Solely for security purpose.

If you look at other mmos forums (ff14), there's tons of player getting their account hacked, bots spamming their virtual currency and hacks like teleporting from a gathering point to another.

A great game is nothing if it gets invaded by hackers 2 weeks after release.

I think an authenticator is a easy way to prevent a lot of trouble and it should be mandatory.

I have to agree. I for one hope that ESO will have an option for additional security such as a RSA Token. (Authenticator, damn wow terms)

Force? No.

Option? Yes.

People shouldn't be forced to pay extra for an authenticator, but the option should be there if they want to.

edit: Also, chances are,around half of the people claiming they were hacked just have bad security practices. ie: Sharing their details, reusing passwords, no anti-virus protection, sharing their account etc.

Heck, I remember one SWG player who complained about being hacked, further questioning revealed that he'd allowed a complete stranger to use his account and character because the other player had said he could cheat a way to unlock Jedi early (this was back before the big combat/professioin overhauls)

When he then found himself locked out of his account, he went crying on the forums that he'd been hacked.

You're assuming that they'd charge for this service. Think they're charging people enough already, thanks.

Only game I ever got an authenticator for was SWTOR, and I regretted it. I've never had any security issues since I am practically paranoid about security, but with that thing I had to find it and enter the code every time I wanted to play. An extra step I don't need, thanks. Optional? Sure, whatever, if people like it, but I sure hope they don't make it mandatory.

True, but depends on the authenticator. Most are separately bought dongles as I recall, though some give them away with the game.

If it's an extra fee, they shouldn't be mandatory. If they are free, by all means let's have them!

And I've never used one. Never been hacked.

An Authenticator does not need to be intrusive or a even a third party device. All they have to do is tie the account to either an IP address, a NIC Mac Address, a HDD Serial Number, a Mobo Serial Number, or even the OS License Key. All of these numbers are unique to a device, can not be easily hacked, at least by the people who would be hacking this type of thing.

A challenge response scheme can be created when logging onto the game from a new device.

Actually it could also be a free app for android or whatever device you use.

There's some stories about fan sites about games (allakhazam I think?) that had issues with a third party key logger in their adds.

If you pay attention alot of them are claiming to be hacked even with an authenticator. So force? No. I never had one for WoW and was only hacked once because of an insecurity in curse's website.

Always use different user names and passwords for all your accounts. Never use the same combination of them either.

OUt of curiosity:

how secure is an device that remember the security number for you of the datastream has to vent through an compromised system anyway?

Won't it just keep careless users from giving their password away because they don't know it in the first place?

And when you start using it every time you log into the game, you may start to understand why so many folks think it is a royal pain for not much added security to the situation.

I got hacked once in wow too, logged in stripped and with no money in front of a mail box. They gave me everything back 6 hours later.

For players on FF14, it takes 2+ weeks and they don't give your money back.

We have no clue what the customer support will be like at this point and I don't see why it would be such a pain to use one.

I do agree it's not a 100% safe way to counter hackers but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do everything to protect yourself

noooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! because most of times i play with my laptop via WiFi and when connection is lost for a second authenticator drops u from the game and u have to do one more thing (input aut. code) to get back into the game which takes time and if u are in dungeon or bg it is a pain in the ass. thats why i stopped using it on WoW. do not force anyone to do anything if it does not concern you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hacker will invade this game no matter what security system u use and the only good solution to fight them is large and well organized moderator community, my friend got hacked acc on WoW and it only took 5 min with GM to get all of gold back.

Ip addresses are not unique. Did you know that we have actually run out of IP addresses and are currently moving to a new IP (well semi new) address system and even that new system, given enough time will run out of IP adresses. NIC mac Address are also not necessarily unique, they simply need to be unique on the network they are on.

I would rather just have them add a few more lvls of security when we log into the game. Yeah it'll take a whole extra 5 seconds to log in but at least it'll be safer and the Dev won't have to waste so much resources dealing with hacked accounts.

Did you see my Screen Name? I am an Engineer at an ISP who designs, configures and builds large scale IP networks. I am fully aware of the IP addressing limitations.

And, yes, each Public IP is unique, otherwise the Internet would come to a crashing halt in just a few seconds. It does not matter if someone goes to IPv6, it's still a unique IP address given out by the ISP to the subscriber. Private IPs can be the same as someone else's, but that is because you can not publicly route to a private IP.

MAC address are unique. The only part that is the same is the OUI (organizationally unique identifier) that denotes a 3com NIC from a cisco router. The OUI is the first 5 characters of the mac address, leaving the other 7 to be the absolutely unique number. There are 281,474,976,710,656 combinations of mac addresses.

Off Topic but I had to comment. If they run out of IPv6 addresses there is something wrong. 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 is a crap load of devices....

Sounds exactly what Steam is doing now. If you login from a new PC it emails you a code in order to validate ownership.

It isn't a bad system but a lot of tards out there use the same password for everything - password12345 LOL. (no offence if you're that person)