Blizzard Triggers a Different Kind of Cataclysm

[Ekit]

Damn, double post.

 

[lapan]

I'm glad i dont really play any of Blizzards games, i dont really want everyone on the internet to know my real name. If it is only the company itself that knows it i may be fine with it, but if every user can see it than the probability is high that someone decides to be funny and do some internet pranks with it, or worse.

 

[agentironman]

This is the way it is in South Korea. You must post with your actual ID. It is a form of censorship that I can't stand. The whole point of the internet forum is to be able to exchange ideas (and insults) with anonymity. When we are afraid of backlash we tend to refrain from speaking our minds and that is a bad thing.

If you look at the Korean news services there are not many disagreements and people going against the grain on news reports and other current events because everything is out in the open. Not long ago a Korean girl said on TV that she did not like short men and that they were "losers." Because of the open ID policy by the government she was found on the internet and bashed and threatened because she had no privacy on the web.

I am not happy with this news from Blizzard. I wish them luck but I also wish they change the policy.

 

[Alar]

snip

DAMN. eliminate anonymity, and see what happens. I kinda like this idea.

-m

Fuck that, if I have to give up personal information to play their games (If I'm reading that right Real-ID will be your BNet login) then I won't be buying their games. It is none of their business what my name is, where I live, or any of that shit, the only thing they should care about is that I bought their product.

Doing a little reading on it, the only information being displayed is your real name. That is not going to be your BNet login, your login will be a username/password as it is now. They will not be distributing your location.

That said, name/address/etc are things you would have to give to sign up for a WoW account anyhow, so they wouldn't be collecting more info from you on top of that.

Likely, you will have to register a Bnet account, complete with this information in order to access and play other games online.

In so far as how it pertains to interactions in an online community, I'm interested to see what happens. Force people to interact without the security blanket of total anonymity, and see how people respond - would civility improve among users of their message boards? I certainly hope so.

-m

As much as I'd love to believe this would be true, there are so many cases where I don't think this would be the outcome. People would use your name, gender, ethnicity, and anything else they could find against you.

It was already shown in an unseemly show on the forums where one of the moderators freely gave his name to the community. Very quickly, there were details about him and his family being posted up over the internet. His Facebook page had to be shut down after being massively spammed and questioned.

This was just one man, and this was only people trying to prove a point. Imagine if the people were truly wishing severe harm on him. He could have been seriously injured. What if they were mentally unstable? They might have followed his kids and done horrible things to them.

All of this and we haven't even spoken about what happens if Haji Balajit (totally made up name, but the idea of ethnicity is there) posts on the forums requesting some help with a technical issue, and some racist decides to troll him. He could look up that name and potentially follow Haji to Facebook and other websites, and even find his phone number and call him.

Women are often treated in a disgusting manner in WoW. There have been multiple times where someone finds out a guild member or player is female and she is instantly assaulted with questions or insults. Would this be any better if whenever she tried posting on the forums, she gave away her gender?

I understand that the entire idea is optional, but it still feels like punishment. Coming from someone who has played Blizzard games practically his entire life, it feels like a betrayal and something I never thought Blizzard could ever do.

Removing anonymity isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there are ways Blizzard could improve. For one, they could just have the account name we use be listed instead of our names. Either that, or we could choose an alias that cannot be changed and is always shown when we post. There, now people can keep track of us and we can't hide behind low leveled alts.

I apologize if this came off as heated or angry at you, because that was not my intention. I've been following this topic since near its inception, and there are many people who have phrased problems more eloquently and with more research than I (there are issues with military servicemen that I will not go into at the moment, as well as people trying to get jobs from employers who are biased against video gamers, and people in high-profile jobs that would give them really bad PR if it was found out they were gamers).

EDIT: For anyone interested, I posted up on the official thread here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&postId=258313286658&sid=1#11308

 

[The Madman]

I don't think we are overreacting. I have a daughter who will one day want to use the internet. I still have a few years before that happens but I am pretty sure it will. It is one of my many jobs to teach her about internet safety. That in a nutshell is not give out personal information to the general public. This contradicts all of that. One of the thread titles on the forum last time I checked was called "Welcome to Pedo.net". It is stupid to do this because of that reason alone. Unless Blizzard is going to have some sort of security measure to keep pedophiles and stalkers out I don't see how this can be good.

There are parental control features available, plus this feature is only active on the forums, not within the games themselves unless you opt-in.

That said I have no clue how Blizzard are going to try and handle the situation with younger users. Frankly I doubt they fully thought this feature through, probably some high-up office exec who heard that facebook thing was pretty popular and decided Blizz *must* use that sort of system so they can keep up with the 'kids fads'.

Nevertheless the features are there to restrict childrens access and visibility.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

Or maybe you don't want any future employers who google you to know that you play WoW? With it's reputation in the mainstream media, it's something that could easily count against you.

Oh right so there couldn't possibly be another person by that name playing the game? unless you talk about your personal life on the forum they can't identify if it is in fact you.

 

[Klepa]

I bet women all over the world are thrilled about all the horny nerds who will come a molestin'..

Other than that, I guess go go Blizzard. Maybe the forums won't be so filled with complete idiots, when people actually have to mind what they say.

 

[squid5580]

I don't think we are overreacting. I have a daughter who will one day want to use the internet. I still have a few years before that happens but I am pretty sure it will. It is one of my many jobs to teach her about internet safety. That in a nutshell is not give out personal information to the general public. This contradicts all of that. One of the thread titles on the forum last time I checked was called "Welcome to Pedo.net". It is stupid to do this because of that reason alone. Unless Blizzard is going to have some sort of security measure to keep pedophiles and stalkers out I don't see how this can be good.

There are parental control features available, plus this feature is only active on the forums, not within the games themselves unless you opt-in.

That said I have no clue how Blizzard are going to try and handle the situation with younger users. Frankly I doubt they fully thought this feature through, probably some high-up office exec who heard that facebook thing was pretty popular and decided Blizz *must* use that sort of system so they can keep up with the 'kids fads'.

Nevertheless the features are there to restrict childrens access and visibility.

Sure and porn sites also have parental controls. You know the ole are you 18 Y/N or how old are you pick a random number. But it goes deeper than that. For the sake of the arguement lets say they devise an uncrackable parental control. She logs in to Battle.net and sees everyone else using thier real names. So now either the old man is full of shit or is way to overprotective. Then I get the joys of trying to explain why she can't use her real name while everyone else can. And having the pedophile talk is gonna be a helluva lot scarier than having the birds and the bees talk. Even worse is it is a company like Activision doing this. And you know if a big dog like Acti is gonna do it others will follow suit. The whole thing undermines the basic rules of internet safety. And the worst part about it is we won't see the results of this little experiment until it is too late. And people have gotten hurt. But hey at least the forums will be jerk free so that makes it all ok.

 

[ThePlasmatizer]

It is not about RPing. It is about the right to keep your private info, private. People have their lives they want to keep far away from their gaming. In my guild only 5 people i trusted knew my real name, only 2 knew how i looked like. They earned my trust over 4 years of playing together.
When i meet someone in real i am able to judge the person i see, if i don't like him/her i can say "Get lost, none of your business". It is simple. Now why would i be denied such basic right on game forums?

During my playtime in WoW i was even careful with revealing my gender. Thank god for the "There are no woman on teh internets" theme going on i just played along whenever someone i didn't know treated me like a guy. It helped me avoid stalkers and pestering whispers, like i wouldn't get enough of that playing a priest. Some of my friends that made a mistake of revealing their gender had to actually deal with plenty of idiots.

You really under estimate data mining possibilities, as i said, ever since e-mails became logins for battle.net and thus WoW accounts the amount of hacked accounts increased because the the hackers did not have to bother with guessing your login name anymore. Any community site where you used your e-mail to sign up was a resource. I used separate e-mail set up for that and it got flooded with about 200 phishing attempt email in 2 weeks. For about 6 million players in NA/EU (rest is supposedly Asia), there was plenty of casual enough to not do such thing. People tend to be careless if they are not internet-savy, but there is no reason a service they pay for should punish them.
When you know how to connect the dots you have pretty high chance of finding out things about others, they wouldn't really want to give you out.

Then you have people with original names, names pointing at their nationality, suddenly more and more info you can gather from all that. Imagine that world doesn't consists only from Joes and Janes and not everyone has American name.

With sites like Amazon or any other trading site on that matter they are doing actual business. When you are selling something the name makes sense, because of legal reasons. On game forums, where you come to talk about events or just to simply discuss builds or strategies it doesn't. There is nothing that would warrant displaying real name.

I understand what you are saying but lets just stop likening a game forum to real life. The forum is owned by Blizzard so you really have very little rights when it's a privately hosted and privately run game forum.

With this female gamers will probably get a lot of harassment from other people but lets face it everyone has to deal with some kind of BS on the internet, such as trollers, flamers, griefers.etc really by now if you haven't acclimatised yourself to dealing with the typical teenage male behaviour then you'll probably have to continue hiding behind a username. I know for a fact female gamers can be accepted into a game community without harassment though. If they don't flaunt the fact they are a girl gamer. Just because your gender is known doesn't mean you'll be continuously harassed if you show others your not just seeking attention but want to have a valid discussion.

I can hardly believe people are going to steal your identity by just seeing your name, as long as users are careful and don't give out important information about themselves then it's fine. Really what are they going to do with just your name? unless a user was isguided enough to make it a security question then it's not going to do much.

Also the Amazon name deal is not due to legal issues, anyone can choose to have a screen name or real name, those using their real name are more trusted because of this. I think you are one under estimating the value of this, a lot of users will definitely change their attitude when their name is stamped there and it'll probably go a long way towards female gamers avoiding harassment as well.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

There's a chance this has already been mentioned, but I didn't want to sift through the whole thread...

What about girls? Seriously, were I female, there's no chance in hell I'd want my real name next to my forum posts. Creepy dudes will search that shit for sure.

 

[Keava]

See, to rpoove how good this system was one of Blizzard Posters decided to give out his full name, not just first name. People at WoWRiot quickly got to work and got this

Granted his name was already quite public, but still now you can associate the name to the avatar on forums it makes things a little bit different. While he was just a name, written at the end of manual among "Others" it didn't meant much.

So yeah. Great idea. Brilliant.

I understand what you are saying but lets just stop likening a game forum to real life. The forum is owned by Blizzard so you really have very little rights when it's a privately hosted and privately run game forum.

With this female gamers will probably get a lot of harassment from other people but lets face it everyone has to deal with some kind of BS on the internet, such as trollers, flamers, griefers.etc really by now if you haven't acclimatised yourself to dealing with the typical teenage male behaviour then you'll probably have to continue hiding behind a username. I know for a fact female gamers can be accepted into a game community without harassment though. If they don't flaunt the fact they are a girl gamer. Just because your gender is known doesn't mean you'll be continuously harassed if you show others your not just seeking attention but want to have a valid discussion.

Don't be so sure about that. I use internet for about, uh 15 years now or so. I already had stalkers in internet communities, damn i had one guy in WoW harassing me just because he found out my gander when i was a little less cautious. I had to deal with him whispering, whispering form alts, jumping around me, sending mails and generally being pain in the ass before he got eventually banned... People have right to keep their private life far away from online communities if they wish so. If Blizzard says they have to give up that right in order to use the service it is obviously bad company politics.

I can hardly believe people are going to steal your identity by just seeing your name, as long as users are careful and don't give out important information about themselves then it's fine. Really what are they going to do with just your name? unless a user was isguided enough to make it a security question then it's not going to do much.

I know how to make usernames/passwords/security questions/use several e-mail for different sites, etc. You probably know it too. But there are several millions of players in WoW, only about 5% of them is considered the hardcore crowd (based on guilds that clear the content). There is plenty of more casual players that aren't really that experienced with all the evils of internet.
Sure you can say it is their stupidity and thus their fault, but it is service providers duty to protect their identity as much as possible.

Also the Amazon name deal is not due to legal issues, anyone can choose to have a screen name or real name, those using their real name are more trusted because of this. I think you are one under estimating the value of this, a lot of users will definitely change their attitude when their name is stamped there and it'll probably go a long way towards female gamers avoiding harassment as well.

See there is choice. On Blizzard forums you wont have choice. Real names help in business because of the trust, hell when i pick up the phone at job i say my name too. It's basic of customer - client communication. But on gaming forums you have client - client communication. There is no need for real names, there is no reason to build that kind of trust between people you don't really want to deal with outside of the game.

The bottom line, is the decision, while doesn't have to lead directly to any bad cases it creates a risk of such things happening. The supposed good things don't out weight that risk. Trolls and flamers will find ways around it.

 

[The Madman]

Sure and porn sites also have parental controls. You know the ole are you 18 Y/N or how old are you pick a random number. But it goes deeper than that. For the sake of the arguement lets say they devise an uncrackable parental control. She logs in to Battle.net and sees everyone else using thier real names. So now either the old man is full of shit or is way to overprotective. Then I get the joys of trying to explain why she can't use her real name while everyone else can. And having the pedophile talk is gonna be a helluva lot scarier than having the birds and the bees talk. Even worse is it is a company like Activision doing this. And you know if a big dog like Acti is gonna do it others will follow suit. The whole thing undermines the basic rules of internet safety. And the worst part about it is we won't see the results of this little experiment until it is too late. And people have gotten hurt. But hey at least the forums will be jerk free so that makes it all ok.

Slightly more complicated Parental Features than that but hell, I don't work for Blizzard, I'm not going to defend it. I see your point!

Of course why your daughter is theoretically browsing the WOW forums years from now when she's old enough to be playing the by then ancient game is another issue, but I see your concern. My answer? No clue. Like I said, I don't work for Blizz, it's their job to try and answer these questions, something they haven't done at all yet since they announced this feature.

Like I said before, I doubt anyone really thought this through before announcing it, and they certainly weren't expecting the sort of response it's been getting. Personally the whole RealID thing doesn't much bother me, my name is gloriously generic enough that there's plenty of me's on the internet and not a single one actually *is* me since I've been careful to keep my personal life offline.

That said there's always just the option of, you know, not going on the forums or simply not playing Blizzards games. It's *is* only a game, well... two games now, eventually three. But still, a game. No wait, scratch that, not even a game; A gaming forum! Some people are acting like this is the apocalypse, the end of free speech, and an affront to humanity. That's what I meant when I said that I figure people are overreacting.

There's always the option of simply not going there any longer.

 

[Jodah]

Typing my name into Google the seventh link gives the town and state I live in. You may ask why such information is available on the internet, well I will tell you. It is my mother's obituary from the local paper. This is the type of information Jimmy "Random Retard" Smith can look up because he disagrees with a post I make.

It seems that the WoW-Killer people have been waiting for is going to be WoW itself. Fun times, fun times indeed.

 

[Lightslei]

Sure and porn sites also have parental controls. You know the ole are you 18 Y/N or how old are you pick a random number. But it goes deeper than that. For the sake of the arguement lets say they devise an uncrackable parental control. She logs in to Battle.net and sees everyone else using thier real names. So now either the old man is full of shit or is way to overprotective. Then I get the joys of trying to explain why she can't use her real name while everyone else can. And having the pedophile talk is gonna be a helluva lot scarier than having the birds and the bees talk. Even worse is it is a company like Activision doing this. And you know if a big dog like Acti is gonna do it others will follow suit. The whole thing undermines the basic rules of internet safety. And the worst part about it is we won't see the results of this little experiment until it is too late. And people have gotten hurt. But hey at least the forums will be jerk free so that makes it all ok.

Slightly more complicated Parental Features than that but hell, I don't work for Blizzard, I'm not going to defend it. I see your point!

Of course why your daughter is theoretically browsing the WOW forums years from now when she's old enough to be playing the by then ancient game is another issue, but I see your concern. My answer? No clue. Like I said, I don't work for Blizz, it's their job to try and answer these questions, something they haven't done at all yet since they announced this feature.

Like I said before, I doubt anyone really thought this through before announcing it, and they certainly weren't expecting the sort of response it's been getting. Personally the whole RealID thing doesn't much bother me, my name is gloriously generic enough that there's plenty of me's on the internet and not a single one actually *is* me since I've been careful to keep my personal life offline.

That said there's always just the option of, you know, not going on the forums or simply not playing Blizzards games. It's *is* only a game, well... two games now, eventually three. But still, a game. No wait, scratch that, not even a game; A gaming forum! Some people are acting like this is the apocalypse, the end of free speech, and an affront to humanity. That's what I meant when I said that I figure people are overreacting.

There's always the option of simply not going there any longer.

I think a large concern is if this would spread to other sites. You need to keep in mind the absolute worst case scenario.

 

[squid5580]

Sure and porn sites also have parental controls. You know the ole are you 18 Y/N or how old are you pick a random number. But it goes deeper than that. For the sake of the arguement lets say they devise an uncrackable parental control. She logs in to Battle.net and sees everyone else using thier real names. So now either the old man is full of shit or is way to overprotective. Then I get the joys of trying to explain why she can't use her real name while everyone else can. And having the pedophile talk is gonna be a helluva lot scarier than having the birds and the bees talk. Even worse is it is a company like Activision doing this. And you know if a big dog like Acti is gonna do it others will follow suit. The whole thing undermines the basic rules of internet safety. And the worst part about it is we won't see the results of this little experiment until it is too late. And people have gotten hurt. But hey at least the forums will be jerk free so that makes it all ok.

Slightly more complicated Parental Features than that but hell, I don't work for Blizzard, I'm not going to defend it. I see your point!

Of course why your daughter is theoretically browsing the WOW forums years from now when she's old enough to be playing the by then ancient game is another issue, but I see your concern. My answer? No clue. Like I said, I don't work for Blizz, it's their job to try and answer these questions, something they haven't done at all yet since they announced this feature.

Like I said before, I doubt anyone really thought this through before announcing it, and they certainly weren't expecting the sort of response it's been getting. Personally the whole RealID thing doesn't much bother me, my name is gloriously generic enough that there's plenty of me's on the internet and not a single one actually *is* me since I've been careful to keep my personal life offline.

That said there's always just the option of, you know, not going on the forums or simply not playing Blizzards games. It's *is* only a game, well... two games now, eventually three. But still, a game. No wait, scratch that, not even a game; A gaming forum! Some people are acting like this is the apocalypse, the end of free speech, and an affront to humanity. That's what I meant when I said that I figure people are overreacting.

There's always the option of simply not going there any longer.

Oh I understand where you are coming from. If I put on my gamer hat I am right there with you. Big whoop. There isn't much you can do to me. If you wanna steal my identity go right ahead. You might help my credit rating because you sure can't do much more damage to it. You wanna stalk me? Awwww I'm flattered. And if you wanna try and cyber bully me hey it's your time you are wasting. Might give me a good laugh before I delete the messages. And I find my beard is a great pedophile detterent.

Then the parenting hat goes on and this scares the hell out of me. I agree that this was not thought out but I disagree that they didn't see this reaction coming. They had to know that people would freak. Someone posted a link earlier to the boards where they had one of the mods full name, address, facebook account link and possibly a phone number (not 100% sure on that one). And to make matters worse my daughter (just like the mod I am talking about) has a pretty unique name. Lol fuuuuuuuccccckkkkkkkkk!!!!!!

 

[squid5580]

I just had a thought (ya I know I should have saved it for when I get older) but what happens when they find out your REALID isn't your real ID? Was that covered in the faq? It was hard to read with all the red.

 

[Guffe]

Isn't this an invasion of privacy? I'm sure this has to be illegal somehow

Not necessarily since this will be and always has been a your choice, if you chose to be a part of it then add your name there, it's just an option to be able to chat with other people.

 

[Sanguinius- The Angel]

As a person who avidly plays World of Warcraft, I can say that this is a load of bullshit. Honestly, how can trolling be such a problem where they decide to flaunt your real name to everyone? It's a pathetic stab at trolls, and in the long run, it will stop nothing. Honestly, I will never post on those forums again. I don't need strangers seeing my full name. Ever try googling yourself? I did. The first link was my damn facebook. I don't need some 12 year old schmuck tracking me down because I camped him in Hillsbrad.

 

[squid5580]

Ok this Ipulled right from thier privacy faq right above the REAL ID thing in thier privacy Faq.

What about Children?


Children Under 13
Once a child states that his/her age is under 13, we do not collect or store any personally identifiable information such as name, address, or email address.

Note to Parents
We recognize a special obligation to protect personal information about young children. We urge parents to instruct their children to never give out their real names, addresses, or phone numbers, without permission, when on-line. Teenagers under the age of 17 and over the age of 12 should encourage their parents to review this policy and to contact us if they would like to evoke our opt-out policy or to raise any concerns.

Save the children. The rest of you are screwed lol