Issues with Battle.net 2FA
I remember picking up a DVD copy of World of Warcraft. They had me on “Macintosh” written on the side.
Recently I picked up a Diablo IV copy. Me and my partner finished Diablo III in couch co-op on the Switch. I wanted to experience what Blizzard has to offer running on a powerful PS5. I have also purchased a second PS5 controller just for this occasion. I am glad to report that we are pleased with the game so far, and I recommend it. It is even more fun than the previous version, much darker and mature. The game is approachable with a low learning curve. The user interface is beautifully crafted and gameplay works great with a controller. But there are issues, and I have concerns, deep concerns about everything which surrounds the core game. Compared with the Switch version, one can say that the human experience setting up the game went into actual hell. The actual demons I needed to fight were 2FA error messages and constant loading spinners.
I was wise to put the disk in early so it could be copied to our PS5 while we were putting the kids to sleep. The process of copying of course has not finished because PS5 fell asleep, and I had to restart it. We watched a TV show listening to PS5’s rocket-ship-about-to-take-off noise.
Good start. I opened the game and the first thing it asked me was to log into Battle.net. I do have an account, of course. The devs made it convenient allowing me to scan QR code using my iPhone’s camera. Then I was presented with a login screen and signing-in issue as the 2FA code from Blizzard’s proprietary iOS app didn’t work. I could sign in. Soon I learned that their property app is retired and instead, functionality is shown in Blizzard’s Battler.net. Me 20 minutes trying to figure out how to migrate didn’t work, and I realised that I couldn’t do it without submitting a ticket. I sent my ticket on the 28th of October and received a reply the next day. With apologies for the slow reply, I was asked to answer 12 vague security questions. I think 1 day is pretty fast, okay. I replied on the 31st of October, it took me 20 minutes to collect all the information I could find. I was able to ask some of them, including my previous address (I don’t know which, I have 7 of them), PayPal transaction ID from my bank, security question (thanks 1Password), and my previous phone number. It’s been 10 business days, I still have not received any reply. Okay, I don’t care about the account, I would like to get it back eventually, but we really wanted to play, so we just created a new account.
On that cold night, I logged in with my wife’s account just to test it out. Sony linked my wife’s account with my PSN, and now I would have to wait a year to unlink them, okay? I created a new account for my partner on Battle.net. Then I realised that my wife also needed a PSN account just to be able to play locally, so we created a new account for her as well. By the time the game was loaded and we both “logged in”, it was almost 2 AM, we played for 10 minutes and then went to bed. Next week we played again, I am not going to do any work on the setup until we finish the main campaign. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
What can be improved
- Sony, please adopt Nintendo’s “PLAY MODE” physical box design for demonstrating how your game can be played right on the box, so we don’t have to do research just to know how the game can be played.
- Blizzard (now Microsoft), however, is responsible for not using open standards for 2FA, why they are still in charge, and why this kind of decision was made. It costs in customer support and development, it’s idiotic tech leadership.
- Sony, please learn from Nintendo how to do couch co-op. There was zero setup on Nintendo Switch, it just worked. Why Sony and Blizzard (now acquired by Microsoft) think it is okay to steal ~2 hours of our lives just so 2 of us can start the game is beyond me.
Image credits LeHeathersBoutique, sourced from Etsy.