The most recent batch of statistics from MMO-Champion has an interesting buried tidbit about World of Warcraft players: only around 40 percent of them use authenticators.
Those are the little dongles that make your World of Warcraft accounts more secure. It means hackers are less likely to break into your account.
Blizzard should be handing these things out for free, but they actually charge $6.50 for each device. So it’s more of an opt-in security layer. If the statistics are right, Blizzard made up to $26 million off just these little security devices.
When you activate an authenticator, you get access to a Core Hound Pup pet in the game. That’s what MMO-Champion tracked through the World of Warcraft armory. The statistic was buried in a post about pet usage, but it’s actually kind of striking.
UPDATE: A bunch of people pointed out that you can still get the Core Hound Pup by using the iPhone/iPod Touch authenticator app. So not all of the users with Core Hound Pups necessarily bought the authenticator. That was my bad entirely — I assumed you had to purchase the authenticator, and that was incorrect.
(Also, TIL people actually read this. I should be a lot more careful.)
It’d be cool to see someone break down the number of accounts hacked in World of Warcraft, average time required to resolve a hacked account, how much those customer services representatives are paid versus that $26 million resolution.
It’s probably pretty close.
