Real ID poised to kill the wow forums, in every sense

Overheal

Worldofwarcraft.com wrote:

With the launch of our new Battle.net, we’ll be making some changes to how players and Blizzard posters are represented on our official forums. Click here to read about our plans for integrating Real ID into our official forums, learn about the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and find out about some other upcoming features designed to make the forums a more enjoyable place to visit.

Heh.... even my favorite consumer watchdog site got a whiff of this bs. And they normally just blow the whistle at cable and phone companies, and the odd crazy at walmart:

Consumerist.com wrote:

http://consumerist.com/2010/07/you-want-your-real-name-publicly-associated-with-your-world-of-warcraft-account-right.html

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bad ideas
You Want Your Real Name Publicly Associated With Your World Of Warcraft Account, Right?

By Laura Northrup on July 6, 2010 7:15 PM 0 views

(Menage a Moi)

If you want to use certain official World of Warcraft forums, you're going to have to come out. That is, you're going to have to make your real full name visible on forums. No, not your character name: your real name. No, it's not a severely delayed April Fool's joke. And no, Blizzard, the company behind the game, doesn't seem to care that their players like to post on forums but also might have problems with stalkers or identity theft, and also occasionally seek gainful employment.
The reason for the change is good old-fashioned trolling. Oh, Internet. From the official announcement:

“
The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.”

On one blog (which we won't link to) fans made their point by taking the real name of a Blizzard employee, revealed on the forums, and uncovering every bit of information they could about him, including his age, relatives' names and ages, phone number, home address, and that he apparently lives with his mom.
The change will not affect posts that have already been made, on the "classic" forums. So at least there's that.

Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to Forums [Battle.net]
More About:

• bad ideas,
• privacy,
• blizzard,
• world of warcraft

Truly I have no idea when they were deciding to flip over, stir, and then finally bake the other half of this idea.

Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Forums

Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - http://www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID -- including these forum changes -- have been made with this goal in mind.

We’ve given a great deal of consideration to the design of Real ID as a company, as gamers, and as enthusiastic users of the various online-gaming, communication, and social-networking services that have become available in recent years. As these services have become more and more popular, gamers have become part of an increasingly connected and intimate global community – friendships are much more easily forged across long distances, and at conventions like PAX or our own BlizzCon, we’ve seen first-hand how gamers who may have never actually met in person have formed meaningful real-life relationships across borders and oceans. As the way gamers interact with one another continues to evolve, our goal is to ensure Battle.net is equipped to handle the ever-changing social-gaming experience for years to come.

For more info on Real ID, check out our Real ID page and FAQ located at http://www.battle.net/realid/ . We look forward to answering your questions about these upcoming forum changes in the thread below.

Update - Text updated to include more current and correct information regarding legacy forums and their use of Real ID. "The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

[ Post edited by Bashiok ]

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041&sid=3000&pageNo=1

Noxin

Easygainer

Did you see the wowriot blog and ensuing drama on US forums?

It was poetic justice. Blue poster decided to show how easy it would be by posting his real name.

Within minutes his address, phone number, photos from his facebook.... everything were posted.

Blizzard's response, of course, far from taking pause to consider the problems decided to ban those who exposed the flaws...

2 Espressi

Terrible idea, they'd obviously prefer everyone just went to EJ or mmochamp...

Are the US forums really that bad? I'm on the EU boards a bit, and apart from the Off-Topic section (a strange and eerie place) it's generally full of helpful people.

Could they not use the IDs associated with the blizz account instead?

Gummy Panda

This real ID system is crap. I thought it would be a cross game master username like an xbox 360 gamertag. Instead its my real name online.

I'm not sure about starcraft2 now. If I join a matchmaking match, does my opponent see my name?

Dustaz

Giving out personal information on the internet? What could POSSIBLY go wrong!!


lets face it, noone actually seriously uses those forums apart from the odd tech support question or the VERY odd balance issue.

The ONLY posts that go on there are trolls and useless drivel, the us forums being especially bad for it.

However this is utter madness, the flow of posts there will halt to a trickle overnight.

As many have said, im not keen on the real id feature. I have like 4 real id friends and thats it. If it was linked to a master username, id have a lot more.

Dustaz

Easygainer wrote: »

Did you see the wowriot blog and ensuing drama on US forums?

It was poetic justice. Blue poster decided to show how easy it would be by posting his real name.

Within minutes his address, phone number, photos from his facebook.... everything were posted.

Blizzard's response, of course, far from taking pause to consider the problems decided to ban those who exposed the flaws...

got a link for the blog?


edit: nvm found it and LMAO.
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function

How is this not a lesson?

Dravokivich

you know this is going to be an in game thing as well? Albeit optional in game. No choice on the forums.

nix

lol that blog is hilarious, and right.

WTF were blizzard thinking?? When i seen it was showing my billing name i was like WTF and spent like an hour trying to figure out a way to change/hide it.

I even turned on parental control as they advertised you can change settings, and by settings they ment you can turn it on or off, which you can also do in game :rolleyes:

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

In all fairness, the GM has a very unique name. Unlike John Smith for example, good luck sifting through tens of thousands of search results to find the right guy. I've always been very security concious about having my personal information attached to anything online. Twitter, facebook, youtube, linkedin, lastfm, photobucket etc etc. Thankfully for me, i pass the google test (Put in your name/online alias/handle, D.O.B, address, and nothing comes up) But others i fear will probably be hugely linked and easy to find info about.

Never before has the online threat of CU@LAN been more real!

Easygainer

Komplett-Tech (Ryan) wrote: »

In all fairness, the GM has a very unique name. Unlike John Smith for example, good luck sifting through tens of thousands of search results to find the right guy. I've always been very security concious about having my personal information attached to anything online. Twitter, facebook, youtube, linkedin, lastfm, photobucket etc etc. Thankfully for me, i pass the google test (Put in your name/online alias/handle, D.O.B, address, and nothing comes up) But others i fear will probably be hugely linked and easy to find info about.

Never before has the online threat of CU@LAN been more real!

Context.

I'll give a hypothetical situation.

Let's say we PuG a raid together, and while waiting for summons Dutch people are going crazy about a goal in the World Cup. I, John Smith, unwittingly remark that Ireland got shafted in qualifying.

At some point in the raid, player "Troll" disconnects at the end of a fight. Loot is rolled for and I win my shiny purples. Troll comes back online and is dismayed he missed the roll. He gives dog's abuse and /w me non stop . Fine, I ignore him.

Troll then sees, through the RealID friends list, that his arena partner is "friends" with me and deduces from a forum post or by asking his arena partner what my real name is.

He also knows I'm Irish from my football comment. He googles my name and finds several facebook entries with my common name, 6 in Ireland alone. However, a quick perusal shows that I'm a member of the facebook group Irish WoW players, and he recognises his arena partner's name on my friends list.

My facebook is trolled by this person who accuses me of stealing items. My non WoW friends see this and ask what is happening. Troll says I took a ring that was rightfully his and won't give it back. Real life friends think I'm a thief, boss becomes aware, I lose my job on suspicion of theft.

My partner leaves me as I say I can't afford to start a family now. The grief of events makes me turn to drugs and later prostitution...

Oh wait. You get the idea though.

][cEMAN**

Dustaz wrote: »

If it was linked to a master username, id have a lot more.

Exactly! A major part of the problem of trolling on the forums has been people using low level alts. If people could only post with a main character username, or if they showed all toons linked even (and even that's pushing it), then it would cut down on the trolling. It wouldn't stop it completely, but people could more easily put others on ignore, or see who's being the asshole on the forums.

Same in game. You can still have a low level alt (not known by people outside your REAL ID) trolling trade. REAL ID hasn't stopped this. If you had for example 1 main character name per realm (no matter what character/class you were logged into), it would mean people would troll less on trade, they'd think more about what name they wanted rather than having alts with rediculous names, and ninjas couldn't just use their alts to escape server persecution.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

You're into conspiricy theories arn't you?

While i can understand where you are coming from, i think you are jumping the gun a little bit. All the online sites and programs we use have security features, facebook for one has quite strict security settings. Unless you accept this muppet obsessed with loot, how will he post on your wall? Even if he did, the delete button is there for a reason The rule here, is dont link your self from one program/site/game to the next.

Wolfe Tone

I think the whole idea of these games is to keep your real life and the game seperate.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

MUSSOLINI wrote: »

I think the whole idea of these games is to keep your real life and the game seperate.

Thats exactally what i was trying to say.

DevilsBreath

Man this sucks. I've just managed to get my char geared up enough to go looking for a guild to go raiding with . and i aint going to be posting with my real name.

Love the ingame side of it though.

Nehaxak

Dunno what the problem is really in regard the Blizzard employee as every Blizzard employee's real name is listed (unless it's changed recently) in the IMDB database for the WoW entry, including Irish employees, and has been that way for years.

Much pissing and moaning about nothing really and probably just a lot of trolls and fanboi arse kissers now afraid their internet hardman persona is busted when others find out their real name is Percy or Cyril instead of HeadSmashingBastardKiller.

I've always shared my facebook page with past guild members from Europe I got on well with and still have them as friends and don't see a problem with this change at all, who cares if people know your real name ? Does anyone still really think the internets are or where ever anonymous ?

Anyway, it might make people think twice before they piss others off just for the sake of trolling. That and it should put a stop to the same people posting under numerous characters to back up whatever silly trolling points they're trying to make, as if to suggest they somehow had support for what they were saying, when all it ever was, was themselves posting replies to back their other chacters postings up all along. Good move on Blizzard's part imho.

Overheal

What Im slightly more concerned about is the potential for stalking and indeed, even homocide.

Wouldnt be the first time I have heard of a murder transpiring over events in an MMO. This just sounds like it will make it easier for these things to happen. And frankly it already happens far too often.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news090605murdershelevelledup

Hobbes

Komplett-Tech (Ryan) wrote: »

In all fairness, the GM has a very unique name. Unlike John Smith for example, good luck sifting through tens of thousands of search results to find the right guy.

You will be surprised what you can find even without the persons real name. Google search is the newbie method. All releasing real peoples names is make it such much easier for the average troll.

Personally I think it is a bloody stupid idea. My previous guild one of the officers was female and pretty hot looking. The second any new to the guild heard her on vent or saw the guild photos she would continually get hit on. She had to say she was married and that her hubby plays as an officer as well to shut most up (total bs).

I see there is already a security flaw with the Real ID in game.

With the data protection act in Ireland is this even legal for them to do it here?

Hobbes

Komplett-Tech (Ryan) wrote: »

facebook for one has quite strict security settings.

Not strict at all, by default all your information is shared.[edit] FB made peoples phone numbers public by default recently.

BrokenArrows

yes people will stop using the forums from the point of introduction but what about archived posts.
Will the real name still be viewable on the old posts pre real ID.

Overheal

BrokenArrows wrote: »

yes people will stop using the forums from the point of introduction but what about archived posts.
Will the real name still be viewable on the old posts pre real ID.

No. They are from what I understand archiving what will now be known as the Legacy forum and shutting it down to Read-Only. The new battle.net forums will take over with much the same forum structure, add the addition of RealID.

Magaa

I am shocked, do you know what information can be got by just a name and a search engine like google?

MMO champion forums will get alot more trafic when this is put into motion

Branoic

Did anyone else read this and have a total lol WTF moment reading about Jim Brand's concerns that his employer might find out he's a gamer? He thought the best way to hide this fact was have it published by the BBC?! I seriously cracked up.

Xinkai

I KNEW naming my account C. Ockmongler would pay off one day!

Strolls off to WoW Forums.

TheDoc

Bout time.

Not that anything serious can come of it imo, its about time people who want to act big behind a keyboard, deal with some consequencies.

As dustaz says, who uses that forum seriously anyway

Lone Stone

look your all blinded by your faith in blizzard this is not about trolling on the forums they are doing this because they have some contract with facebook and tweeked battle net so it can connect up to the site most likely so you can have updates your facebook page and they have sold our privacy away.
I gaurantee this is what this change is for watch real id instead of character name's next.

At the end of the day we pay for a service the forums have always been a part of this service and now they try tell us ow its optional if you reveal your real name depending on wether you use the forum or not thats bull**** to be honest im playing 6 years nearly and they are shafting us for more money off our personal information.

also i have a unique name, i would assume from the vast amount of players a lot of them do so using not everying has a unique name means f all to me.
and who even care's about trolls i always read the wow eu / relam forum and its minimal at most and its not like it ruins anything im doing. its a crap excuse for real id forums.

][cEMAN**

It's laughable listening to people saying this is a good thing because of people who think they're a hard man being found out. It's purely down to a privacy thing. Your friends in wow will likely already know your real name and where you live. People who troll each other, well common sense would say just put the person on ignore rather than arguing with them online.

I'll give you an example - you don't walk into a bar wearing a t-shirt giving your name, your address, your telephone number, and other personal details. You still choose to go into the bar. You might go to meet friends who know all of these things, but you don't necessarily want everyone else there knowing them just because they can look it up. It's the same with games. It's the same with everything really.

Identity theft is one thing, but the reality of it is there are so many other ways of doing it than this. What it comes down to is a very very simple point...

NONE OF YOUR F*CKING BUSINESS!!

"What did you say your name was again?"
"I didn't"

Dr_Teeth

My name is quite unique, if I google it basically every result on the first 3 pages is me. I will never *ever* use RealID or an equivalent service - I don't use Facebook for that reason also.

Kiith

I'm sure there's another money making scheme for Blizzard in there somwhere.

Einstein

I like the RealID thing for the fact that I can chat with couple of RL friends cross faction / realm etc...but also for SC2...couple of mates play between WoW and also gonna be on with the upcoming starcraft...

I've NEVER used the WoW forums...complete waste of time...EJ or MMO champ much better..

I don't like the fact that I cant play as offline though...sometimes its nice to just grind away anonymously...