RealID soon to apply to all forum posts, other upcoming official forum improvements - Page 2

Antiphonal · 07/06/10, 3:32 PM

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this is inviting legal trouble. So many WoW players are under age and not responsible or mature. I can imagine a kid doing regular cocky kid stuff angering someone who tracks them down. Or worse, the realID system making WoW ideal for predatory... whatever.

I'm not talking about the bad PR. I think there is real danger in this policy.

Nitz · 07/06/10, 3:36 PM

There was a good post about that in the 200+ pages long thread: every kid must have his or her parent(s) to agree on them disclosing their real names—legal nightmare indeed.

alienangel · 07/06/10, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Belegûr

What I simply can't grasp is the reason for doing this, regardless of whether you think it's a good or bad idea. It can't be just to "tame" the jungle the official forums have become, despite what their announcement claims. If it were just that, blizzard could simply do some harsher (or, well, some actual) moderating. After all, EJ manages to keep a clean forum despite thousands and thousands of users posting on a daily basis, and they certainly don't have blizzard's means: they achieve this through very, very harsh moderating. Blizzard could obviously afford a few extra moderators to keep the forums cleaner.

So what on earth could be worth such trouble? In under 24hours since they posted the announcement, there have been 170+ pages of heated complaints - heated as in "the president has announced Christmas has been canceled", both from players and MVPs alike, and MVPs don't often outright bash a new initiative. This is one of the worst responses I've ever seen on the forums, and for good reason: people value their privacy much more than any in-game mechanic. I just don't understand Blizzard's motivations here.

I think Blizzard's vision of BattleNet is a sort of gamer's facebook, where people get together and vague social networking magic takes places, perhaps giving BlizzardActivation access to the influence (if not the advertising/app revenue) Facebook has had. So having RealID both be a name (to distinguish it from things like Steam that just tie games together without much of an identity for the player) and having it tied to your communications is important to them. If it's tied to your real identity anyway, it's a short step to tying it into all the other networks currently tied to your real identity.

The Blue's ending paragraphs from the announcement seem to be along these lines too:

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.

Emeraude · 07/06/10, 3:47 PM

Well if that's the case, then I could in fact see the Armory being the next logical step in all of this. It basically gives you your own facebook(BNET) page to edit and modify as it is.

ZachPruckowski · 07/06/10, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by alienangel

Your name doesn't need to be particularly unique though, since a lot of context can be attached to it that makes identification much simpler. This is because it's not just a one way link from gameID->realID, it goes both ways, and is a bridge for any ID linked to either of them to connect to the other end.

Strictly speaking, you don't have to include your character name with your post in the new system, so you could actually avoid tying yourself to a specific WoW character. Of course, avoiding that would be tough, since "Boomkin on Chromaggus Horde-side with ICC-Hard Mode experience" narrows you down to only a handful of possible characters (none of which are mine, if you were wondering). Of course, Chromaggus is a low-pop realm, but I think you get the idea.

Originally Posted by Antiphonal

I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this is inviting legal trouble. So many WoW players are under age and not responsible or mature. I can imagine a kid doing regular cocky kid stuff angering someone who tracks them down. Or worse, the realID system making WoW ideal for predatory... whatever.

I'm not talking about the bad PR. I think there is real danger in this policy.

Which will have the effect of booting all the 13-year-olds off the forums. That's a silver lining at least.

I think there'd be a lot of merit applying it to just the feedback-oriented forums, or even creating a tiered system where some forums are Real-ID and some are not, but Blues only pay attention to the Real-ID ones.

Someone on another site suggested that the real loser here is Realm Forums, which could dry up as a result.

Antiphonal · 07/06/10, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by ZachPruckowski

Which will have the effect of booting all the 13-year-olds off the forums. That's a silver lining at least.

I think there'd be a lot of merit applying it to just the feedback-oriented forums, or even creating a tiered system where some forums are Real-ID and some are not, but Blues only pay attention to the Real-ID ones.

Someone on another site suggested that the real loser here is Realm Forums, which could dry up as a result.

Idiot 13-year-olds, yes. They _should_ be booted. But if a 13 year old wanted to ask a question about a talent spec, or PvP technique, or even to post that they are making available X ultra-rare recipe for Y fee, shouldn't the forums be the appropriate place for such things?

But consider the danger - All a child has to do is click a box in order to get their parent's "permission" to post. They are then stalker-bait or rage-bait in an arena that is much harder than facebook to supervise.

I have a very unique name and so obviously I will not be using anything that exposes it to the public, especially regarding something like WoW which is still, in many ways, stigmatized by people in my profession. But a child doesn't know what privacy they are throwing away by clicking the "Mommy said yes" button.

I see an injunction in their future. <waves hands around crystal ball>

Milemarker · 07/06/10, 4:25 PM

My personal biggest issue with this (aside from the fact that it would plaster my name all over a gaming forum) is that it affects the level of technical support available to users.

I've never been the biggest user of of the official forum - sure, I've made some recruitment posts, which I wouldn't miss too much (especially since I'm not responsible for this anymore) and I've made very occasional suggestions on specs, gear and gameplay. But the most use I've ever got out of the forums was posting in technical support to narrow down and eventually fix an issue with an old ISP's connectivity to Telia. The forums would be my first point of call with technical game issues, and being able to interact with them would be impossible with this 'Real ID' change. It's a noticeable reduction in level of service for those of us who can't afford to have full names associated with a computer game for professional / personal reasons.

Connected to this, I can only assume they'll have to stop asking for tracert logs in technical support - information like that attached to a real name could have serious implications.

Itzena · 07/06/10, 4:27 PM

My personal biggest issue is that RL names can be pulled out in-game by UI mods without having to accept RealID friend requests: World of Warcraft (en) Forums -> Addons can share Full Name without RealID

your battle.net account full name is exposed to all your addons (and thus potentially to anyone) without ever adding any realid friends

proof:
/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,"RealID whisper from yourself..");break end end

alienangel · 07/06/10, 4:32 PM

Originally Posted by Milemarker

My personal biggest issue with this (aside from the fact that it would plaster my name all over a gaming forum) is that it affects the level of technical support available to users.

I've never been the biggest user of of the official forum - sure, I've made some recruitment posts, which I wouldn't miss too much (especially since I'm not responsible for this anymore) and I've made very occasional suggestions on specs, gear and gameplay. But the most use I've ever got out of the forums was posting in technical support to narrow down and eventually fix an issue with an old ISP's connectivity to Telia. The forums would be my first point of call with technical game issues, and being able to interact with them would be impossible with this 'Real ID' change. It's a noticeable reduction in level of service for those of us who can't afford to have full names associated with a computer game for professional / personal reasons.

Connected to this, I can only assume they'll have to stop asking for tracert logs in technical support - information like that attached to a real name could have serious implications.

The other useful part of the official forums is feedback; primarily PTR or Beta feedback. There is quite a lot of stuff I'd like to say to Blizzard when new mechanics are being tested, but not at the expense of sharing my name with google.

Ellyh · 07/06/10, 4:40 PM

My concern is that it will lift the raceblind veil from the forums. Currently no-one knows or cares what ethnic group you belong to but at least 50% of real names allow for all sorts of racial profiling if not out and out racism. Given the general immaturity of people on the wow forums do you really see people belonging to racially identifiable groups wanting to post when they expose their real name to the ignorance and vitriol of the morons inhabiting most of those forums.

Exemplar · 07/06/10, 4:55 PM

Originally Posted by Nitz

There was a good post about that in the 200+ pages long thread: every kid must have his or her parent(s) to agree on them disclosing their real names—legal nightmare indeed.

Also note many kids are likely to be playing on an account registered in the parent's name. The parent created the account for their child, associated credit card/etc, then gave the kid the login. It's the kid's account (parent doesn't play), but all registration information lists parent's info.

Said kid posts on forums. Said kid's parent is suddenly logged as the one making the post. Cue problems.

Bonestorm · 07/06/10, 5:08 PM

Originally Posted by Horac

I agree it's an undesirable move but I think many are overreacting to it so far. Very few people have a name that is unique enough to allow someone to find out anything about you.

Regardless of how common someones name is, it's very easy to find their address/etc. if you have almost any other information to cross reference it with. For example, if John Smith adds me to his Real ID friends list, and his list has a few of his real life friends and family. I could just stick all those names in people search engines or social networking sites, and I could more than likely identify him by finding a John Smith that lives nearby or communicates with some of those people without very much effort. And further, I could just as likely identify a friend of a friend, as in someone not even on my own personal friends list. If the new forum system still shows a character/guild, you could even cross reference guild mates against each other to potentially track people down from them posting on the forums.

Personally, neither my first name or my last name are really that rare, and I'm the only result for my name on search sites such as pipl.com, same thing with my girlfriend. Most friends/family show up with a small handful of results, but if someone had any sort of other information on them such as a general location, an idea of their age, names of friends/family, etc. it would be quite easy to identify them with from their first/last name.

Ukerric · 07/06/10, 5:28 PM

There's probably also a number of other sticky issues regarding EU. Notably Blizzard's HQ there, in France - France has relatively strong laws regarding personal information and disclosure thereof (strong as in "get 5 year in jail if you don't comply").

I wonder what the CNIL will think of this...

Duilliath · 07/06/10, 6:12 PM

I signed up for a game. I did not sign up for a Facebook substitute. In fact, when I'm in WoW, I'm playing it exactly to get away from the real world. Tying this to my real name goes counter to that.

Additionally, real name will give away awkward information, such as gender. I can't imagine the majority of ladies being thrilled to know it'll now be open season for internet stalkers. Additionally, not everyone is called John Smith. Enter my first and last name in google and at least half of the results will actually be me. I have little reason to want to see WoW pop up a lot in there, particularly not as teacher. Furthermore, there's a number of celebrities that currently play. The WoW-crew itself is under strict conditions to not reveal their position to their own guilds. I've seen posts where people are concerned about a restraining order on an ex-husband suddenly gaining a new way to harass them.

And it's not exactly like this is fully optional. Technical support, after all, is still a part of the official forums.

Finally, this still completely defeats the point of keeping trolls out, as you do not need to post with your main character attached to the post. A John Smith will see little reason to stay out.

//edit: Wow, the official forums have gone crazy. About 1500 posts/hour stating this is an incredibly bad idea. Apparently they're rather heavy-handed with the delete button on the Starcraft forums as well, though I am not sure how much of that is the result of more ascii-one-fingered-salute spam.

Emeraude · 07/06/10, 6:14 PM

Just to respond to those that don't think we read through all of these responses and threads, we do and have been. We will continue monitoring feedback as well.

We put a lot of thought into this change and have a long-term vision for the Real ID service and wanted to make sure that we communicated ahead of time and very clearly as to what will be changing and how. Keep in mind that posting is optional, and we recognize that some players will choose not to utilize the Real ID feature in game or post on the forums and support everyone's individual choice on using or not using it.

This is obviously new ground for us and for you as well, but we want to make sure we're creating a great social-gaming service that people will want to use. We just want to make sure that if people are sharing feedback, that they keep it constructive, and yes, as I said, we are reading.

I think that just about says it all. They have their plans for Real ID and they're going forward with them, they're just letting us know in advance what those plans are. "Keep in mind that posting is optional" did kind of irritate me, but I don't think they're going to change their minds about this. It seems more like a business decision then a one for their fans.