Online security is always a constant battle. For an MMO, that goes double. Guild Wars 2 implemented a feature called password blacklisting to help protect many of their users, and now they’re closing up the last loophole that feature has left: players who already had their passwords set.
Blacklisting?
The idea behind password blacklisting is that there are certain words that are very commonly used as passwords for online games. Many people seeking to break into other people’s accounts on these online games (like Guild Wars 2) know what these words are, and routinely go through trying out dozens of these common passwords on random accounts, hoping to get a hit.
Arenanet decided to combat this by simply disallowing most of these common passwords from being passwords, thereby forcing players to be more creative and forcing the people trying to breach their accounts to try different tactics.
Get with the program
The players who already had passwords set up when this blacklisting system was implemented have not yet been required to update to be sure they are not using any of these blacklisted words, and that oversight is being remedied. Players will be required to update passwords starting on February 7, with the process being done in waves.
If you’ve had your Guild Wars 2 password set for a while, be prepared to reset it to something new sometime after that date.
