Step 4 of 5

Step 4 — Making an account and checking the first session

An account takes five minutes to create and a lifetime to recover if it is taken. This step does the setup properly and then shows you how to judge the first hour.

What to have ready

Three things, all of which you should have from the earlier steps: the email address you chose in the pre-course checklist, confirmation that the address itself has two-factor authentication turned on, and the outcome of your hardware comparison from Step 2 so you know what to expect.

Everything below is written for the category in general, not as a tour of any one publisher's screens. Interfaces differ and they change. The order of operations does not.

The account procedure, in order

1. Decide the address before you open the sign-up page. Use an address you control and will keep. A dedicated address for game accounts is a reasonable habit but not a requirement; what matters is that it is not an address you are about to abandon.
2. Reach the sign-up page by typing the address yourself. Type the publisher's web address into the browser rather than clicking a link in a message you did not expect. This single habit defeats most account-theft attempts in this category.
3. Set a password used nowhere else. Long beats complicated. A password manager — your browser has one, and there are standalone ones — will generate and remember something you could not. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance on passphrases and password managers that is worth two minutes.
4. Fill in the required fields and nothing else. Optional fields are optional. A date of birth may be required for age verification; a phone number usually is not. You can always add something later.
5. Read what the tick boxes say before ticking them. Consent to marketing is usually separate from consent to the terms, and is usually optional. Unticking it does not prevent the account from working.
6. Activate from the message in your own inbox. Most publishers send an activation link and the account does nothing until it is used. Open your mail client yourself, find the message, and follow the link from there.
7. Turn on two-factor authentication immediately. Do it before you play anything, in the account's security settings. The next section explains what it is.
8. Write down the recovery codes and put them somewhere that is not the computer. A printed sheet in a drawer is better than a file on the desktop. These are what get you back in when the phone is lost.
9. Check the communication settings on the account. Decide now which messages you want, rather than unsubscribing from each one later.

That is the whole setup. The product this site is paid to link to pays a commission precisely at the point where an account is created and activated, so it is worth being explicit: nothing in the list above is there because of that. Every item is standard practice for any online account, and the order is the order that reduces risk.

Visit the World of Tanks website

Paid link. We are paid a commission if an account is created and activated after this click. You pay nothing extra, and the steps above are identical whether or not you use it.

Two-factor authentication, in plain terms

Two-factor authentication means that logging in needs two different kinds of proof: something you know, which is the password, and something you have, which is usually your phone. Someone who learns your password still cannot log in, because they do not have the second factor.

There are three common forms. A code sent by SMS is the weakest of the three but far better than nothing. An authenticator app generates a six-digit code that changes every thirty seconds and does not depend on the mobile network; this is the usual recommendation. A security key is a small physical device you plug in or tap, and it is the strongest, though not every publisher supports one.

Choose the best form the publisher offers. If it offers none at all for the account itself, that is a fact worth weighing: an account with no second factor is protected only by a password and by whatever the publisher does on its side.

Installing the client

Download the client from the publisher's own website or from a store you already use and trust. Downloads from third-party sites are a well-known route for tampered files, and there is no benefit to using one.

Expect a two-stage process: a small installer, then a much larger download of the game itself that may run for hours on a modest connection. Start it when you do not need the connection for anything else. Note where it installs and how much space it ends up using, because large online games grow with each patch and the figure in six months will not be the figure today.

Let it finish before you judge anything. A client that is still downloading content in the background will behave worse than the same client an hour later.

What a healthy first hour looks like

Beginners often cannot tell whether what they are seeing is normal. Here is a reasonable set of expectations for a first session on an ordinary household computer.

• The first launch after installing is slower than later ones, sometimes much slower, because the program is building caches and checking files.
• Picture quality defaults may be set automatically and may be set wrongly in either direction. Turning settings down is the first thing to try if the picture stutters, and it costs nothing.
• A tutorial or practice mode, where one exists, is worth finishing before anything competitive. It is also the safest place to find out whether the controls suit you.
• Some delay between your input and what happens on screen is normal in an online game. A constant, obvious delay is not, and the next section is about telling those apart.
• If the computer's fans get loud, that is the hardware working, not a fault. If the machine shuts itself off, stop and let it cool before trying again.

Give it two sessions before forming a view. A first hour is mostly an argument with menus.

Telling a slow computer from a slow connection

This distinction, introduced in Step 2, is the most useful diagnostic skill a beginner can have, because the two problems look similar and have completely different remedies.

A hardware problem shows up as a picture that is choppy or jerky while everything still responds in the right order. Moving the view feels sticky. The symptom gets worse when a lot is happening on screen and better when little is. Turning down the graphics settings makes a visible difference. Other players move smoothly even when your own view does not.

A connection problem shows up as a picture that is perfectly smooth while events happen late or out of order. Other players jump between positions. Your own actions register a moment after you take them. Turning down the graphics settings changes nothing at all, which is the clearest single test.

If it is the connection, the useful responses are to choose a nearer server region where the game offers that choice, to use a cable rather than wireless if that is possible, and to check whether something else in the house is using the connection heavily. If it is the hardware, the useful response is lower settings, and only after that a conversation about whether the machine suits the hobby at all.

Messages that are not from the publisher

Once an account exists, messages about it start arriving, and some of them will not be from the publisher. The common patterns are a warning that the account will be closed unless you log in through a supplied link, an offer of in-game currency in return for your login, and a message claiming a prize that needs confirming.

The defence is simple and does not require judging whether a message looks convincing: never log in through a link in a message. Open the browser, type the publisher's address, and log in there. If the warning was real, it will be waiting for you in the account.

Scamwatch, run by the ACCC, collects reports of this kind and publishes descriptions of current approaches. The Australian Cyber Security Centre publishes guidance on what to do if an account is compromised. Neither costs anything and both are more current than any article.