This stuff also opens up a whole new can of opportunities to stalk and harass female gamers within battle.net.
Go figure the possibilities that are there with minor female gamers. This is so ridiculous it just shows that the only thing that can "kill" WoW and Blizzard is themselves (or their publisher).
Bullshit scaremongering, again. Everything that you would be able to do with RealID, you can do now. Besides, there are lots of much easier ways to do this besides lurking on online game forum. And don't get me started on how you can successfully use social engineering and NLP.
Hiding all evidence of one's gaming activities from employers and other "mundanes" may help one to avoid negative consequences, but it will do nothing to address the cause of said consequences: the anti-gaming (and anti-MMORPG) social stigma. Outing millions of closet gamers, however, might very well turn out to be a drastic revolutionary measure (on the scale of publishing Kinsey Reports) that might just do the trick.
On a related note, I'm a lawyer working for a major international legal company. For the last two years, I've had an Orc Warrior figurine on my desk. Nobody has ever complained about it, to my face or otherwise.
Here's a little gem I found in 5 minutes (barely) of research on the CNIL's website. For those of you who don't know, the CNIL - Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés - is France's watchdog regarding private information and general privacy. Here's what I found:
Ainsi la diffusion sur un site web d'informations sur les personnes nécessite le consentement préalable de celles-ci. Les personnes peuvent, ultérieurement, s'opposer a tout moment a cette diffusion.
A quick translation for those of you who don't speak French:
Therefore, the spreading of information about a person on a website requires their explicit consent beforehand. Said person can, at any time later, demand that such information be taken down.
While this bit of law was primarily drafted for blogsites, it will certainly be most relevant in this case, since both the wow forums and blogsites alike are teeming with minors. I have only a very rough legal training, but I can already see many loopholes in that statement, mainly the fact that you could argue that if the person is posting, they agree to disclose such personal information as their name; however, that paragraph makes it quite clear that you should also be able to request later on that blizzard does not disclose your name on the forum. Some mess...
Now, as some others have pointed out, the fact that this is in a very gray zone legally speaking is interesting because Blizzard is owned by a French company. Therefore, I'm quite sure you could find a way to bring any legal issues to a French court; and considering that French courts usually protect privacy rather fiercely, I'd have to guess that Blizzard is going to have many a vicious legal entanglement if they move on with this.
On a more personal note, I'd like to emphasize on an aspect some have brought up: the loss of privacy for female players. As a typical example, my girlfriend is an avid wow player, and she has come to dread PuGs with TS. It's quite incredible to be honest, and I myself had no idea of the ordeal it could be before I saw it with my own eyes. On an average 25-m PuG, she gets an average 3 to 7 whispers - that's up to one quarter of the PuG for f*cks sake! - asking her her name, where she lives, her facebook account, her msn, and various unbelievable whispers. All that just because her voice carries well on TS3.
You would not believe the trash some guys are ready to type. Remember Penny Arcade's "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory"? Well rewrite the first half like this: "Single Drunk Guy At Bar + anonymity + girl", and imagine what that can turn out. I cannot imagine what her life would become if Blizzard started giving her name away. And for the record: I googled her name - just first name, last name - and yes, she was the first one on the list.
What confuses me is the lack of a vote thread. I bit a 72 hour official forum ban for a thread requesting a vote (obviously I knew exactly what I was doing and the likely ramifications of it).
The feedback thread stopped being useful around page 10, nothing really new is posted in it past there, just rehashes of the same information over and over again. At that point all you're possibly getting out of it is a set of numbers representing the opinions of your users, so why not actually put it in a voting format?
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Bullshit scaremongering, again. Everything that you would be able to do with RealID, you can do now. Besides, there are lots of much easier ways to do this besides lurking on online game forum. And don't get me started on how you can successfully use social engineering and NLP.
It's not whether it is easier to do outside of the game. It's the PR and clueless polititians with axes to grind the first time one of these things is PERCEIVED to have been facilitated by Blizzards real id policy or instigated online in a blizzard property. That also is enough to open them up to charges in many juridictions. Laws regarding the protection of minors are very stringent and are a real touchstone with the media who LOVE to whip up a scandal about youth being lead astray by evil corporations.
It's not whether it is easier to do outside of the game. It's the PR and clueless polititians with axes to grind the first time one of these things is PERCEIVED to have been facilitated by Blizzards real id policy or instigated online in a blizzard property. That also is enough to open them up to charges in many juridictions. Laws regarding the protection of minors are very stringent and are a real touchstone with the media who LOVE to whip up a scandal about youth being lead astray by evil corporations.
Yup, it only has to happen once, or even appear to happen, and things will get ugly. It's one thing if you start out as a social network and add games (Facebook) but it's a whole different issue if you start out as a game (WoW) and then import a social network. There's a perception of bait and switch there when it comes to anonymity no matter how much notification Blizzard gives.
This is a very slippery slope that Blizzard is now walking on. The fact that they mention that this is just the first step makes it pretty clear that this will expand to the Armory and in-game in the future. I'm not one to fall for the "sky is falling" syndrome, but this could very well be the first step towards WoW and Blizzard losing its grip on the playerbase.
Bullshit scaremongering, again. Everything that you would be able to do with RealID, you can do now. Besides, there are lots of much easier ways to do this besides lurking on online game forum. And don't get me started on how you can successfully use social engineering and NLP.
No, because right now people can not match a 'name' with an 'in-game character'. Yes, everyone can take my name randomly from a phone book or whatever. But nobody can link my name to my character, and know it is me who "ninja'd that token" "declined my application" "kicked me out of that pug" and so on.
My real name is rather unique, if you google my name everything that shows up will be me (or my dad's wife, since we bare the same last name). Someone coming across my name because I'm friends with a friend of his via realID and he can see my name there... I am not happy with it, but I can live with that. Yes, random people will know that a person called "so and so" plays wow on some server. But that's pretty much the limit I can take. Having my name splashed on a forum, allowing everyone to actually connect my in-game character, my gaming schedule and everything, to my real person, that's something entirely different.
Taking this a bit to the extreme, I don't want my boss going "of course you're tired and useless today, been up playing wow at 5 am last night". And I definitely don't want an eventual future employer to google my name and come across a bunch of wow forum posts. Same as I don't want to worry when I get whispers like "omfg !@#$#@# noob you @#$$##ing ninja'd that from me, !@#@#$@ idiot, I'll find out where you live and come !@#@#ing blow your head off". Yes, chances are not huge that it will actually happen, but it's something that would make me feel uncomfortable, there's always the "what if..."
What confuses me is the lack of a vote thread. I bit a 72 hour official forum ban for a thread requesting a vote (obviously I knew exactly what I was doing and the likely ramifications of it).
Because they don't want people to vote on something they know they would lose. It would be going to far to say that they don't care at all but that post was just an advance notice of what they are going to do with RealID. No discussion invited, just that: an advance notice.
In my opinion there is no need for first and last names on battle.net for RealID.
The ID should be a username not a real name.
But i suppose most people will just go along with it and the 2% that complain ( and have the right to do so ) will be ignored.
Originally Posted by Kalya
Someone coming across my name because I'm friends with a friend of his via realID and he can see my name there... I am not happy with it,
This is not possible, if you are in a conversation with a group of people anyone who is not on your friends list cannot see your real name, they can only see the current character that you are playing
Originally Posted by Kalya
Having my name splashed on a forum, allowing everyone to actually connect my in-game character, my gaming schedule and everything, to my real person, that's something entirely different.
This may be quite a good thing if it forces people to take forum posting a lot more seriously.
But i suppose most people will just go along with it and the 2% that complain ( and have the right to do so ) will be ignored.
There's a 944 (and counting) pages long thread of complaints on official wow forums, probably 1-2 pages more by the time I post this, that hardly qualifies as 2%. I don't remember ever seeing such a huge thread in such a short time.
Originally Posted by Haaggis
This is not possible, if you are in a conversation with a group of people anyone who is not on your friends list cannot see your real name, they can only see the current character that you are playing
This may be quite a good thing if it forces people to take forum posting a lot more seriously.
Yes it is possible, if you right click the name of a friend of yours you can see his friends, and it will show their real names. Nothing else but a name, no char or server. Or at least it was like that last time I checked, which was 1-2 days after RealID was implemented.
And no, it is not a good thing, not at all. It would be a good thing if you could only use a unique handle for posting on the forums, as others stated above, hence not allowing 'troll accounts'. But my real name, no.
Last edited by Kalya : 07/07/10 at 6:32 AM.
Reason: Replying to post made while I was typing.
Edit: too slow, 3 people already said what I said...
The "2% that complain"? There are close to a thousand pages on the thread about this change, and if 2% is going to reflect any statistic, then it's the people happy about the change. Just read 100 random replies out of the 17,000+. The vast, vast majority of posters is revolted. I very strongly doubt people will just "go along with it".
On future moves that may expand Real ID, Manditorily adding it to all armoury profiles and/or in-game WILL result in massive lawsuits based on bait and switch and while they might win in the US the odds are very bad in the EU, especially if it ends up in one of the supranational juristictions such as the European Court of Human Rights or they run afoul of the EU parliamentary machine. Just ask Microsoft how much fun it is getting on the wrong side of Brussels and they are a fully US company. As has been mentioned before Blizzard has very strong ties to France.
There's a 944 (and counting) pages long thread of complaints on official wow forums, probably 1-2 pages more by the time I post this, that hardly qualifies as 2%. I don't remember ever seeing such a huge thread in such a short time.
In comparison to the total number of accounts, >12 million im sure there won't be much more than 2% voicing their concerns ( 240,00) people.
That's not the point, Haaggis. The forum-goers may be a minority, but as of right now, they are 100% of the concerned playerbase, since this is a forum-only decision. And 950 pages of complaints in UNDER 48 HOURS is an absolute record. The entire WoW forum-users are overwhelmingly pissed off, and the day blizzard announces RealID will extend in a mandatory fashion beyond the forums, expect much, much more angry posts to hail on the boards.
This is not possible, if you are in a conversation with a group of people anyone who is not on your friends list cannot see your real name, they can only see the current character that you are playing
Look at one of your friends in your RealID Friends list. You can see everyone they are friends with, first and last name.
On a side note, I hate tough internet warriors looking up personal information of people, posting it and pretending to stand on moral high ground by doing so. (like it happening with the Blizzard employee).
Also, I don't think the harassment will be anywhere near the level the fearmongers project. Even the biggest creeps think twice before signing a threat with their real name.
Disclaimer: I do not on any level agree with the proposed change itself. And I'm sad I feel the need to put a disclaimer in.
God bless our good and gracious king,
Whose promise none relies on;
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.
On future moves that may expand Real ID, Manditorily adding it to all armoury profiles and/or in-game WILL result in massive lawsuits based on bait and switch and while they might win in the US the odds are very bad in the EU, especially if it ends up in one of the supranational juristictions such as the European Court of Human Rights or they run afoul of the EU parliamentary machine. Just ask Microsoft how much fun it is getting on the wrong side of Brussels and they are a fully US company. As has been mentioned before Blizzard has very strong ties to France.
On other hand, Chinese legislation is decidedly against Internet anonymity, and the majority of Blizzard players happen to be in that sector. Could there possibly be a link here?
Edit: too slow, 3 people already said what I said...
The "2% that complain"? There are close to a thousand pages on the thread about this change, and if 2% is going to reflect any statistic, then it's the people happy about the change. Just read 100 random replies out of the 17,000+. The vast, vast majority of posters is revolted. I very strongly doubt people will just "go along with it".
Go ahead. Name me one company of a significant size whose business suffered due to its treatment of people's private data.
That's not the point, Haaggis. The forum-goers may be a minority, but as of right now, they are 100% of the concerned playerbase, since this is a forum-only decision. And 950 pages of complaints in UNDER 48 HOURS is an absolute record. The entire WoW forum-users are overwhelmingly pissed off, and the day blizzard announces RealID will extend in a mandatory fashion beyond the forums, expect much, much more angry posts to hail on the boards.
I do not agree or disagree with anyone's opinion as it is their own, but i would like to think that battle.net had a very good discussion over realID whilst implementing it. They must be well aware of previously having an account username to log in to wow.
The main thing i would like to know from battle.net is why they decided to use real names instead of using a username for the realID. They must have a reason and i for one would like to know what that is.
I also wouldn't mind them considering my login being changed back to a username rather than my email address.
On other hand, Chinese legislation is decidedly against Internet anonymity, and the majority of Blizzard players happen to be in that sector. Could there possibly be a link here?
Nevermind that wow-china is a mess that may never come back. The Chinese government will have access to all that detail by having an official wander down to the local service provider with a 100% legal court order for all the details on player XYZ. Hell if your local government enforcement agency (FBI etc) wanted to talk to you about a an illegal post you made they could do the same thing.
Go ahead. Name me one company of a significant size whose business suffered due to its treatment of people's private data.
Err, that wasn't really where I was headed actually. I was simply pointing out that, from what the forums showed, the majority of users opposed this change; and by "not going along with it", I was obviously referring to them no longer using the forums, nothing more or less.
The main source of trouble Blizzard can expect, as of now, is legal trouble if the national online privacy watchdogs find something to sink their teeth in (which I expect they will).
Err, that wasn't really where I was headed actually. I was simply pointing out that, from what the forums showed, the majority of users opposed this change; and by "not going along with it", I was obviously referring to them no longer using the forums, nothing more or less.
The main source of trouble Blizzard can expect, as of now, is legal trouble if the national online privacy watchdogs find something to sink their teeth in (which I expect they will).
This again just shows that we need some form of communication as why they chose to use real names.
Someone needs to release a statement that justifies why they didnt just give everyone a 13 digit number as their RealID and allow them to set their <realID username> as they wished.
This is a worst case scenario but I truthfully believe the question is not if but when. Wow has a large enough community to gather at least some very troubled minds with the dedication, time and resources to execute whatever they feel like (You know the folks you hear about on the news killing their neighbor for annoying them). Combine this with some random stranger that starts a fight with that guy over anything you can fight about in wow, guild kicking, ninja looting, arena match.
Sooner or later somebody will be killed just over something that happened in a Blizzard game. Press will jump on it like vultures and instantly wonder if the victim willingly shared his identity and location with the killer, and even if so plenty of sources will claim it's pretty much forced thanks to RealID unlike Xbox Live or Playstation Network.
Mere hours after that news hitting CNN, Blizzard forums (and whatever other Real ID they implemented by then, Armory?) will close down only to return like we know it today.
A shame somebody has to be murdered, tortured, abducted or his house lit on fire for it.
But that's assuming it goes live of course, I'm not betting on it.
As for why this is a bad thing I think the following tidbit from a New Zealand Herald story shows how easy it is for someone who thinks "I have nothing to hide" could get caught out by such changes.
I'm reminded of the video by a law professor (with supporting commentary from a serving police officer) about why you shouldn't talk to the police: Why You Shouldn't Talk To The Police Pt. I
Notably the examples later on, where you have nothing to hide, wish to cooperate and try to be honest, and can still get into serious trouble if you have a lapse of memory, or someone contradicts you, or some other factor in the big wide world conspires to make part of your honest approach not add up.
There will be negative consequences. Some have already been predicted, some will be a surprise.
Another key concept in the strategy is that the Identity Ecosystem is user-centric – that means you, as a user, will be able to have more control of the private information you use to authenticate yourself on-line, and generally will not have to reveal more than is necessary to do so.
Anyway - it seems they have made the commitment to facebook businesswise. It remains to be seen whether the backlash and possible lawsuits will force Activision's hand in this and reverse the decision. This would naturally mean they would need to buy their way out of the facebook contract, which I'm sure they can afford to do if things go that far.
If I end up cancelling my subscription because of this I will be sure to mention RealID as the reason for my decision. I'll see first whether someone at Blizzard HQ gets their feet cold - there's still time to decide until Cata launches.
07/07/10, 6:05 AM
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