Guild Wars 2 Mobile Authenticator is here!

As part of our ongoing commitment to security in Guild Wars 2, I am pleased to announce that we are making a mobile two-factor authentication solution available for beta testing, effective immediately.

Mobile two-factor authentication is an alternative means of securing your Guild Wars 2 account, and like e-mail authentication, is optional but strongly encouraged. Rather than sending you an e-mail when unauthorized login attempts occur, the game (or any of our online web sites) will prompt you for a six-digit number any time you log in to a Mobile Authenticator-protected account. Using a freely available app on three major smartphone platforms – iOS, Android, and Windows Phone – you can obtain the correct six-digit number unique to your account. These numbers change every 30 seconds and can only be used once; this ensures that without your mobile device, an attacker would not be able to compromise your Guild Wars 2 account.

Please be advised that this feature is currently in beta and we are actively working to get it up to our standards of quality. Use of this feature should be considered “at your own risk” until we have completed the beta phase. We have already identified two major improvements to the feature that we will complete before releasing this system for general use:

• To increase security of your account, unlinking the Mobile Authenticator will require additional six-digit codes.

• We will be introducing an option to “remember my current network” so that you will not have to authenticate every login from trusted environments.

Of course we will also be interested in your feedback on this feature, and will make sure to take into account your suggestions and opinions during final development.