WoW Petopia Community

Parents can turn on parental control,but I wonder how many know that or much about games. If the account is in the parents name and the kids post something it'll go in the parents name. Could you imagine getting fired because your boss found out "you" were posting on the forums during work hours?

I think this post from the official thread put it very well:

I have come to the realization that we are shouting into the wind. The decision has been made and will not now be unmade. This is the future of WoW and probably all Blizzard games.

Its a gamble on their part because if it pays off then they're ground-breaking and ahead of the market yet again. If it doesn't, they will probably keep enough players to remain profitable and will then go in another direction and somehow salvage the idea or brush it under the rug or something. But the decision has been made.

They may be reading but nothing that we can say, no situation we can pose, no argument we can put forth will dissuade them from their chosen path. In a way that's kind of honorable. Suppose those who fought for civil rights had simply said "eh, you know, a lot of people don't like this idea."

I will speak for myself and no one else on this matter. Others may feel the same or they may not, that is entirely their concern. My feelings, however, are really quite simple.

I go to work, read the forums during a few times in the day, post something now and then, and go home. I have dinner with my family and usually get an hour or two in WoW. That's after I've answered various emails from work or family or friends, commented on someone's facebook about the cute pics they put up of their dog or their children or my kiddos, whatever. Then I play a little WoW to relax and let my mind be at ease for a little while.

I can think while I grind out a quest or work on rep with someone or do whatever. I rarely raid, usually do some leveling or some dungeons or something. Its a way to unwind, calm down, spend some time where the family isn't hounding me for this or that, my friends aren't asking me questions, I don't have to worry about work where I had to be nice to the mean man on the phone.

I don't go into the big cities very much because /trade is a cesspool but I like to keep it on in case someone's advertising something I can use (though that is exceedingly rare). Usually its just crap.

See, if I wanted to stay in the real world with my real friends and real family and real job I'd be on Facebook chatting with them. I choose to log into WoW when I don't want to do that. You're blurring the line as it is, and I now have no reason to think that the line will exist at all in the very near future. Real ID being optional in game was one thing. I could choose not to participate and blame it on my nephew being in the house and I disabled it on his account so did the same with mine. This forum thing, however, is the next step. What's the step after this? How invasive will that be? Do I want to know? I'm pretty sure you aren't going to tell us what that next step is.

I suppose the bottom line is that your vision of the game is changing from a pasttime, a hobby, to a social network. I didn't sign up for that and I have no interest in it. Its the thing I'm getting away from when I log in.

And I'm one person. Your company is large and your customers are many and one person here or there isn't going to matter. If I quit you will not care. You will do fine without me.

But I won't buy more Blizzard games because I don't want a social network. I will find something else to use as my escape from reality. I do not trust you anymore to simply give me a game. I do not trust you to remain true to what you say because you've changed your philosophy so drastically. And that's you're right as a business, I suppose, but I don't then have to continue my support.

So you've made your decision. Its a sad one for me because it puts me a step closer to not caring about your game that I think is wonderful. I won't be able to post on your forums anymore but that's just an added perk, right? Just something that my subscription no longer guarantees. Just a choice that I make that I don't really feel is a choice. If I have an issue that requires customer service I'll just wait on hold forever instead of posting in the forums.

I can deal with it, and will obviously have to, if I want to keep playing. But never before have I felt so entirely ignored and unimportant to you. Never before have I felt that you do not care at all about your customers. The feeling I have now is that you're relying on the addictive aspect of the game to keep customers, even if they feel more at risk.

So... I don't know why I just wrote all that. You do not care. Probably nobody else does either, but I guess it was a little theraputic in some way. Kind of help me realize that I should go game shopping this weekend.

Noor wrote:I know I can't change your opinion, Anansi, but think of this:

Someone finds out what your real name is. That someone then googles it, and finds your tax returns for the past 3 years. They also find your name in what appears to be a phone book. They then, google just your surname, and come up with 3 other people with that same surname. After a quick look-through the website that gave you the tax information (it also has birth year) they come to the conclusion that two of them must be your parents and the last one your brother. They now have the phone number, address and e-mail address of your family.

Then it is your responsibility to protect your identity. With an optional service, you can protect that identity by not using the service, it is personal choice. I totally understand where you're coming from, but posting on Blizzard's forums is not compulsory, and your ID will not be known by anyone if you do not post.

Vephriel wrote: What worries me is the sort of implication this Real ID thing has to the future. They keep talking about their 'vision' for it, and with each implementation it seems to hit a little too close to being uncomfortable. I'm afraid of what direction this is leading the game if things like this keep stacking up. That's where my concern lies.

Understandable. Blizzard do have to conform to privacy laws however, and so far the only Real ID services available are purely optional, opt-in programs. I seriously doubt they could legally enter a situation where your real name is displayed for a non-optional service.

Karathyriel wrote: I absolutely do understand where you are coming from but...

• have my name shown or shut up is no option, it's dictator style
• playing wow itself is, like almost everything, optional
• the situation they are trying to fix only has to be fixed because of lax handling of problems in the past
• not answering questions about serious concerns is no way to treat customers
• to deny me full control over what data about my person is shown to whom is, at least in Germany, illegal
• if I want a facebook account I'll go to facebook.com and get me one
• posting personal data in official forums has until now been handled as rule breaking and earned you bans

The forums are privately owned, Blizzard can administer them as they see fit. Notions of a right to anonymity, freedom of speech and all those things that I see tossed around in forums, and have for years, do not apply. Maybe it is dictator style, but that's fully the right of Blizzard to deal with their forums as they believe is best for their own reasons. Of course playing WoW is optional, but it is also a paid service, and with that comes some rights for the customer, such as privacy. I do not believe Blizzard could legally make our Real ID public within the game without our consent, without getting into an ugly legal situation. As I see it, the purpose of using Real ID on the forums is to diminish traffic and balance out the signal to noise ratio. As for regional privacy rules, perhaps Blizzard will have to adapt different policies for regional forums, I don't know, and as to the rule-breaking of the ToS via posting personal data, that is in regards (as far as I know) about posting personal data about other people, not yourself, as you are depriving those people of the ability to control whether their identity is public or not.

As for Kotick, yes, the guy is an asshat. But even asshats are bound to legal regulations and desires he may have may not mesh with what is legally allowed.

In regards to using a fake name for your Real ID, I'm not sure how it works and whether that is possible or not. I don't know from where the Real ID service pulls your name.

Anansi wrote:In regards to using a fake name for your Real ID, I'm not sure how it works and whether that is possible or not. I don't know from where the Real ID service pulls your name.

It's the name on your battle.net account.

Anansi wrote: In regards to using a fake name for your Real ID, I'm not sure how it works and whether that is possible or not. I don't know from where the Real ID service pulls your name.

Microsoft and their XBOX Live service have been doing it this way for years:
http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/x ... nking.aspx

They use a gamertag, or a username. One alias that is tied to your account. No one will know your real name unless you send them a message saying, "Hi wowguy01! My name is Bob!". You find friends with your username and theirs, you make parties to play online, you post in their forums, everything is done through one gamertag or username. You can even see who's online and who's not, and what game they're playing, what level they're on, everything. NO NEED FOR A REAL NAME. (Caps because this real name thing makes me angry)

If they did this and say you got hacked? Could that person use the hacked info to go on the forums and spew all kinds of strange stuff you'd be personally responsible for now and not just your char? I mean you can change a char's name easily enough,but your own...that is expensive.

Bulletdance wrote:If they did this and say you got hacked? Could that person use the hacked info to go on the forums and spew all kinds of strange stuff you'd be personally responsible for now and not just your char? I mean you can change a char's name easily enough,but your own...that is expensive.

...yes.

Now I can't see any reason for anyone to use those forums. Ever.
Oh wait.
This affects us just for HAVING A GODDAMN ACCOUNT!

Dear god, I just went from slightly concerned to worried to really mad. Someone should make that argument on the official forums, that if you get hacked you could lose your entire reputation! Its your name people could google find that stuff! I'd tell them,but I'm horrified to post there! lol Having a game account seems really risky now...

The scariest thing is that you don't need an Authenticator to log in to the forums.

Sure a hacker wouldn't be able to access your account or mess around in game, but the forums are free-for-all. I'm assuming they didn't attach authenticators so people could log in while they're at work and stuff, but still.

They might with the new forums though. I have a feeling (which may or may not really more be a case of "hope") that Cata will make authenticators required - perhaps shipped with the game? Anyway, it wouldn't be difficult to require an authenticator for forum login at that point. We need it to log in on the armory already.

We'll see what happens.

Even then, if someone hacks your account they can utterly destroy your reputation completely.

Even then, if someone hacks your account they can utterly destroy your reputation completely.

If this lives up to my worst expectations, I will have to quit playing. This scares the crap out of me!

I think we have to be careful not to start a frenzy of worst-case scenarios. Yes, this might happen. Yes, it might be exactly as bad as it sounds. If that's the case, we can decide what to do. But so far, all we have is a few scarce announcements and lots of speculation. As of this moment, right now, I refuse to give up my faith in Blizz. It might be naive, and if that's the case I'll be eating these words in a few months time, but until then, I'll keep playing and enjoying my game.

The thing is, this isn't very far-fetched. If someone can post under your name, you can bet it's not going to be good posts.

Now, I may be the odd one here, but I'd prefer not to have my name connected to whatever certain people believe to be effective governments, or suicide-cults, and that stuff.

*nods at Sara*
As much as I dislike this new Real ID stuff, it's not at the point where it would make me drop the game. I can't imagine leaving WoW and never coming back...I'm not ashamed to admit how much I enjoy this game and will continue to enjoy it for as long as I possibly can. I fully realize it's weak for me to give money to a company while I disagree in the direction they're going, but dammit I cannot leave this game behind. I can't quite say what sort of threshold it would take to force me to quit, but so far nothing's come that close yet. There is plenty I don't agree with, and plenty I'd rather not see, but at the end of the day my hunter still exists with the pets I care so much about, the game is still fun for me, and I still get to hang out with all the wonderful people I enjoy spending time with in Azeroth.

^ what she said yes its fine to be worried but theres no big point in going "OMG WERES ALL GUNNA DIES' just yet.

bet bioware isnt gonna pull this shit

http://swtor.com anyone?

Who says they wont?

because their forums are already up and if they were going to they would have made a big announcement about it.