RealID soon to apply to all forum posts, other upcoming official forum improvements - Page 18

• Double-Neg · 07/08/10, 3:31 PM

A valid Real ID will soon be required for all elitist jerks public forums posts.

Garanthir · 07/08/10, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by Double-Neg

A valid Real ID will soon be required for all elitist jerks public forums posts.

That does bring up another side to this, the top progressing/well known players will be huge targets for Real ID exploitation. Hopefully it goes no further than the official forums.

MizarAlcor · 07/08/10, 4:02 PM

Originally Posted by Enova

Now, the supermarket example you've just given seems, in my experience, not to be true. Seems. My experience. Your mileage may vary. But pretty much every day during my lunch break I leave work to grab a bite somewhere. Most of the times I can't remember or be bothered to remove my ID badge. Never noticed anyone staring intently at it...

On the other hand, the administration of the area I'm living in is implementing a new design for newly-issued driver's licenses, as a response to the increasing threat of ID fraud. Now, this might not be an appropriate counter-example because most of the time, the target of the fraud is most likely the ID number of the driver's license itself, not the name of the victim. However, it's not always the case.

Living in a university- and college-based city, I'm also aware of a few cases where people got into trouble for lending friends their ID to try to bypass drinking-age limitation at bars and clubs. Similar problem might happen with RealID forum implementation. For example, getting your account hacked in the future may cause you additional headache due to potential misuse of RealID postings on the forum by the hacker. Yes, hackers can still do that right now with your in-game avatars, but the damage is limited to in-game reputation at the most, not real-life reputation.

Exemplar · 07/08/10, 4:15 PM

This can also be reversed. Know someone's real name and Google up what you can find. Email addresses (which could be the Blizznet login ID), birthdays, pets names, children's names/birthdays, other hobbies - you suddenly have a lot of good fodder for a dictionary attack.

RealID becomes another foot in the door for hackers to break account security.

Edit because it doesn't merit a full post: EJ needs to use RealID so that Double-Neg cannot Troll about EJ using RealID!

Cloudgatherer · 07/08/10, 4:17 PM

Originally Posted by Double-Neg

A valid Real ID will soon be required for all elitist jerks public forums posts.

There are pages of negative feedback regarding the Real ID change in this thread alone. Also, this thread isn't really the appropriate place to make that kind of announcement. The quoted poster is also currently in violation of the forum rules (no valid wow-profile). Given all three of those factors, I find it difficult to verify the integrity of the quoted statement.

If it is indeed the plan for EJ to go RealID, there should probably be an announcement thread, with some details and Q&A around that change instead of placing a "one-liner" here in this thread 250+ posts in. For instance, I immediately thought about a question regarding donations and the benefactor's bar, but such a question is more appropriate to a thread dedicated towards that change.

Edit: Yeah, I originally wanted to post "Is this a joke?" or something similar, but you never know these days...

Garanthir · 07/08/10, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Cloudgatherer

There are pages of negative feedback regarding the Real ID change in this thread alone. Also, this thread isn't really the appropriate place to make that kind of announcement. The quoted poster is also currently in violation of the forum rules (no valid wow-profile). Given all three of those factors, I find it difficult to verify the integrity of the quoted statement.

If it is indeed the plan for EJ to go RealID, there should probably be an announcement thread, with some details and Q&A around that change instead of placing a "one-liner" here in this thread 250+ posts in. For instance, I immediately thought about a question regarding donations and the benefactor's bar, but such a question is more appropriate to a thread dedicated towards that change.

He/she was being sarcastic. Well, at least I hope so.

Hoenir · 07/08/10, 4:58 PM

Technically he is not wrong, because in a way assuming you make only 1 blizzard forum post and on that post you use any of the characters in your EJ profile they can do a forum search for you and find your RealID. That being said the person would have to be exhaustive in their efforts of not just searching for a name, but also name and a server on the official forums.

Kaubel · 07/08/10, 5:05 PM

You stupid shits need to just shut up and admit you got trolled.

Joecode · 07/08/10, 5:18 PM

Blizzard doesn't understand trolls. While we can link all their posts together now, they are still effectively anonymous and will continue to shit all over the forums. If Blizzard wanted effective action, every forum post would have a link showing a few of your characters based on most recently active and highest /played. If they would do that, then the community could effectively blacklist genuine assholes as a true incentive for moderate civility.

Horac · 07/08/10, 5:28 PM

Originally Posted by Garanthir

He/she was being sarcastic. Well, at least I hope so.

Technically I believe the statement is correct. While I'm sure that some exceptions have been made, I think the current policy is that you must have an active World of Warcraft account (and by extension of that a realid which is now required to play WoW) in order to post on the class forums at least. I've seen people get infractions for not having an active account or for having misconfigured their information so that it doesn't point to an active character. I don't think that Double-Neg's post was in jest. I think he was saying that even if you forsake the official forums and post here you will need an active game account and will have a real id (even if this site doesn't require real id in order to log in).

As far as my comments on the first page about how I felt people were overreacting, they represent my initial response to the announcement and to the storm that followed it. Having had time to think about it further I see that those reactions of concerned players are not unreasonable in the least.

In my circumstances, knowing my real name doesn't net you much however, I can see how that would not be the case for others. I don't use social media of any type on the internet beyond the old anonymous message boards and Real ID would change that despite me not wanting to use such a service. Searching via Google or one of the People search web sites doesn't generate information about me but Real ID would change that. Now that I have had a few days to think about it I can definitely say I am not interested in the least in a social media framework, especially one that uses my real name.

There's nothing that revealing your name accomplishes that cannot be accomplished via the use of a gamer tag that a person must choose and cannot change. I can't think of one case where the use of a real name is necessary in order to make a gamer social network system work. That information could and should remain private and under your control to publish.

Malan · 07/08/10, 5:43 PM

Originally Posted by Morthoul

The "anonymity causes social problems" argument is very one-sided. Anonymity is a normal part of life; we're anonymous on the highway, at the grocery store, at the movie theater, and in most public places besides.

No, you only think you're anonymous in those places. You have the illusion of anonymity in your everyday life. It's pretty easy to take very basic bits of information and find out loads of information about you. Paid with a credit card anywhere? The clerk now knows your name, the credit card company knows where you were and what you bought and when you were there, and so does the store. Driven your car through a toll booth? The state has a record of your license plate going through, or a digital record of your exact identity from your ez-pass. There are plenty of services offered online that will do an identity lookup based on license plate numbers. We are not anonymous.

robbymo · 07/08/10, 5:45 PM

Zarhym just responded to a poster asking about his personal opinion of RealId.

Not exactly touting it's merits.

• Chicken · 07/08/10, 5:46 PM

Going by some of the recent posts, I'd like to remind everyone that with their proposed changes, your real name is only linked to your character if you choose to have their new forum display your main character alongside your name. Blizzard's other services are still remaining as they are now.

In other words unlike some of you appear to be thinking, making a single post on the coming official forums will not automatically mean that everyone will be able to link your real name to what exact character you play in the game. At best someone can Google your name and find out that someone with your name plays WoW, and they might be able to infer more information based on what you post, but unless you choose to display your character, there's no direct link between your real name on their forums and your in-game character(s).

I don't support their change, but if you want to discuss it I would recommend sticking to the facts or stating very clearly that you're in fact speculating about other services that might change to using your RealID in the future.

Belegûr · 07/08/10, 5:54 PM

In the case of recruiting officers, people will have a pretty solid clue, since that would narrow the list down to 2 or 3 players.

Morthoul · 07/08/10, 6:05 PM

Originally Posted by Horac

There's nothing that revealing your name accomplishes that cannot be accomplished via the use of a gamer tag that a person must choose and cannot change. I can't think of one case where the use of a real name is necessary in order to make a gamer social network system work. That information could and should remain private and under your control to publish.

Forcing people to give up privacy is valuable in itself, because once people have done it, they have nothing further to lose by repping WoW on their Facebook, and participating in incentives to recruit more players through Facebook.

It's a simple matter that the forums don't make Blizzard any money, and they could just as well remove forums entirely. The new system is a way they might actually make money off the forums, by offering the service only to players willing to help Blizzard in exchange.

Originally Posted by Malan

No, you only think you're anonymous in those places. You have the illusion of anonymity in your everyday life. It's pretty easy to take very basic bits of information and find out loads of information about you. Paid with a credit card anywhere? The clerk now knows your name, the credit card company knows where you were and what you bought and when you were there, and so does the store. Driven your car through a toll booth? The state has a record of your license plate going through, or a digital record of your exact identity from your ez-pass. There are plenty of services offered online that will do an identity lookup based on license plate numbers. We are not anonymous.

I don't mind identifying myself to official representatives, like cashiers, and I wasn't talking about that. (It's also why I think analogies to the Patriot Act are something between silly and irrelevant.) I mean every person I pass in an isle in a grocery store, and every driver I pass on the road, and all the other normal, non-official people I pass in a single day. I'm anonymous to them and it's normal. That contrast is that if I posted on the official forums even once, linking my real name to my character, I'd no longer be anonymous to the thousands of people I pass in WoW cities, dungeons, and BGs.

So basically I don't buy the argument that removing anonymity makes things more like real life, and more civil. I think it's weird as hell. It would be like going through life with a name tag on both sides of my shirt, and on my bumper sticker.