Blizzard to take away any anonymity you had left

[Mania]

I may be opening a can of worms here, but I seem to be seeing what I believe is a disproportionate response to this news between male and female players. (And not just me and Vephriel! Heh.)

[Kalliope]

I'm glad I never post on the Blizz forums. I already keep turning down people who want to be real id buddies because I don't want half the server having access to my real name.

And yes, Mania, this hurts the female players FAR worse than the male ones. -_-

[Vephriel]

I feel a bit sorry for Blues that will suddenly be forced to display their full names. We know some of them of course, like Greg Streets being Ghostcrawler, but many of the forum mods and staff deal with a lot of crap every day. I mean, I see people go to the extreme and start spewing out death threats over a class change.

Ugh. We may have a few less trolls, but to me the negative aspects outweigh the positive.

[Aleu]

I actually could really care less about my real name online. It's true people can find out some things about you online, but do you really want to visit a girl who may round house kick you as soon as you open the door? (I seriously almost did it once...) I'm not one to give way my address and such. =P

I very rarely post on the forums anyways. I'm still baffled why they don't just make it optional?

On the bright side, it may actually kill trolling on those forums all together? .-.

[Golden]

I just won't want to post on the forums because both my first name and last name are pretty uncommon, and put together I'm easily the first few results on a google search. I'm easy to find with my name, so that alone would make me hesitant enough not to post.

I don't post in the forums now regardless, but it'll be a shame if they change for the better and then I wouldn't want to use them due to that.

I'm in the exact same situation. I've joked before about my secret identity, but the truth is that there's quite a bit I've done in an official capacity in the past that I would rather not dredge up in the context of WoW. And while I've become a lot less concerned about that around you guys ... this will keep me from posting on the Blizzard forums.

Same here. I'm the only person you'll find if you google my name. I find that displaying your full name even to RealID friends is way too much.. Just because I want to see someone's status regardless of their server or faction does NOT mean that I want them to know everything about me. >.<

Bringing RL names for everyone to see is completely unnecessary and will end up hurting them more than it benefits. Something as simple as being able to assign a single displayed nickname for your whole BattleNet account would work a lot better in my opinion. They could just make it so that only full accounts that currently have game time on them can post on forums - that would rule out people that would create new trial accounts just to troll, as they would have to pay for a whole new game AND playtime first.

[Vephriel]

I'm not one to cry out about 'slippery slopes' and all that, but I really am starting to wonder how far Blizzard will take this RealID thing. Will our armory eventually have real names displayed on it? I didn't care about the RealID friend thing since it's optional, and even this forum thing doesn't bother me too much (though I regret that I'll never be able to post in them after). But I hope it never goes far enough so that anyone can find my WoW characters by using my real name and vice versa.

I just really don't understand why they feel the need to make so many real life connections. It's a game, I come here to get away from real life. I shouldn't even have to remotely worry about privacy issues since that sort of thing should be completely under my own control and discretion.

[Siliverin]

I shall throw my 2copper in I thought the real id thing was pretty nice but now knowing that after cata if u post on the fourm your real name will show.. not to much my bowl of gumbo. I have no prob with the real id in game cause i know some people in rl who play so it does make it easier to see when they are on and on which toon. but the whole fourm thing not so much i have a common first name but my last name is uncommon but still i do nto want people to google me -_-

[Saturo]

They will not make our real names accessible simply because "lolz, u has a character, he shows on armory, ur rl name shows too".

They'd lose too much customers, and they'd propably get sued since we didn't agree to having our names up there, and if we don't have any time on the account, we don't have any way to remove the characters either.
I believe that it is against several laws to put someones personal information online, and then forcing them to pay to have it removed.

[Mania]

You know, this is especially surprising to me given the recent Facebook privacy kerfluffle(s). Blizzard's timing isn't usually so far off.

I don't believe how much this is bothering me. I'm not getting any work done and I can't really afford that right now. (I put in 14 hours yesterday, but we're supposed to deliver this thing by tomorrow morning and I need all the hours between now and then. This is why nothing is getting updated right now.)

Heh -- I just thought about how the poor Blizzard Community people are probably taking this. Not only do they probably have all the same concerns we do, but they have to pretend to be on board.

I wonder if they will back off. The official feedback thread is at 123 pages as I type this and is growing at something like a page a minute.

[Vephriel]

Even the article on WoW.com had like....100 replies within 5 minutes. As of this post it's over 500 comments.

[Adam-Savage]

You know, this is especially surprising to me given the recent Facebook privacy kerfluffle(s). Blizzard's timing isn't usually so far off.

I don't believe how much this is bothering me. I'm not getting any work done and I can't really afford that right now. (I put in 14 hours yesterday, but we're supposed to deliver this thing by tomorrow morning and I need all the hours between now and then. This is why nothing is getting updated right now.)

Heh -- I just thought about how the poor Blizzard Community people are probably taking this. Not only do they probably have all the same concerns we do, but they have to pretend to be on board.

I wonder if they will back off. The official feedback thread is at 123 pages as I type this and is growing at something like a page a minute.

The actual thread this came from on the wow forums is at 157 pages..

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... pageNo=157

EDIT: It's growing by the minute as well. There coming under ALOT of fire for this. I can see where coming from but at the same time do we really need our real names all over the net ?

[Vephriel]

This whole thing sounds like an absolute nightmare for Blizzard's legal department. Who even approved this idea?

All in all I still wouldn't be surprised if this was shut down before it even begins to take off. Or all it will take is one crazy story about some WoW player getting stalked and killed from having their name displayed and it will blow this out of the water.

[Adam-Savage]

wow the page count has already grown to 171 pages already.

[Kalliope]

This whole thing sounds like an absolute nightmare for Blizzard's legal department. Who even approved this idea?

All in all I still wouldn't be surprised if this was shut down before it even begins to take off. Or all it will take is one crazy story about some WoW player getting stalked and killed from having their name displayed and it will blow this out of the water.

^^^^
This.

I totally understand them wanting to cut down on the anonymous trolling and such, but I think it's too late to switch that on WoW, y'know? If people had started out with their real names being out there, it'd be different, because you'd've known what you were getting into.

The whole thing baffles me, really.

[Adam-Savage]

Wouldn't they be breaking there own rules on this ?

"Posts containing personal information about other players"

<== I believe this is one of there forum rules.

[Vephriel]

The worst part of this is how negatively it's going to affect the good part of the community. Say goodbye to a lot of the Trolls, but also say goodbye to the handful of helpful people as well.

The official forums may be a cesspool, but there's always nice, honest people that go out of their way to post helpful responses or take part in great discussions. People make guides, collect information, and answer valid questions that others may post. Think of how many of them will no longer want to do that at the risk of displaying personal information?

I also really feel for the Roleplaying community on the forum there. They're going to take a major hit after this comes in to play, and roleplaying is hard to find as it is. =/

Ugh, this is just such a stupid decision that it infuriates me.

[Kalliope]

The question is, will Blizzard be cowed by players' outrage? Will they fear losing money over their decision?

We can only hope it's enough....unless the idea is to kill the forums.

[Adam-Savage]

There telling players to keep it in one thread. A few mentioned this was a against the US privacy laws and that the blizzard employee's should have there real names shown as well. It's pointless to keep it one thread really. It is growing so fast nobody will even notice it. Sounds like there trying to keep this quite but they wont have a easy time doing this at all.

[Bulletdance]

The Wow forums were such a nasty place I hardly used them. I can see something had to be done,but I think this is just a way to save on cost. Its more bad pr from blizz. Instead of hiring more mods or putting in place an actual system to weed out trolls they decided to discourage people form using them at all. I'm a bit disappointed in them at least that's how I see it.

[Adam-Savage]

Here is something another player said about this.

There's a couple problems with Blizzard's new "design vision". Firstly being a release of personal information, which has not been authorized, nor is it desired by a mass of the player base. As a student of Law School, I've always been fascinated by the way the EULA and ToS functions, or I should say attempts to.

Although many people believe that Blizzard simply amending the EULA and ToS at the proper time (and the mass of the player base clicking) "I Agree" to encorporate this will absolve them of any form of wrong doing, they are in reality deluded.

First Point: Does Blizzard truly own our characters? Truly? Granted I am more than aware that they "claim" to. But would this hold up in court? I truly doubt that. You see while a license was originally purchased to play the game, the true extent of our license is merely a license to play Warcraft.

Blizzard claims that any characters made are theirs. This was something I found humorous in 2004 and doubly so now. While true they own the bandwidth of our characters, a claim of ownership can successfully be argued by virtue that the advancement of said characters of "Blizzard's property" a detriment to the offeree, and benefit to the offeror has occured. This detriment is formed in the shape of time expended, and monthly fees.

Point Two: (Uniform Commercial Code) Which Blizzard is bound by as a business.

"A contract signed under duress is unconscionable and must be represented "without prejudice" or the instrument is treated as "satisfaction and accord" before the trier of fact. "

(Black's Dictionary) - Unconcionability. Unconcionability is generally recognized to include an absence of meaningful choice on the part of one of the parties, to a contract together with contract terms, which are unreasonably favorable to the other party.

Gordon v. Crown Central Petroleum Corp., D.C.Ga., 423 F.Supp. 58, 61.
Chouinard vs. Chouinard 568 F.2d 430 (5th Cir. 1978)

By us playing the game, we have been unfavorably inconvienced, while Blizzard has been benefitted, further there are certain tangible proofs that Blizzard knows this time has value, as evidenced by the Character Transfers, Recustomization, Faction Transfer, Re-Race et al.

Further, by continued (five years if you were her for launch day) use of the game, a material ownership has been established. In order to truly enjoy our game, we are forced to consistently re-sign the TOS and EULA. As long as Blizzard acts within the original Terms of the Agreement, which does not include the dessimination of our personal property (in fact holding instead a promise by Blizzard to PROTECT said identities) we are bound to it. However consistent revisions over the course of five years makes for a strong point that without true verification (which anyone with access to a PC may have hit I agree to) we can argue this.

"If we do not agree, we are deprived of property we have a vested interest in, and are forced to sign to continue enjoying our license."

Forcible Coercion, again ties to Duress. =)

Third Thought: This one is straight out of Torts Law.

"Negligence can only arise out of a act of volition". A action to a injury to a person or a tangible property requires that intent to inflict them be backed by proof, "OR" a failure to exercise proper care to evade them.

The first person who is stalked and assailed, injured, has their identity stolen, killed et al. (because of information which Blizzard Entertainment foolishly displayed) will emmesh them in a negligence claim, and wrongful death. Given that Blizzard is significantly wealthy due to the millions of players, I fervently doubt they could stand up to a million class action negligence suites.

Conclusion: While Blizzard states "if any portion of the agreement is to be found void, it will not affect the remainder of the agreement" they forget themselves and the power inherently vested in the Judicial branch. A Judge will make that decision, not they. If the matter has merit, then one must ask a simple question: Is a contract signed under duress is unconscionable? Under the principle of Stare Decisis it most certainly is.

If Blizzard realizes and concedes that in five years they have largely been unable to curb the bile and hate, that most forums topics seem to stand for, then creation of such a scenario creates a dangerous risk which was ENTIRELY forseeable. Granted I doubt anything but the deletion of this post by Ghostcrawler, as I've never seen eye to eye with him and found much of his replies in the past relatively condescending and at time outright inciteful, but perhaps he and Blizzard will see some reason for once.

I would hope Blizzard rethinks this breach of privacy, and speaks with some of their Lawyers, before this choice kills them financially. I'll be watching. Very interesting, and in the mean time I'll avoid the Forums like the bubonic plague.

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