Poll: What do you think of the Blizzard Real ID Forum Changes?
By maryvarn on July 8th, 2010Posted In: NPC Blog, Video Games, World of Warcraft
The World of Warcraft blogosphere exploded with discussion about Real ID during the past few days, and it’s time to hitch NPC to that bandwagon. Not for the sake of hitching, but rather because I’d love to know what you NPC readers think of the fact that in the near future, you will be required to disclose your full name in order to post on the official Blizzard forums. I realize a lot of you don’t play WoW, but I bet you still have an opinion about it. And remember, this affects ALL Blizzard games….Star Craft 2, anybody?
I first read the news on WoW.com. I’ll discuss my thoughts along with the poll results next week.
What do you think of the announcement that your Real ID (full name) will be displayed whenever you post in the official Blizzard forums?
- It’s ridiculous! Blizzard has gone too far. (46%, 400 Votes)
- It makes me cringe a little. (20%, 174 Votes)
- I see why it bothers people, but I personally don’t mind if people see my name in forums. (13%, 117 Votes)
- I really don’t care either way. (7%, 62 Votes)
- I think this is a smart move by Blizzard. (7%, 57 Votes)
- I’m really on the fence about it. (4%, 39 Votes)
- Other (Please comment!) (3%, 23 Votes)
Total Voters: 872
Loading …*UPDATE* Blizz CEO Mike Morhaime just announced that, in thanks to feedback from people like you, they decided NOT to go forward with requiring our real names to be revealed when we post on the official forums. Woohoo! Feel free to continue discussing and voting in the poll.
It’s not enough to get me to quit the game… but I will no longer be posting. If they bring it to the game itself, I’ll find something else to play, no question. I don’t want my game life associated with my real life in any form.
searching my full name gives me my:
home address and phone number
satellite and street side photos of my home.
how much my house cost and how long i have lived in it.
names addresses and phone numbers of all my immediate family members
and where i work and how much i make
before this change my name us just another wall of text in a pool of entries, but have one person on the forums get mad at me and now my info is gonna stand out like a sore thumb. This change is terrible and if it goes live or extends to the game I will no longer be a customer.
I would personally prefer them giving you a BNet username that’s unique to you, so no matter which forum you post on, it’s your username. Trollers can’t use level 1 alts to troll, and people can be identified on the one account without their real name being revealed. That’s just a preference however; I haven’t played WoW in a year so I don’t lurk the forums anymore.
I agree with Fallantaur, I feel a unique, yet still anonymous, username is best. So many people have been harrassed and stalked by revealing their true idently. When you friend a person in WoW using BNet, it asks you if you specifically trust this person to exchange your personal data. Why would I want to share my personal data with someone I don’t kow? Yet another reason for me to avoid posting anything on the internet.
This move is really going to kill the forums.
Blizzard has such a high ranking in google that when someone is going to type your name, your gaming posts will be the first thing they see. I hope my boss never looks me up.
I hope they never to this with the armory. Seing that you did you daily heroic at 1 am when you have a meeting at 8 is not a good thing ^^
That’s tame – it’s when you do the weekly raid / daily HC after 3am to get the next day’s/week’s badges that it’s bad
Ridiculous beyond belief. I won’t relist all the reasons, many people have said them over and over. I have a common name and I live in a country without websites that gather info from the phonebook or whatever, and I still think it’s a stupid idea.
Sadly, I’m sure Blizzard thought this out, and the outrage of a percentage of their million subscribers won’t mean a thing to them.
I’m pretty sure it’s more than a small percentage…
I have an incredibly unique name, as well as living in a very small country. While I’m happy giving my name to people I know, and do have people from wow on facebook etc, I have an issue with it being forced if I ever want to use the forums.
Actually i will just not post on forums, only posted twice ever and that approx 2½ years back. i dont really give anything for the forums, i just look at other websites, (usually wow.com) they post it if theres anything interesting. goldfarmers can farm someone elses personal information.
Anonymity leads to people being jerks to each other. Although I understand the concern some people may have if they are ashamed to play the game, if you want to be adult and have a conversation with other adults, wouldn’t it be better to actually be responsible and relatively civil? Using real names will do that. Maybe people will think a bit before spewing onto the forums.
While I understand Blizz’s intentions behind the move its definitely a bad one. The key rule on the internet, never give out details that could allow someone to track you. This is the key rule they are proposing to be broken and I see no real benefit in them doing so.
Thanks Blizzard! Without the implementation of Real ID, I never would have broken my addiction to World of Warcraft. Nor will I get addicted to Diablo III. Thanks, I really appreciate it!
It wouldn’t bother me if blizzard requires you use a battle.net account to login just to VIEW the forums. then they are not just easily google searched like people are afraid of.
I concur with Fallantaur. A unique ID that crosses all of Battle.net would provide at least one layer of anonymity to those that desire it while preventing the type of Trolling that is Blizzard’s original intent. This has also been posited by Tim Buckley @ CTR+ALT+DEL among other game bloggers.
But anything that gets rid of random internet douche, who can say anything and troll all day long, is a good thing.
I honestly don’t mind the change, I don’t use the official forums, so I don’t really care. But, I find that most of the arguments that are being given are on a slippery slope fallacy of thinking. Your first and last name are NOT personal identifying information.
Your name is very personal information. For some, their first name may not be very “unique” but for many, the combination of first and last names are. My last name is quite rare, and while my first name, Jenna, is not, I know that I am the ONLY person with my first and last name in the entire US. The problem with the RealID system is that we are not being given a choice – let us post with a username like any other forum in existence uses; don’t let us change the username whenever we want to. But to have to post with our real full names? That’s a violation of my personal privacy that I am not comfortable with.
My name is so unique that no one else in the U.S. (or at least anyone online) has it. There’s no way I’m going to associate my name with WoW – employers don’t necessarily look kindly on MMOs, and I don’t want to put that impression of me out there. I feel bad for the kids who aren’t necessarily thinking about this now, but who will be hurt by it in the long run.
Really I couldn’t care less. If people can find themselves from the internet using their own name it is most likely their own fault because they have already revealed themselves. And if you care so much about your security on internet just don’t use internet ever again. “They” can find you only by your IP address, something you cannot hide.
I think that Blizzard is looking in the right direction, but I understand people’s apprehension at having their real names posted. I think if they changed realid to have some name that you could choose and get rid of the ability to change your avatar to a level one alt whenever you want to stir the pot and piss people off. I don’t post very often on forums anywhere, but whenever I have, I don’t think I would have minded people seeing my real name. In the end, I guess I would prefer to keep it that way, but if the change goes live, it won’t really affect me much.
Has anyone thought about the legality of this thing? I know that Myspace and Facebook got into problems when they let teenagers have profiles. They have to make separate account types for people under the legal age because people stalk them and it’s dangerous.
I’m not a teenager and I do not like the RealID system that has been implemented. The concept is great, the execution is poor. I have real life friends who play WoW on other servers and those people I would love to stay in touch with. RealID is great that way. BUT I have friends I met in game on my old servers and THOSE people do not need my full name nor do I have any way of changing theirs when they message me. I don’t know who James Smith is but I do know who Locksforlife is. Why can’t I nickname the person? Or choose to hide my last name from a person I add? Or customize it in ANY way?
The forum thing is, for lack of a better term, retarded. There is no way in hell I’m posting anything to the forums *ever again* if my name is there. I just left my server and in order to do that I had to find a new guild on a new server. My old guild also reads the recruitment forums and they are pretty bad trolls overall. If they had my real name? Not cool. Like someone said before – you can find out my address, my phone number – I don’t need them sending me a dozen pizzas or calling the cops on me just because I left their guild. It’s not cool.
I have heard quite a few comments (elsewhere) along the lines of ‘yeah it might make it easier to stalk people but I don’t think it will happen as much as people are saying it will, so I’m okay with it,’ and, ‘If you would be ashamed for your employer/potential employer to find out that you play WoW, perhaps you shouldn’t be playing.’ The first is shockingly callous – if even a few people are stalked, harrassed, or come to harm in RL because someone found their name online (ex-guildmate, ex-boyfriend, random crazy, whoever) then that is a much bigger problem than people being rude online, which is what this is supposed to ’solve’. The second overlooks the fact that this is a gross violation of privacy, and employers are only one example of people that shouldn’t have free access to this information. People have the right to choose who they give certain information to, and who they don’t.
Facebook requires you to use your real name, but gives you privacy settings to allow you to hide your personal information from anyone you don’t want seeing it. Facebook’s privacy filters may be crap, but Blizz isn’t even giving lip service to privacy any more.
I have no idea what the privacy laws in the US are like, unfortunately.
I like the idea of one identifier across your account / online identity. Having one name in Global Agenda was a stroke of genius. However, I dont think it should be your real, full name. I could give a rats *ss about the wretched hive of scum and villainy that are the wow forums, but they are just the beginning.
voted other should of done it long ago bully for them.
Heres the deal if you can’t own it you shouldn’t be posting it right? and whats wrong with a few forum trolls getting a good beat-down now and then maybe just maybe it would make the jerks rethink what they just typed. reminds me of Jay and Silent Bob strike back when at the end of the movie they go and stomp all the trolls that posted crap about their movie.
if you google my name you get one result and can find my address on 3rd link down. Now I am 300lbs male so have less to worry about then say a cute female gamer but if you have a unique or rare name it is fare more of a risky idea.
What I really don’t get about this is how Blizzard is so protective of your WoW account (authenticators and whatnot) but they don’t seem to really care about your personal information on the forums. I know that if your WoW account gets hacked, some of your private info can be accessed, but with the new Battlenet setup, Blizzard is basically saying “Hello, internet! Here is Caelestis’ real name! Want to know more about her? Good luck and happy stalking!”
One of the things I like about Warcraft is the anonymity (pretty sure I spelled that wrong). If your friends play, you probably know what their characters are already, and if you meet someone in-game who you really trust, then you might want to share a little private info with them. But letting anyone who reads the forums see your real name is crossing lines that even my slightly paranoid mind knows should not be crossed.
My issue with it is that it’ll cause a huge drop in forum posting.
I think it’ll stem the trolls, yeah, but it’ll also cause a lot of people who don’t want their name out there (like my roommate for professional reasons) to stop contributing positively to the forums.
Don’t get me wrong, the WoW community will still stay strong, but I expect essentially all the services the WoW forums currently ovver to migrate out of their control.
I resent the implication they’re making that if you don’t want people to know your real name, you must have some malicious reason for it.
I feel betrayed that I used my real name when I first created my account because Blizzard’s own privacy policy assured me that my personal information would never be given out. Now they are deciding that my first and last name is not personal information, which I don’t think is their decision.
I’m a little curious if Blizzard has enough force on the internet right now to cause such a major social change, and I’m wondering if they can pull it off successfully. In an ideal world, this could be an amazing thing, a serious change in the way gamers interact with each other and the internet, the beginning of a new era — but I know the real world doesn’t work that way, and I think Blizzard is risking too much.
I hate my legal name and I never want it associated with me in any way. I tolerate it for real-world purposes, but on the internet, my legal name is nowhere to be found outside of addresses I haven’t lived at in 10 years. It would be hard to find me from that name. But the fact remains, I don’t identify with the random collection of letters my parents assigned me at birth any more than a transgendered person identifies with the lot they were given by chance. I won’t be legally changing my name until next year — so I’m more or less prevented from posting on the forums until next year because I can’t change the name on my battle.net account to the one I’ve been going by for the past 10 years without supplying documentation that it is my real legal name. Even Facebook isn’t that extreme — I use my preferred name there, but I can’t on battle.net?
Even when parts of me say “it’ll be okay, once I change my name, I won’t feel so bad about posting on the forums” I’m reminded that even though the chances are very slim that a homicidal maniac will come hunt you down because of a conversation you were having on a forum, all you need is one person out of the 11 million WoW players to do so, and your life is over. I’m not willing to risk my life and those of my family members (or that of a random stranger who happens to share my name) just to get some tech support.
I’m teetering on the fence here. I’ve been a loyal customer of theirs ever since Warcraft II. Blizzard is the last company I believed had a shred of decency. I am still looking forward to Cataclysm and I will play it (without ever posting on the forums) but if they continue any further down this slippery slope, my account is canceled permanently.
And this makes me very sad =(
> I resent the implication they’re making that if you don’t want people to know your real name, you must have some malicious reason for it.
The fallacy is pretty common; you see it by proponents of the National ID card system, TSA, etc.
There are, as of yesterday, more than 29,000 posts in the RealID thread on the blizzard forums about this issue. Any argument I could make here has been made there probably hundreds of times.
I read on the /GU forums that this is coming from the Activision side of things, and that the Blizzard creative side people are as up in arms about it as we players are… and don’t have the reins to stop it.
If you really want to complain, write a paper letter to
Robert Kotick
c/o Activision
3100 Ocean Park Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90405
United States
Please express you issues clearly and in a business-like fashion. Don’t devolve to ad hominem attacks, etc.
I can understand the why: there is big money to be made in datamining social networks, and the direct marketing possibilities are substantial. When you are big enough to ignore E3 in favor of your own convention, your fan base has value.
But if Blizzard learned anything from authenticator sales, it should be that some people will pay a premium for account security, and that others will leave when security becomes a concern. To potentially expose people’s personal information is an insanely risky gamble, the kind proposed by people who do not know they are gambling.
this is what they do instead of actually moderating. The cynical part of me believes it is their intent to drive people off the boards.
I’m very not happy with the way that they are moving with Real ID. If they actually go through with the proposal, I think that having your “real name” posted everywhere in the game is coming. I didn’t sign up for the in-game Real ID connection system to connect your activity with your game friends, because it my suspicion button. I’m glad I didn’t because I understand that you cannot turn it off once turned on and connected with game friends. If Blizz is trying to go the way of facebook then I’m probably going to quit playing and delete my account. I DO NOT want wow to become a social network the way that facebook/myspace/googlebuzz/etc are social networks. If I did, then I would spend my day playing farmville or something.
I get that they want to reign in the multiple – account issues. Not only does this encourage the forum trolls, but it probably feeds into the gold farming problems. Surely they can do this without exposing our real names to the world.
@prion – interesting point. I was wondering about that yesterday because didn’t Ghostcrawler have a hissy fit on the forum last year and turn over his job to someone else at blizz for a month or so? They don’t seem to want to put in the effort for real monitoring. There are people who have studied this issue and have real systems in place to deal with it.
@M – I’m in your same boat – I have a nearly completely unique name, am female, and I don’t want random wow players harassing me at home, and I don’t want my employers to track my off-work activity that closely.
“I resent the implication they’re making that if you don’t want people to know your real name, you must have some malicious reason for it.”
Kiryn, I agree completely.
After I first heard about the RealiD, I did a Google search of my name. I didn’t see any results about myself, but I don’t want this to be the way my name hits the interwebs. It’s partly due to personal reasons and my own paranoia, but one reason is that I don’t really want potential bosses seeing that I play MMORPGs. It’s like what they used to say about Facebook and MySpace: “If you don’t want your boss to see it, don’t put it on a social networking website.” For a GAME (see this, Blizzard, ‘game’ not ’social network’) like WoW, we should be allowed to put a little space between who we are in real life and what our role-playing characters are like. I do things like WoW to play a game and even though I interact with friends and other people, I try to keep my gaming life (lives?) as far from my real life as possible. It just feels odd that Blizzard is kind of forcing them together like this.
And with the Spamming / Phishing getting worse (even Blizzard admits to this) I can see a time in the near future when I get a /tell that starts “Hello , http://www.phish-site.com wants to let you know that…” I don’t like seeing my made-up characters’ names like that now, and if I ever saw my own name… well, WoW might lose a long-time player to an easily preventable issue.
Edit: I have no idea how, but that actually made a link in the third paragraph. It goes nowhere, and I did NOT intend to make it a real link. I apologize if it is not allowed on this site, but was just supposed to be the name of some generic-sounding spam site. Also, the original didn’t have the ‘Http://’ part in it so I don’t know how that got added too. I don’t know how it got turned into a working link and I’m not sure how to edit it out of the post, but I’m really sorry if anyone actually tried to follow it.
I managed to use an alias for my WoW account (legally outdated information which is unverifiable) and I will still refuse to post on official forums despite this not being able to get to my employers (present and future). I know from experience that googling a prospective employee is far from uncommon practice and the having a mask of semi-anonymity is invaluable to fend off unwanted scrutiny. Ultimately, as long as Blizzard’s forums can show up by a search in any database but its own, all information presented is vulnerable.
The first and last name can do powerful things with tools like spokeo making what they obviously don’t consider to be private information a valid point of entry. With my full name I am able to find my home town, my previous home town, satellite images of houses I’ve lived in since childhood to present, maps to said houses, my income bracket, the income breakdown of every city I’ve lived in, the demographics of every city I’ve lived in, all three of my phone numbers, my relatives, my girlfriend via second head of household, and three of my e-mails (one of them not being a spam dump and none of them being attached to my WoW account).
So… I have to ask, if a name isn’t private enough to be protected, what about everything attached to it? The fact is, should someone make an enemy on the forum, they could receive real mail and phone calls from them. Using the forums, a person could find out where a player lives and drive to their house at a moment’s notice. As long as it is within the realm of possibilities for someone to go the stereotypical GTA re-enactment based on the information available on the internet, it is socially irresponsible to provide someone the means to get it.
That said, posting on the forum is and has always been… an option. You MUST opt to have your name associated with the game in its current rendition, though an add-on may present that information for you unwittingly (welcome to account hacking). That doesn’t change with the implementation of RealID on the forums as it is not retroactive, thus the user KNOWS that the name will be in the post. A layer of anonymity should be implemented… but ultimately Blizzard has found a fine line where the user must do the divulging.
I don’t know why they’re requiring that! I don’t even have my full name on my facebook! I don’t trust the internet with information like that. D: So, to everyone that said something similar, HIGH FIVE! I totally agree with your “paranoia!”
I thought I had read somewhere it was going to be first name and last initial, not the name in it’s entirety.
I think what we all really need to be concerned about is the fact that someone already made a mod to hack real ID and they can mouse over any character any where and see their real ID name. … Guess that means I need to start being nice to the noobs I get stuck with in randoms.
I voted other. I’m certainly against it, but I don’t think it’s ridiculous, and it’s a bit more than cringeworthy. I also probably wouldn’t mind having my name shown. The thing is that it’s outrageous for other people. I do have a unique name, so I’d be quickly identifiable to anyone looking, but I’m also a 20something man, so not in any real danger. I just don’t understand how they think this will improve the gaming experience of women and minorities. It will also make it pretty much impossible to be out on the forums. I guess maybe I’m outraged, but I understand where they are coming from (both in terms of lolmoney and in terms of trying to increase accountability), so I don’t get as upset?
There have been some amazing comments out there about this though. Penny Arcade linked to one in particular today (though their treatment of the subject was as over the top as ever).
I voted other. I do like the Real ID system. However, instead of showing the real names of people on the forums they should, instead, show a single name that is perma linked to that specific person. For instance, before when you were making forum posts you could choose any of your toons on any post, so it could look like 50 people posting. Make them pick 1 of their toons, or, not even a toon but a forum screen name that is linked to that account. I use the same screen name on any forum I’m on, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t use my full real name on the interwebs for I am not stupid. Even my facebook page isn’t my full real name. I’m happy in the fact I google my name and nothing comes up.
Now I only use the forums when there are tech issues and I’m looking for a fix or if it’s out of the ordinary and to see if others are having the same issue or if it’s just me. Regardless of the issue Blizzard’s responce is always the same. “try rebooting your modem”
Any ways. They should let you create a screen name just for the forums that links to your Real ID account and the only way you can change this screen name is by either contacting blizzard directly to have it changed or by buying a new account. Just my thought though.
I think it’s a ridiculous violation of privacy, and like Hanoumatoi says, it’s women and minorities who it’s going to affect the most. Why should you agree to have a “Stalk Me” sign posted on your back because you have a question to post in the customer service forums or want to talk about lore on the board? And for a woman who doesn’t want to admit her gender on forums, now she’s got no choice if she has a feminine name.
Or what about someone who’s gay or trans and needs to keep that info somewhat private for their own safety? Huge red flags and privacy concerns there.
Accountability with a unique username is one thing, but your full name is personal information that should be private. To the folks who are saying it’s not–um…Blizz’s whole reason for doing this is to make people accountable for everything they say on the forums by tying it to their real name. If you aren’t identifiable by it, then there’s no point. They’re *working* from the assumption that if you want to hide your identity, you’re trolling or doing something malicious, which is really not the case.
alright boys and girls, conspiracy theory time.
alright so you will be required to post with your name that you signed up with, not neccasarily your real name although it probably was. now what if you made a second account, an alt account, to post on the forums? more money in blizzards pocket and you get to keep your anonymity sort of like a premium feature.
probably not the case but its fun to think about stuff. anyway this could actually hurt blizzard in some ways. hackers only need your email adress to get your username and password, so if they find your name linked to your email adress they can,
A. send you emails personallized to your name to make you think even more its from blizzard to get keyloggers
B. hack your email account and use blizzards own site to get your username and password
c. hack your email account but do something like steal bank info.
Too far. Way too far. I’ll be brief as the same valid points have been brought up over and over and I have no need to restate them.
What people are failing to grasp in all of this is that this will not stop at the forums. It is JUST the forums right now, and fine, I’ll just not post there. If I have an issue I’ll just sit on hold forever after calling them. Yay. HOWEVER, this will go further. Where does it stop? When we all have our real names over our heads running around Dal?
There are a LOT of us out there with our fingers hovering over the “cancel account” button. Once the next step is taken, I can guarantee I’m out.
Also – I’d be curious to see the breakdown of males vs. females (possibly with some minority vs. non-minority, those with corporate jobs vs. non-corporate) that think this is ok/not ok.
Sadly, we live in a messed up world where people have to be constantly on their guard. In doing this and taking any (assumed) steps further, they aren’t even giving us the chance to mount a guard.
I’m in the “if you want to do something, make an alias that you have to use for everything” camp. Accomplishes the same thing while still protecting your customers’ identity.
I’m going with this was an Activision move and Blizzard went ahead and put it out there so it could be completely blown out of the water by subscribers. Blizzard knows its consumers and knew that this would create such an uproar that Activision would have no choice but to pull it.
I’m going to be honest. This was the final straw for me with Blizzard. I have been an avid supporter of their games ever since I first picked up Diablo for the first time, and have played all their games since. I started WoW as soon as it was out and had a great load of fun with it. I cringed at all the changes made as it chugged its way to WotLK, but I dealt with it and kept going. However, with recent changes, Blizzard has shown that it is no longer the company that I loved and supported. Online store, mobile auction house, the Real ID on the forums, and then the announcement on the new talent trees. While the Real ID change might not be going through, even the fact that they were willing to make this change in the first place allowed me with no regrets, to click that cancel account button. Although I will miss the great times I had in WoW, I’m just no longer willing to support a company thats willing to bastardize its player base that much. I hope all you guys enjoy your times, myself, I’ll be playing Aion and League of Legends.
Posting with my real name, the idea doesn’t exactly appeal to me. Only people i know in the real world know my name, i don’t need some loon to track me down because of some in game issue. Sure you could “opt-out” by not posting in the forums but what about tech support? blizz has horrible wait times for there phone support. And what about when i go searching for a job or the like and my prospective employer googles me? All in all, in my opinion its a horrible idea and the privacy ramifications… well it leaves A LOT to be desired.
Update: The players have been heard, and the realid change for the forums has been scrapped. Everyone breathe a sigh of relief! http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1&pageNo=1#0