Blizzard announces upcoming additions to their RealID system. Hilarity ensues.

MyOwnDemon

MyOwnDemon

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Jan 28, 2007
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A few hours ago, Blizzard dropped a HUGE bombshell about their Battle.net RealID system - stating that real names would now be used in their forums when the next WoW expansion hits. Bad idea or horribly bad idea?

Almost 8,000 replies and counting in only a few hours lol:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to Forums


MMO champ also covers it:

MMO-Champion - Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Official Forums

This is a very interesting study in how people on the internet view privacy, and Blizzard is doing something really risky here. For a such huge company, this seems like a very stupid move and is going to put a dent in their subscription model. I wonder how it's going to pan out.
 


Seems rather annoying. There's really no real reason this benefits the person by having a real name unless they happen to have fifteen people on their friend list with xXw33dph4rkXx as their username.

It seems like they're basically using it as a global name for all of your shit since they don't have you pick a username for your battle.net account, they're just giving out your real name instead.

Sure you get all the cross chat, but then you have your real name for no real reason other than they're trying to make it more social (I guess). I was going to get SC2 and Diablo 3, but they've been pushed down to a wait 6 months - 1 year and see what's happening.

Battle.net Real ID <--- are the reasons why they said for you to use it.
 
They are trying to integrate into Facebook deeper and deeper. You likely have some harvard/Princeton/Yale marketing douchebags telling corporate that Facebook is the medium to market SC2 and Battle.net on, so they just force through stuff without feedback from the dedicated user base.

It is almost like they are trying to destroy the game before it launches by listening to people who don't have a clue about RTS and community/competitive gaming.
 
Yeah, RealID in general was a good idea to keep in touch with friends across games, but it has tons of potential for abuse. There is already a KNOWN EXPLOIT where you can get someone's name without their permission and it has not been patched.

My theory is that they don't want to hire people to moderate the forum and this is quickest, most cost-effective way to clean it up. There are SO MANY players that play and the forums have become a cesspool of trolls and flame wars, not to mention the forum is completely public.

By placing your real name next to posts this does two things:

1) Attempts to get rid of trolling and hateful posts.
2) Make the forums look "more friendly" to people considering purchasing the game.

Either way, it's a horrible idea and most gamers are up in arms about it. I am really interested to see what happens here. Blizzard is really treading on thin ice with this one. This could possibly start a chain reaction among other companies trying to do the same thing. Which is not good for privacy concerns at all.
 
sounds like a great digital product: how to stay safe while playing WOW now that blizzard is going to let your identity be stolen.

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I'm going to laugh if those that delete their accounts in protest to try and avoid their real names displaying on the forums have their past posts still live and their name changed anyway.

This is a massive hit for anonymity. I know from experience in managing thousands of gamers on a forum that it's incredibly hard. It's even more difficult when the management of the company cares more about letting trolls run rampant and return after you remove them time after time because they are paying customers than they do about their moderator's sanity. Even then, I wouldn't sacrifice someone's personal information for convenience in moderating the game.
 
I use realid, I like realid, I don't hand it out to anyone I don't know or trust, just like my real name. Hell, there are people and classmates in my real life that only know me by 'Dagoth' because I don't hand out my real name to just anyone.
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Hahaha. That's taking it a bit too far. Classmates that only know you as Dagoth?
 
I don't really care so much until someone gets pissed off for some reason and starts sending pizzas/boxes/bibles/subtle harassment in my day to day business because something I said hurt their feelings or they perceived it as an attack on them or something stupid.
 
blank_czech said:
I don't really care so much until someone gets pissed off for some reason and starts sending pizzas/boxes/bibles/subtle harassment in my day to day business because something I said hurt their feelings or they perceived it as an attack on them or something stupid.
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That's just it. There are too many rage quitting assholes who flame people once they start to lose a game, and you are going to have all sorts of kiddies acting out, because while their name is as transparent as yours, you will never know for sure it is them screwing you around.
 
I'm not surprised but I don't like it. I think this is another step towards them being able to offer you the ability to purchase items in game on a whim rather than outside of the game.

Must be a pedos dream come true. Oh hi kid, I see you play WoW and live in my area (checked through Facebook/Google search). Why don't you come over and we can discuss WoW and I'll even give you some items in game if you do some special things for me.
 
poisonsembrace said:
I'm not surprised but I don't like it. I think this is another step towards them being able to offer you the ability to purchase items in game on a whim rather than outside of the game.
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Haha yeah, that celestial steed was just absolutely ridiculous. Along with the non-combat pets. Eventually they will start selling gold when their userbase starts to fall off to make up for lost income.

Ever since Activision bought Blizzard, shit has gone downhill.
 
tainted said:
So, who would be interested in a Real Name scraper for the Blizzard forums?
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Or start up a new blizzard unofficial forum. MMO-Champion.com (an already active forum community) is probably about to get slammed with all the official forum fallouts. They are going to bank so hard. Hope they are upgrading their servers to the tune of a few million more members haha.
 
Obviously another way to combat piracy or something. Can we have right-to-privacy lawsuit over this crap?
 
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