Update: As of mid-2011: This is no longer relevent. The Authenticator issue has been fixed. Great job Blizzard.

So, I was screwing around with my Droid Incredible today. Unfortunately, my phone decided to reset itself. No biggie, I didn't lose anything major (all my phone numbers and such are synched, etc) or so I thought.

I use Blizzard's Authenticator from the market to put extra security on my World of Warcraft account. I had done the same with the iPhone in the past as well. Never had an issue with this thing. In fact, I did a full restore on the iPhone and had forgotten to deactivate my Authenticator on my account and re-installed the app and everything still worked.

Yeah, I learned today that the Authenticator on the Android devices doesn't work the same way. You get a new serial number whether you want it or not. There's no way to change it either. So, you have to contact Blizzard to deactivate your authenticator on your account or you won't be able to log on. At all.

Fair enough.

Here's Option A of what Blizzard wants to deactivate the authenticator:

• Original Serial Key of the Classic WoW game.
• Account Info
• Answer to your secret question

I've got 2 out of 3 of those. I have 2 WoW accounts and while I found one of the keys, I can't be sure it's the right account key. Plus I recently moved. Guess what probably got trashed during the move? :| After all, who keeps original serial keys for games from 1996? :P Especially when the disk / game is completely downloadable online.

Option B? Some form of ID scanned, emailed and the long run-around.

So, word of advice, don't screw up your phone or at least, be aware that the authenticator serial number is going to change so deactivate the old serial number before you root / screw around with your phone.

Update: As of mid-2011: This is no longer relevent. The Authenticator issue has been fixed. Great job Blizzard.