RealID: Scare-Mongering From A Lot Of People With Funny Names

Wryxian, Blizzard Europe:

We have been planning this change for a very long time. During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction.

 

It’s been very obvious over the last few years that the forums are an exceptionally valuable source of information both for players and for us to gather feedback. There are many threads on this forum now, and over the last few years, that people have been constructively discussing many aspects of the game. They’ve received new wisdom and have then been able to go back to the game and enjoy it further with the new knowledge acquired through the forums.

These threads, however, can often be lost amongst a great deal of other threads that are basically filled with trolling, name calling, flaming, off-topic conversations and that’s just a small amount of some of the content that has been found in these forums over the years. We don’t want that anymore, and we believe the Real ID change will bring about a lot of the improvement that we are hoping for.

There’s a lot of scare-mongering going on about the change, but there seems a need to make something very clear. The forums have always been an optional extra — something you can choose to participate in if you wish to. With our Real ID changes for the forums, this is still the case. The only difference will be, if you do choose to participate in the forums, then you will do so by using your real name. But only after you’ve been warned and accepted this in advance.

Wryxian, Blizzard Europe (again):

A lot of legitimate and understandable concerns are being raised. It would be hard for myself or any caring individual to not empathise with the fears and concerns people have. But amidst these concerns there is also a bit of something going on that I can’t easily describe with other words, but I’ll try.

 

Posting on the forums with your real name will be optional — yes, in the sense that the options are simply post and show your real name, or do not post and you keep it confidential. If people are happy to post and do not feel intimidated by this, then great — hopefully they will also post constructively (though it’s fair to say, this isn’t a given). It might be scary to consider posting with your real name, in which case it might be advisable simply not to post in these forums. There’s a whole load of other forums across the internet where you’ll be able to post in a more anonymous way, and maybe you will make a useful and constructive contribution there instead.

If you really do read all posts in this thread and others, like we are doing, then you will see some examples of what I was meaning by “scare-mongering”. There are posts from some people who are either confused by the changes or generally uncertain, and they are getting understandably scared and then posting in a way that scares other people in the process. With such a change as we have outlined, it is completely understandable that people can and do feel this way. Describing the process of scaring others and raising the level of general fear as “scare-mongering” does not in any way diminish people’s validity in doing so, nor does it dismiss the usefulness of anyone expressing themselves in any way, including in a way I might describe as “scare-mongering”; the term simply describes it for what it appears to be.

Randy Farmer, virtual world architect/pioneer:

It is completely unreasonable to expect that people will understand the risks of using their real names on a message board – and if they DO understand, I contend that most people won’t bother posting anything at all.

 

In short:

  • The trolls now get more information to harass
  • The best players will leave
  • The casual players will panic when they realize that their private-time activity is now public.

This is lose-lose. The worst kind of change. The only upside I see is the ability to lay off board moderation staff as traffic (good andbad) plummets.

Sanya Weathers, community management expert:

We won’t know the legal truth until Blizzard gets sued for wrongful death.

 

Yes, I said death, and no, I’m not overreacting. Someone is going to get stalked through because some whackadoodle fell in love with an avatar. Maybe the victim did a little roleplay and the stalker took it too seriously. Maybe the victim hurt the stalker’s widdle feewings during a message board discussion. Who knows. Marriages break up (and reform) every day thanks to MMO drama leaking out into the real world. Blizzard should know this better than anyone. Good lord, you can’t go a week without an international advice column posting some complaint about a spouse or a kid that is too involved in WoW. That’s not Blizzard’s fault. “Here’s the real name of the person who sexxored you and then changed her mind/called you an idiot in front of all your friends/won’t talk to you because you’re creepy” will lead to something disastrous. Unfortunately, the person to whom the disaster occurs will be one of the people who is sitting here today scoffing at the “scare-mongerers” and “alarmists.” Because the scare-mongerers and the alarmists won’t be posting.

Spinks, blogger:

There was a time when Blizzard was viewed as a company run by and for gamers. That time is now over. Even aside from the wrongs or rights of the proposal, no company that fails so badly in understanding gamer culture can really claim to be one of us any more.

Ysharros, blogger:

It’s a game. Or, it’s this blog. It’s something I do in my spare time that has NO relation to my professional or a large part of my personal life and I see no freaking reason why everything should be made public when it’s not my explicit there-and-then decision to share said info. (So my decision in this case is going to be: keep your fucking games thank you very much.)

 

It’s not that I object to people knowing who I am if *I* choose to share it with them. After all, I don’t get on the bus and tell every bloody passenger on it what my name is. They have no particular right to know it and I have zero obligation to tell them. So why the hell should every asshat — and god knows there are a lot of them — in a given game be able to find out exactly who I am, where I live, what my gender is and how much I enjoy being stalked?

Tobold, blogger:

Social networks using real names can work, but the history of Facebook shows that one fundamental rule for these networks is that you can’t have people signing up with some level of presumption of privacy, and then withdraw that privacy protection later. Thus it would be okay for Blizzard to lets say release their next MMO game with a RealID system and inform everybody that their real name will be used in that game. It is *not* okay to let people play for nearly 6 years under anonymity, and then strip that anonymity away. Even if the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory predicts that stripping people of their anonymity will make them behave better.

Larisa, blogger:

If we can’t communicate with Ghostcrawler through the forums anymore, since they put adults with concerns about their personal integrity in the same group as trolls, we can always go back to old-fashioned hand written letter writing. It’s a forgotten art, but it’s not as hard as it may seem. All you need is a pencil, a paper, an envelope and a stamp. Quite handy when you think about it. You don’t even need electricity!

Syncaine, blogger:

Can this thing launch already? This is like watching a car accident, only instead of seeing the flaming wreck after it happens, you’re like Nicolas Cage in that movie no one saw where he can predict the future, and you actually get to wait for the car wreck to happen right in front of you.

Carebare, moderator, Elitist Jerks:

The idea of merging RealID into the Blizzard forums is dumb. The more places that say it’s dumb the better (which includes here). If your post violates our forum rules we will infract you for it, but the do not whine rule is waived for this thread only. Carry on.

Nattie, commenter, Metafilter:

People won’t actually harass other people outside the game, come on.

 

This is just wrong. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s a lovely thought, but people go to great lengths simply to harass others in-game, and just handing the real name to them without their even having to do any work for it makes it easier to harass them outside the game. If you really, truly think it won’t lead to harassment, you are underestimating both teenagers and angry, socially ill-adjusted people — a ton of whom play WoW, alongside all the normal people. People already go to crazy lengths to e-stalk people and some of it already culminates in real life confrontations. I have trouble believing that anyone who says this has actually ever played an MMO, so if you haven’t, please consider that you might not know what you’re talking about and people aren’t just paranoid and complaining about nothing.

And, more on this in a moment, but one really needs experience in the gaming community to comment on it. Particularly those in doubt of women being SEVERELY harassed in-game and, yes, on the forums. The gaming world is way more hostile to women than you think. I wish it weren’t, I really, really do, and I know you mean well, but please do not say you doubt those things when I and other women have been through a lot in that regard. The WoW forums is not Metafilter by ANY stretch of the imagination. I would not mind my real name being on Metafilter and I’ve posted things here I wouldn’t tell my mother, but I would probably cry if my real name was next to my WoW posts.

Anonymous RL friend, IM conversation:

1:56:58 PM Friend: ok go ahead and realid me 1:57:04 PM Friend: cause you and i will be the only two left playing 1:57:10 PM Me: heh! 1:58:07 PM Friend: i’m serious 1:58:08 PM Friend: everyone is leaving :(

 

Newer Comments →

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  • Gx1080

    Well, if Blizzard wanted to out-do NGE in “biggest kick squarely in the balls to paying costumers”, congratulations, they fucking did it.

  • dartwick

    I realized something.
     
    Blizz isnt actually doing this to clean up the forum.
     
    Its doing it to try an force WOW/MMOs more into the main stream and get get real people saying openly that they play MMOs.
     
    But no matter what the motivation – its just selfish on Blizzards part.

  • sleepysam

    Time to vote with my feet, account cancelled.

  • Athryn

    My account is canceled right now, but this is really making me reevaluate whether or not I will be resubbing when Cataclysm comes out. For the time being, I am taking a wait and see view.

  • http://stylishcorpse.wordpress.com Ysharros

    /swoon
    But srsly, this really has summoned up a shitstorm. Given us bloggers fodder for weeks I tell ya, weeks!
    I’m already not a huge fan of Facebook. Now that we’re getting WoWbook, I think I can safely say I’m *definitely* not one of these young social media whippersnappers (being neither young nor social this shouldn’t really have come as much of a surprise to me). Now get off my lawn!
    Oh wait. Your lawn. W’evs.

  • Jeff

    I just cancelled. I just hope beyond hope EA is laughing at the shit storm Blizzard voluntarily dove into and decides to not come within a country mile of anything like this for SWTOR.

    There have to be better ways to do this. And its not just about the forums, it’s about my friends list being potentially hijacked too. As far as the forums go, just force people to post on their most active 80. A lot of the the trolling is done on alts.

    This is simply asinine.

  • Bob

    So I have to ask these questions.
    What percentage of players do you think won’t even hear about this other than in-game griping?  Another way of asking this is, what will be the adoption rate because of general player apathy, ignorance, and not giving a crap? Will WoW basically succeed because the vast majority of players will just go on playing.  Let’s face it, the vast majority of players do not go to the forums, so why should they care?
    Even if you take that epic thread over on the WoW forums, say it has 15k posts and consider them all to be unique, does that even equal .05% of their North American audience? Amongst that group, who will actually quit over it? From that group, how many will come back when the next new beta (RealID required) begins?
    While many bloggers and video game sites might post about this, does that same huge group of people who don’t read the forums, care about, much less read, any of the opinions linked to in this post?
    To be clear, I’m not supporting their decisions.  I am merely asking interesting questions about how “massive” and meaningful this reaction really is.  To be sure, Blizzard doesn’t care if you post on their forums or not, as long as you keep paying.
     

  • http://www.facebook.com/sanya.weathers Sanya Weathers

    Bob – I covered that in my own post, but briefly, my opinion is “nothing.” The percentage of forum readers is small, posters even smaller. I’d be stunned if there was much of a blip in their subs.
    That doesn’t make it safe, okay, or a good idea.

  • aach

    Surely you can just buy a new game disc put it on game-card and then post to your hearts desire?  Obviously you’d only bother to do that if you were planning to be unpleasant or if you had to protect your real identity because of work or family or legal reasons.  But would you bother to pay Blizzard money to be able to make unfettered constructive comments on their forum or would you take your contributions else where?

  • http://tagn.wordpress.com/ wilhelm2451

    I need an irony rating on a Blizzard employee posting about Real ID using a handle.  Any takers?

  • Sleepysam

    There is potential for this to get bigger, there is at least some mainstream media coverage.

  • Baroo

    Both the AP and BBC News have picked it up.

  • Vetarnias

    Anonymity: If it was good enough for Junius, then it’s good enough for me.
    But the real problem is that WoW has become all that is wrong about the mainstream. Every little fad of the day, they’ll go after it by thinking there’s money in it — and from what I know of the gaming industry, if Blizzard is successful, everybody else will jump on the bandwagon, with people like Raph Koster legitimizing this (in his case, by heralding the end of pseudonymity).  I wish that players who are uneasy about this would have the willpower to turn away from Blizzard, and Facebook, and all that “social networking” stuff that is quite absurd, matters not at all, and makes a mockery of serious matters, such as real interpersonal relations.  And a little introspection would be useful, too: Do you really need to tell the world what you’ve had for dinner?  While you’re at it, do you really need a cell phone?
    But now the push has really come to shove.  The boss asks that you befriend him on Facebook if you want to keep your job; he wants to know how you spend your free time; he views anyone without a Facebook account — people like me — with suspicion, because he’s likely to follow the syllogism that people who don’t divulge everything about themselves must have something to hide.  And to think that some of you think it’s fine; you people are bringing the roof down on all of us, and you must be stopped.

  • http://twitter.com/jnfr jnfr

    A poster in the epic thread posted his (apparently fairly common) name and dared peopleo to find him. This is what happened.
     
    http://seewhatyoudidthere.com/2010/07/07/realid-changes-the-very-real-ease-of-stalking-in-the-internet-age/

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    Sadly, Blizzard isn’t so dumb to persist in idiocy. It just takes them a bit of time.
    Think of the rest system or the meeting stones.

  • ToeJob

    WoW is the cancer of gaming anyway, I hope this tanks that virtual cesspool.

  • Mandella

    Here’s a weird thought: What about all the celebrities playing?
    I’m serious. Plenty of actors/businesspeople/whatevers play MMO’s, and often mention how much they enjoy being able to hang out with other people without anyone treating them different. They can just play the game and relax without anybody bugging them for an autograph or telling them how much their last flick or business decision sucked. I guess they can just stay off the forums too!
    As a further point, are they going to wipe the current forums, or will this retroactively affect anyone who has ever posted? Meaning are they going to fix it so that if I look up one of your old posts before this decision was made I’m not going to see your name in the sig?

  • http://serialganker.blogspot.com sid67

    <i>”The unfortunate reality is that Blizzard is simply arming the “trolls” with real information they can use to make the attacks more hurtful. The real trolls, the ones who want to cause harm and mischief, just got a brand new way they can make your life miserable.  If they don’t like what you have to say, they don’t need to post the hate, they can just call you on the phone and leave nasty messages.”</i>
    <a href=http://serialganker.blogspot.com/2010/07/because-trolls-dont-necessarily-stop.html>Serial Ganker</a>

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    The quantity of blog entries dealing with RealID has exploded today. I’ve seen a couple that quote/cite Blizzard employees that are concerned and upset by the decision but have absolutely no say in the process and, rightly, have no intention of leaving the company. The quantity of people who have the luxury of quitting their job in the current economy on ethical or philosophical grounds approaches zero.
     
    As Sanya mentioned, there will not be a very large blip in their sub numbers and, frankly, I think Blizzard is counting on that level of opacity/apathy. They know that a large number of their subscribers don’t “get into games” with any more voracity than one would the directions on the back of a Hot Pocket box. Depending on where you fall on corporate “ethics” you will probably see that as either a) good, sound business strategy or b) completely fucking obscenely criminal.
     
    While I’m loathe to make the argument, Blizzard has played out a slippery-slope IRL – if you put all the pieces together.

    Convert users to “universal” battle.net accounts. It makes no nevermind to anyone and if you think about it, makes good sense. No resistance.
    The armory. There’s some initial wailing and gnashing of teeth, but ultimately there’s complete acceptance as any legitimate privacy concerns are easily mollified by the fact that there really is no correlation to my characters unless I choose to make one. Now it’s a fact of life and a pretty welcome addition to the game.
    Blizzard states that battle.net is the focus for their new social initiatives and will be the “hub” for all present and future games. Steam does it already and it’s awesome! Kudos Blizzard!
    RealID as a totally optional (if not totally opt-in) feature to allow people to connect regardless of character. It’s put forth as something you would only share with “people you know/trust IRL”. Privacy wonks cry foul, but it seems to act as advertised despite some glaring issues. As before, the privacy concerns are mocked by Blizzard staff.
    RealID is required for SC2 beta forums. Public fallout is muted by the NDA and a limited scope.
    RealID is required for post-Cataclysm (how accurate is THAT fucking name?) WoW forums. Complete chaos ensues.
    (Soon…) Your in-game avatar will now be “Foozlebasher the Undying (Gary Donaldson)” and all chat will read as “12:51:12 [Guild] Foozlebasher@Donaldson, Gary: Hey dudez, anyone wanna join this pug ICC?”
    Complete integration/emulation with Facebook. Tired of Farmville requests? Now you get WoW/SC2/Diablo/etc spam from that dickhead in high school you never talked to in the first place but accepted the friend request for “to be friendly”.
    Dogs & Cats live together. Mass hysteria.

     
    Outside of Old Republic I was doubtful there would ever be a WoW-killer. For a while now I’ve just been operating under the assumption that WoW would gradually fade and Blizzard would launch the new IP and WoW^2 just like SOE did, but on a 10+ million-player scale. Now? It’s entirely possible that Blizzard may just hoist themselves upon their own petard. All in all it’s shaping up to be a very exciting Winter for the MMO industry. Old Republic will be looming and all these major changes in Cataclysm will be in-play. The Blizzard footprint will expand with SC2 and more firm data on the next projects.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    Seriously WordPress. Why put the buttons for ordered lists in the WYSIWYG box if you’re going to ignore them? :sigh:

  • Ciarnat

    I’m in Cataclysm beta.  I played it for four straight days and loved every second of it.  The graphics were phenomenal.  The quests were so fun that I was giggling the whole time.
    And since this whole RealID mess, I’ve been tempted to cancel both my subscriptions.
    I have an ex-husband who fled the state ahead of a domestic violence arrest warrant.  Could he find me?  I’m sure he could, if he tried.  Am I scared that it might happen?  Yep.  Do I think it likely that he will?  Well, he hasn’t for 13 years now, so I doubt it, but why take chances, right?
    Do I want Blizzard making it easy for him to find where I play?  Absolutely not.
    I won’t post on the Blizzard forums.  I won’t RealID friend anyone, even though it would be perfect for my guild, since we play Horde and alliance on two different servers.  I may not even stick with the game – it’s only the lure of the awesomeness that is Cataclysm that’s keeping me from canceling and going to some other game right this instant.

  • Ivanneth

    Lurk Mode: OFF
    A theory:
    Blizzard/Activision knew this move was going to alienate a large number of their users, they’re not stupid.
    Blizzard/Activision wouldn’t make a move that alienates a large number of users unless they thought it would ultimately result in a larger number of users and therefore more money.
    Blizzard/Activision has a business deal with Facebook.
    Blizzard/Activision is rushing in a bunch of social networking stuff that’s awfully similar to Facebook.
    Facebook has a lot of users who already play games like Farmville and Mafia wars.
    Blizzard/Activision wants to tap into the “Facebook gamer” resource. They think they can get a lot of people to play WoW from there, and they’re probably right.
    Blizzard/Activision believes that they will easily replace the lost users and ultimately gain a much larger number of users by integrating with Facebook.
    Those of us that are angry and quitting over this? We’re collateral damage.
    Lurk Mode: RESUME

  • TJ

    Blizzard making this change to crack down on trolling? I have my doubts. Making the change to allow the forums to *fit* more seamlessly into Facebook? That would be my guess. Let’s face it, they could accomplish the same end result without revealing people’s actual identities, so I’m not buying that excuse. I think it’s more likely it has to do with the integration with Facebook.

    They are heading down a slippery slope that I personally won’t support. I’m expecting the next move is to link your armory information to your actual identity, I can’t wait to see the excuse they come up with for that.

    They need to learn a lesson, I just hope that someone doesn’t have to get hurt or worse..die in the process.
    Yesterday was a sad day for me, I am still stunned that they think this whole Real ID idea was a good one.
    At the very least, it should be an option that the individual player can control themselves in the form of privacy settings.

    I do still have a right to privacy and I exercised with the only option left to me by this company…the cancel subscription button.

  • http://psychochild@gmail.com Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green

    Randy Farmer of <i>Habitat</i> fame also weighed in on this based on his 35 years of identity and reputation systems work: http://habitatchronicles.com/2010/07/realid-and-wow-forums-classic-identity-design-mistake/

    It’ll be interesting to see how this sorts out.  My prediction?  Not good for Blizzard, but probably not as fatal as SynCaine hopes. ;)

  • http://twitter.com/Loredena Loredena

    TJ said ”
    They are heading down a slippery slope that I personally won’t support. I’m expecting the next move is to link your armory information to your actual identity, I can’t wait to see the excuse they come up with for that.”

    I don’t think they will link the armory — and the reason I don’t think they will is the same reason I hope I am right.   Posting on the forums is optional.  The armory has no opt-out — further, even if they were to add an opt out today, that wouldn’t help someone like me, whose account was cancelled two years ago.  They can win an “it is optional” argument with the forums, but if they were to link real names to armory pages without consent, it wouldn’t just be Congress taking another look.  EU has a lot of laws around privacy.

  • http://twitter.com/Lewisham Chris Lewis

    On the crazy people tracking you down IRL point, it only takes a very small percentage of a very big number to result in a large enough absolute number to be concerned. If only 0.1% of 11 million players were mentally imbalance to the point of tracking people down, you’ve still got 100 000 people to worry about.
     
    The question is how many of them are on the boards.

  • Gearhead

    I canceled my WoW account a while ago, it wasn’t over RealID or anything like that.

    But I’m certainly not coming back for Cataclysm now.

  • http://www.facebook.com/sanya.weathers Sanya Weathers

    Ciarnet: Please do not take this the wrong way. You did point out it’s been thirteen years and the scumbag hasn’t found you yet, so the situation isn’t totally dire.
    But you are basically saying that Cataclysm is so much fun that you are willing to risk being hunted by an abusive felon.
    My first instinct is to stare at you in shock. My second instinct is to metaphorically take you out for coffee and tell you that I am very worried about you and that at least one person wants you to value your life and your safety a lot more.
    My third instinct is as a community professional, and I’m trying to figure out how I would try to make sure that every potential customer on earth read that post, were I in Blizzard’s employ. I mean, that’s a hell of an endorsement there.

  • hitnrun

    @dartwick: It’s certainly something like that. Blizzard has been the proverbial Pretty Big Deal for over fifteen years now, and for nearly all of that time their primary following, their bread and butter, their devoted doorjamb to the mainstream market has been – let’s be honest – a bunch of boisterous assholes. You’re telling me that now, they’re suddenly embarrassed about it? This entire vision, and it’s haphazard, starry eyed implementation, is clearly a reflection of their status as the crown jewel of Activision.

  • Ciarnat

    Leave it to my iphone to barf as I tried to post.
     
    Sanya, I’m still in some level of shock that Blizzard would do something so abysmally stupid. However, I’m not going to stick around if the game is going to reveal any of my personal identification, period.
     
    I tried to cancel my subscription today and got the runaround on the website – I kept getting redirected back to the site where it said “You aren’t canceled yet!”  I’m going to try again later tonight.  Hopefully their servers are packed with people who are canceling.  If I can’t get through the website tonight, I’ll take the time out of work tomorrow and call Billing.  (I wonder if canceling my subscription, which is active through October, will kick me out of Cataclysm’s beta.)
     
    I also posted a notice to my guild that I’m 99% sure that I’ll be quitting if RealID goes live.  Why 99%?  Because maybe, MAYBE there’ll be some way for me to continue to protect my identity as best I can.  But if there isn’t, I’m gone, along with at least three of my guildmates.
     
    Do I think a few more canceled accounts will make a difference?  Probably not.  But at least we’ll be doing what we feel is right, and that’s what really matters.

  • c

    What about the devs? Are the devs going to play the game with their real names? I am pretty sure I can get a list of most of the Blizzard employee’s real names. Can I track THEM down in-game by their real names?

    And if not, why the hell do they think their justifications only work when it’s THEM?

  • ingmar

    Yes devs will use their real names. And no you can’t track them down in game anymore than I can track you down if you don’t list your character names, which they’ve said will be optional.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    I’d like some statistics on frequency of RealID service stalking versus non-RealID service stalking to see just how different the two are.  This is just a whole lot better way to go about making choices than fear-mongering first and thinking later.
    The main thing that bugs me is the idea that possession of a real name equals motivation to stalk.  If this change went live, I’d expect some stalking to occur, but I’m betting the larger amount of it would be from the “people trying to make Blizzard regret their decision” category than “basement dwellers discovering another player may actually be a girl” category.
    (And this is why I hypocritically didn’t want to divulge my own name when asked: this “just to prove you wrong” motivation to grief was already there.  Granted, where there’s a will there’s a way, and I highly doubt anyone is immune to truly dedicated stalkers regardless of what precautions they take.)
    Anywho, clearly this thing has spun out to be such a giant can of worms I might as well have not bothered speaking at all.  The lingering question now is if Blizzard is going to forge on ahead anyway or not.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    (S)he who controls the code, controls the universe.
     
    An interesting point just came across the “holy shit, that’s EVIL” portion of my brain. It concerns a topic that received much attention on this very blog very recently – Free 2 Play.
     
    It’s Q1 2011. Blizzard, in response to massive outcry, rolled back RealID as anything but an optional in-game service. Cataclysm is running and the players are happily grinding away. Blizzard announces their new IP MMO to a frothing fanbase and that the next WoW expansion will also move the game to F2P. Over the course of that year Blizzard goes on to highlight all the perks and features that you will be able to buy, ala carte, to enhance your WoW:NGE experience and how all of it will change your life for the better. One paragraph in unimpressive print on a page buried 4-deep talks about how RealID will be mandatory in the F2P game to curb abuse and protect players. Everyone will say “that’s great, thanks for thinking of us!” They are now soft and malleable. The last item on that page, in even less impressive print, states that one of the upsell charges is the ability to use an alias instead of the now-mandatory RealID. The players rejoice! Blizzard is looking out for them and the fee is really modest to protect your privacy.
     
    Gul Dukat: A true victory is to make your enemy see they were wrong to oppose you in the first place. To force them to acknowledge your greatness.
    Weyoun: Then you kill them?
    Gul Dukat: …Only if it’s necessary.

  • Grumm

    It’s been a really long time since I have posted on your site, but this whole fiasco has raised the blood pressure a bit. I reckon it might be the right of center libertarian in me. I have enjoyed blizzard games going back to the rock n roll racing days. For a long time this was an excellent company known for making polished games. Amazing it took a silly fad like facebook and its ideas to possibly put a greivious wound on the company. Admittedly so I allowed my wife to talk me into facebook and found it useful to a degree, but a dangerous tool if someone chose to use it as such. How or why Blizzard thought this would be a grand idea I haven’t the slightest. That they say it would be safe is laughable.
      I worked in the psychological operations for the us army for quite some time prior to retirement. Alot of the things people are doing here with the realname stuff we had been doing for quite some time to attain info on target groups or audience if you will.  It got to the point you could know someone very intimately through information readily available. It allowed us to utilize media or other methods to “modify” the targets behave to complete a mission. Granted this was obviously outside the U.S. (psyop is a federal crime in the states) So you can see the reservations I have on this stuff. Not to mention the completely sneaky way they are going to implement this b.s. with facebook.  Additionally, I have been a member of a motorcycle club for years and I couldn’t tell you the full name of any of my brothers as we all use aliases or “nicknames” for obvious reasons. Hopefully everyone continues to fight this and not lose heart. You never know who is screaming in a boardroom in CA right now saying why in the f*ck did you green light this crap

  • Female Gamer

    So they’re using the risk of IRL stalking and harassment as a way to control their forums. Smart move, Blizzard.
     
    That’s not going to get rid of the trolls. They don’t care if someone knows their names; they’re Internet Tough Guys, after all. It’s going to get rid of the people like me, who don’t want to have to deal with IRL harassment from those trolls. It’s going to get rid of people who don’t want to be pre-judged (female = casual, carebear, and definitely incompetent, right?) based on our names. It’s going to get rid of cautious, thoughtful, concerned players, and leave the forums to the e-peen wagglers and teenage yappers. In short, it’s going to preferentially filter out the users who are most valuable to Blizzard, and leave nothing but the creeps and the cretins.
     
    Beware of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

  • Skipper

    Lum,
    Thanks for the great summary of viewpoints. Of all the things that I thought would kill my view on Blizzard, I never, ever, thought it would be their suddenly asinine viewpoint on privacy. This smells of Kotick, or something Activision pushed, but really that’s just me hoping that the folks I used to love that could do no wrong … still haven’t gotten over that.

  • Sok

    The main thing that bugs me is the idea that possession of a real name equals motivation to stalk.

    It doesn’t. What it does equal is “pointlessly making it easier to stalk,” which is the problem. If I had to post here using my Social Security number as my handle, it doesn’t mean you’ll all become identity thieves. That’s not a good reason to do such, though.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    In order to get the blockquote to work using the current comment engine, you need to highlight what you want to quote then hit the quote button in the post. The blockquote tag won’t work unless you’ve flipped it over into the HTML mode by hitting the quote button. Then write inside of the empty paragraph tab. You can do multiple quotes if necessary, but you’ll need to save your previous quotes on notepad and do page refreshes if you want it to do all the blockquote creation work for you.

    Grumm: Granted this was obviously outside the U.S. (psyop is a federal crime in the states) So you can see the reservations I have on this stuff.

    Anyone else see creepy tangents with what an MMORPG really is in terms of how it gets money out of people? Psyop against their customers is old hat for somebody who sells magical horses that don’t actually exist for $15 a pop.

    Sok: What it does equal is “pointlessly making it easier to stalk,” which is the problem.

    How much of a problem, really? Lets talk severity.
    What I want is a measure of just how much of a problem it is versus what benefit it brings. A real weighing of pro and con. This is where “frequency of stalking in systems which already use RealID versus systems which do not” could be a good study to have.
    Because you’d think of stalking was completely off the hook over real name possession alone, Facebook would be a bloodbath.

  • Vetarnias

    @Geldonyetich

    I’m afraid you don’t understand what is at stake here. No, having access to real names will not make it more encouraging to stalk, especially among people who don’t care for that.  However, it will make the task easier for those people who *do* want to stalk.

    But let’s run through Blizzard’s potential arguments for bringing this in (apart from the sole, obvious reason: Teh Moneyz).  To make people accountable on the WoW forums?  Allright, accountable for what? If I post something stupid on the forums, they remove it; that’s what they have moderation for. If I post something illegal (say, death threats and the like), they contact the proper authorities.  After all, they do have my contact information on file if all I post on the WoW forums is not-so-cryptic verse that reads:

    Month after month, I have an itch
    To send to that son of a b—-
    Who calls himself Bobby Kotick
    A parcel that goes tick-tick-tick.
    (And in case you wonder, no, I don’t; he’s not worth the postage.)
    But if accountability is the goal, to make forums more civil (heh), you’re just going to dissuade players with privacy issues from posting.  I for one never understood the appeal of Facebook, which doesn’t even have a serious professional networking purpose; that’s what LinkedIn is for, and even then I’m not sure it’s that effective, as I suspect a lot still gets done by word of mouth.  I lamented the fact that a game like Farmville requires you to connect to Facebook in order to play, and that Raph Koster seemed to be pushing in that direction as well. That’s because I want to be able to enjoy the game without ending up telling everyone who I am; otherwise, I just don’t play. And the accountability, as mentioned above, already exists, through the information Blizzard has on file; but I just don’t want to be stuck in some sort of electronic panopticon where I’m subjected not only to Blizzard’s watchful eye, but also to everyone else’s. I want to play my damn game without having to worry about who is trying to identify me.
    Oh, and I was reading parts of that monumental thread on the WoW forums, and there was mention of a guy who filed a complaint with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; he also had a telephone conversation with someone there, who had told him they had received several complaints.  It’s just Canada, though, i.e. irrelevant.
    @Grumm
    Granted this was obviously outside the U.S. (psyop is a federal crime in the states)
    Naturally, it’s never a crime abroad, at least not when it’s done by Americans.

  • Vetarnias

    Speaking of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, here’s a repost of a WoW thread now deleted:
    http://www.threadmeters.com/rYgioO/Privacy_Commissioner_of_Canada_to_investigate/
    Some of the replies are pretty depressing.

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  • Sara Jensen Schubert

    Hitler hears news about Starcraft 2
    (No, really, this one is worth it.  Via the Metafilter thread.)

  • dartwick

    geldonyetich: Polyana /people arent mean stuff.

     

    I get the feeling you never played much D2. I also get the feeling you never played any PVP games where people take it serious.

  • http://www.killtenrats.com Julian

    The $64 bucks question (cheap) to me really is…
    … were they really not anticipating the huge backlash from this, or were they actually counting on it?
    We’ll find out soon enough.

  • Angelworks

    Its not your real name that is going to get you in trouble – if I search Google for my real name – nothing really all that relevant comes up (pages and pages of other people). But… if I search for my name and world of warcraft (not even my toons name) boom – tons of relevant links pop up.
    Blizzard RealID people should hang out with a PI for one afternoon – just one. A friend of mine did this for years – he’d find anything about anyone just by cross referencing information he found (that and Access America – which makes it their job – and by this point probably has fields for mmo’s).

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    dartwick:  I get the feeling you never played much D2. I also get the feeling you never played any PVP games where people take it serious.

    How comfortably overgeneralized for you to say. In any case, I’m attempting to honor our host’s request not to troll or be trolled right now.

  • VPellen

    Makes you wonder what else they’ve been “[planning] for a very long time”.

  • http://twitter.com/DeidrianaS Deidriana

    If you feel the RealID on the forums is a step too far into your privacy, Please sign the petition! I know it might not help, but it also might.
     
    Use your Character name – realm!
     
    Thanks all!
     
    http://www.gopetition.com/online/37593.html

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