Blizzard to take away any anonymity you had left

[Saturo]

Il a bit worried about Gigi. She does nothing special, and gets a few fans. Then she calls people who wonder why she is praise-worthy haters, and sends her twenty-five trolls to annoy them. The "attacked" person goes all "lol, u serious? haha".

[Adam-Savage]

Il a bit worried about Gigi. She does nothing special, and gets a few fans. Then she calls people who wonder why she is praise-worthy haters, and sends her twenty-five trolls to annoy them. The "attacked" person goes all "lol, u serious? haha".

Yah that's pretty much it really. A bunch of 10 year olds that think gigi is the shit.

[Azunara]

Twilight fan girl mafia. xD Win.

[Kalliope]

Any sane person will stay away from those forums, both before and after.

Heh, this. ^

The thing that bothers me is that we really can't reach Blizzard at all this way. If no one's there to pick up the phone and we don't feel comfortable posting on the tech support forums....and say we can't log into the game.....what're we supposed to do?

[Saturo]

Well, I think we can still email the techies.
Email techsupport tends to be even worse than phone techsupport tough.

[Kalliope]

Yeah, so we really don't have much in the way of options. :/

[Chrizesu]

This oddly reminds me of a show where a guy killed a bunch of people with the same name. ...I think it was an episode of CSI.

[Adam-Savage]

This whole thing makes me wonder.

In the bigger picture, I wonder if this is the wave of the future. As instant communication brings humanity closer together, will we begin to cast off our pseudonyms and false identities? 50 years from now, will our online lives be so closely integrated with our real lives that there is no difference? When the first Internet generation has become the establishment, and our children’s children are growing up with the successors of our own advanced technology, will our global society have evolved to a point where we confidently own all aspects of our lives, secure in our rights as digital and analog citizens?

Perhaps. But that time isn’t yet here. The Internet is to us what the Wild West was our ancestors. An untamed, unstructured place, full of very real dangers. Anonymity is both a sword and shield, giving the malicious the ability to strike from safety, but providing the wary with protection from harassment beyond the scope of the Internet environment.

All of which is preamble for me to say that I’m very concerned by Blizzard trying to enforce a policy like this on their gaming community. World of Warcraft is a great product, and a really fun game, but this isn’t something that I want to see stuffed down people’s throats with no protection given to the legitimate concerns of people who want to participate in the community without having their real information made public.

We signed up for this as gamers, participating in an escapist fantasy. I don't recall "join a social network with poorly designed privacy controls" as a selling point on the box.

I feel like a company that’s trying to force this kind of radical change on its community, even in the wake of such extreme reaction, isn’t a company I want to be supporting. Sure, it doesn’t affect me personally (I neither read, nor post on the official forums, save for this post). But doing this demonstrates a serious disregard for their customers, and that sours me on the thought of continuing to do business with Activision-Blizzard. I like the way they implemented RealID friends and chat. I can be selective about who I make a RealID friend, and better yet, it provides significant advantages (like cross-server communication) that are new features. The forum change has no benefit, and the only “opt-out”; is to not participate in the forums anymore. I think that’s just poor implementation. It's bad business practices. And if the only way to make it clear that I'm not interested in this kind of half-baked social networking garbage is to leave behind years of gaming progress, I suppose I'll have to do that.

[Ghanur]

Yeah, so we really don't have much in the way of options. :/

You always have one option: cancel your subscription!

Hit'em where it hurts the most: into their wallets!

This oddly reminds me of a show where a guy killed a bunch of people with the same name. ...I think it was an episode of CSI.

Wrong, it was Terminator: "Sarah Conner?"

[Chrizesu]

Yeah, so we really don't have much in the way of options. :/

You always have one option: cancel your subscription!

Hit'em where it hurts the most: into their wallets!

This oddly reminds me of a show where a guy killed a bunch of people with the same name. ...I think it was an episode of CSI.

Wrong, it was Terminator: "Sarah Conner?"

Actually I never really payed attention to Terminator.

I do however watch a lot of murder mystery stuff.

[Kalliope]

You always have one option: cancel your subscription!

Hit'em where it hurts the most: into their wallets!

I meant an option that didn't mean giving up.

[Sharilar]

Interesting quote from the US forums that was picked up by the EJ forums folks:

Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard, to see what the internal buzz on this was. Apparently, at the moment the employees are largely as pissed as the players, and she stated that despite attempts to keep it hushed, it has become known that the big creative players within Blizzard are pretty much as unhappy about this as we are. Everybody has been told they are not free to comment on this situation outside of specially prepared statements.

It's still going ahead, however (and here's where in-house rumours and hearsay really start coming into play): from what they've picked up, the Blizzard leads have been told in no uncertain terms that the non-gameplay-related direction of the game is working to a different blueprint now. GC and company are free to play with shiny new talent trees all they like, for example, but for the first time the decisions regarding Battle.net implementation, Real ID, and plans for the general acquisition of new players for the business are no longer in Blizzard's own hands, and that's not going down too well.

[Saturo]

I'd be surprised if the employees were'nt pissed off. It's their JOB to answer posts. Basically, the part getting added to their jobs is "lolz ur personal information is going all ovar teh webz! :P".

[Chrizesu]

Let's all vote to look up the Activision managers and kill them?


It would prove a point.



Oh god I think a song that was used in parts with Kingdom Hearts is playing on my Itunes.


Edit: Text Sizing For The Win!

[Teigan]

Now, now. No killing. A nice handwritten letter to their home and a thoughtful, polite telephone call to a private line, though....

[Saturo]

Now, now. No killing. A nice handwritten letter to their home and a thoughtful, polite telephone call to a private line, though....

*Salute*
Ready to serve, m'lady!

[Kalliope]

I know the Blizzard employees aren't officially allowed to voice their displeasure, but I'm glad it's leaking out in an unofficial capacity so they can maintain some degree of credibility.

Classic case of "don't shoot the messenger; he's on our side!"

This news does not surprise me in the least.

[Chrizesu]

Well according to the teachings of mmos we should form a party and raid the culprit.


...that saying, I'll heal.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

Yeah, I got kind of a hint of "Listen, we know this sucks but it's out of our hands." from the blue posts. I kind of have to wonder what Activision is thinking, though. WoW still has subscribers probably numbering over eight million. This particular act of stupidity is VERY likely to chase off the actual gamers who play, and isn't really likely to attract all that many "Facebook"ers. This was a bad, bad, flat out stupid move, and WoW is going to pay for it heavily.

[Teigan]

Have they not noticed that Facebook and WoW are two very different things? And people use them for that purpose? I have both. I rarely visit Facebook. I'm on WoW every day. For a reason.