See my comment. This is all in the above-and-beyond category. HOWEVER note that the profits Blizzard is seeing from battle.net may be more than the profits of that entire bank. They have more clients, need a reputation, and are in fierce competition. That bank may not be.
It is overall saddening that Blizzard, a game company, protects user data better than a bank. HOWEVER note that this happened in 2009. I doubt Blizzard was this secure back then. Also iPhone and Android were not as big then as they are today, and they were more up-and-coming than anything.
This is a tad off topic, but the iPhone authenticator was added early in 2009 (see: http://wow.joystiq.com/2009/04/03/battle-net-mobile-authenti...) and the hardware fob was already in use well before that, with the same stringent identity verification methods in place in case the authenticator was lost.
Blizzard offers the best of both worlds in my opinion: the authenticator is cheap/free and optional so you can choose how secure you want your account to be. Though, as noted, it's expensive for Blizzard to restore all the hacked accounts so they have incentives (free Corehound pet, for example) if you opt-in to have an authenticator on your account.
It is overall saddening that Blizzard, a game company, protects user data better than a bank. HOWEVER note that this happened in 2009. I doubt Blizzard was this secure back then. Also iPhone and Android were not as big then as they are today, and they were more up-and-coming than anything.