or as representations of their jobs like Donations. I've built character names out of thin air as well, mostly because I love character creation beyond all other things. Most of my characters' names are fantasy in nature since being a fantasy writer I tend to be a stickler on that sort of thing. But some of my characters have looser based names. My priest is named Mandie, for obvious reasons. My paladin I've called Vashlyra, which is a combination of my dogs' names. I once even had a gnome rogue named Runnt.

Perhaps that is part of why I love creating new characters so much. I get to give them a name, and infuse them with personality and back story. Every new character is a chance to rewrite the story, and each name is so important to me. But I am just one player in millions. I know my guild mates choose names differently. We have one player whose characters are all named variations of the same word. We have another who picks all his names from the random name generator. And yes, we are a guild populated mostly by alts, if you must know, so there are plenty of characters to name.

On the other hand, I have seen many, many names that I cannot stand. I have actually found a correlation between horrible players and those who named their characters by picking a cool word they like and tacking on the letter X at the end (CipherX, you know who you are.) On our server I have run into Linksys, Pallyman and my personal favorite Ooitsahamster. I have even seen some I cannot believe haven't been reported. Now while I am more of a name snob, I can see why people choose to have fun with their character's names. What I cannot see is playing a character with a ridiculous name until 70.

How do you choose your character names? Is it something tied to characters you have always played, or do you close your eyes and hit 'random?' What makes you connect with a name, or do you have no connection to it at all?

Breakfast Topic: What's in a name?


Players on each realm are required to have unique character names -- which can be an annoyance if you didn't create on the day the realm opened. Whenever a new realm is launched, common and popular names are quickly used up, and at some point naming becomes an annoyance. (Even more of an annoyance when people attempt to take a name they want by inserting special characters -- I've yet to figure out how to invite some of them to groups.) For my part, my most often played characters are "Lizzy" (uncreative, I know, but I created soon after the realm launched and grabbed it), "Blush" (which seemed to me the perfect name for an undead rogue), "Raawr" (a druid, and the only spelling I could find that worked), and "Coraline" (a book character whose name never seems to be taken).

So what's your character name -- and how did you pick it? Do you have some uncommon standbys that are usually free? Do you abuse the random name generator until you find something you like? Do you just hit random keys on your keyboard?


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