For WoW players amongst us, concerned about their privacy

[Mamoulian War]

Remember, when you do this, you will not be able to post on Battle.net forums, after the release of Starcraft 2, and you will be unable to be friended outside the game you are playing...

 

http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2010/07/w...out-realid.html

 

don't mind the elitist language, just do the steps he depicts, and you'll be safe from leak of your real name, unless you install some malware infested addon

 

happy and safe gaming

[Purkake]

Did we really need another thread for this?

[Gfted1]

Just to be 100% clear, nobody will see my real name unless I use the forum, right? Or is the realID thing present "in game"?

[Thorton_AP]

You can use real ID in game by making friends requests with the specific email account of a user in the game. If the other user accepts, then you are realID friends and will see your full name.

 

If you don't make RealID friend requests, and don't accept any yourself, then it won't come up.

[Gfted1]

Cool, works for me, ty.

[Lady Evenstar]

There are apparently security loopholes which may allow addons to expose your real name.

 

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/security-fla...fe-names-witho/

[Purkake]

Via NeoGAF:

 

After we mentioned earlier about Blizzard's plans with the Real ID reported , all forum users first and last name will be displayed in the future that there is also a first victim of the system: Community Manager Bashiok. Although it is not yet displayed the Real ID in the forums, so he wanted to defend the new system in the forum and posted his real name.

 

Within minutes, we knew almost all the important stages of his life, his phone number, address, age, preferences, etc. And even the name of his wife, the roommate in his home and the school of his children could be identified. In addition, some users published pictures of his house - Google's Street View is thanks. This obviously shows that the Real ID is quite questionable.

 

Bashiok now put his Twitter account. His phone number was also blocked. All of this should therefore have come to Bashiok very surprising, which he did not expect during the publication of his real name. Whether Blizzard will reconsider the matter with the Real ID, but again is rather questionable.

Good times

Edited July 9, 2010 by Purkake

[Oblarg]

Via NeoGAF:

 

After we mentioned earlier about Blizzard's plans with the Real ID reported , all forum users first and last name will be displayed in the future that there is also a first victim of the system: Community Manager Bashiok. Although it is not yet displayed the Real ID in the forums, so he wanted to defend the new system in the forum and posted his real name.

 

Within minutes, we knew almost all the important stages of his life, his phone number, address, age, preferences, etc. And even the name of his wife, the roommate in his home and the school of his children could be identified. In addition, some users published pictures of his house - Google's Street View is thanks. This obviously shows that the Real ID is quite questionable.

 

Bashiok now put his Twitter account. His phone number was also blocked. All of this should therefore have come to Bashiok very surprising, which he did not expect during the publication of his real name. Whether Blizzard will reconsider the matter with the Real ID, but again is rather questionable.

Good times

 

I'm surprised Blizzard is even considering this. The internet is a nasty, nasty place.

 

I'm already forumbanned on the WoW forums, though (ah, trolling, good times), though, so I guess this doesn't affect me much.

[tripleRRR]

No more Real ID on the bliz forums.

 

 

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

 

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

 

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

 

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

 

Mike Morhaime

CEO & Cofounder

Blizzard Entertainment

[Oblarg]

No more Real ID on the bliz forums.

 

 

Hello everyone,

 

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

 

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

 

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

 

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

 

Mike Morhaime

CEO & Cofounder

Blizzard Entertainment

 

No surprise there.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

What do you know, whining worked!

[Purkake]

Good to know, but please include a source when you are posting quotes from places.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Here's a source if anyone really cares: http://kotaku.com/5583405/blizzard-scraps-...ne=true&s=i

Edited July 9, 2010 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[Purkake]

It's just a few clicks to confirm it with Google, but I just consider it bad form to post some news without a link to the source, out of respect for both the source and the people who will read it.

[LadyCrimson]

Notice they say "at this time...", leaving themselves (of course) the possibility to change their minds again. No, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. It's a business, have to cover bases. But it is there.

 

But this is a nice 'victory' and shows they're at least listening. However....optional or not, between RealID/Facebook deals+Activision influence (I've been info-gathering) I'll wait and see what they do next before I declare never ending Blizzard love again. I already canceled my 5 and 3 year long WoW subs & this won't make me renew them. We'll see.

[Calax]

What do you know, whining worked!

Given the 1500 page thread on their forums that appeard within 3 days, I kinda expected they'd drop it.

[Luckmann]

What do you know, whining worked!

Given the 1500 page thread on their forums that appeard within 3 days, I kinda expected they'd drop it.

Bah, 1500 po.. wait.. 1500 pages?

In a single thread?

 

Dear.. god.

[Purkake]

NeoGAF regularly has multi-hundred page threads and their threads have 50 posts per page.

 

I don't know why they close ever thread at 50 pages on these boards and spoil all the fun.

Edited July 11, 2010 by Purkake

[Calax]

What do you know, whining worked!

Given the 1500 page thread on their forums that appeard within 3 days, I kinda expected they'd drop it.

Bah, 1500 po.. wait.. 1500 pages?

In a single thread?

 

Dear.. god.

Yeah, in the time it takes you to post a single item, then refresh the page, there's four more pages added.

[kirottu]

European thread was 600 pages long. I have no idea how long the asian threads were.

[aries101]

It amazed me really that Blizzard didn't foresee this to happen when they first talked about using RealID at their forums. Disclosure of real names in internet forums, especially game forums are a bad idea, mmkay...

 

The thing that happened to the community manager could (and will) happen to anyone...

when and of they disclose their real name on an internet website - for games...

[Calax]

It amazed me really that Blizzard didn't foresee this to happen when they first talked about using RealID at their forums. Disclosure of real names in internet forums, especially game forums are a bad idea, mmkay...

 

The thing that happened to the community manager could (and will) happen to anyone...

when and of they disclose their real name on an internet website - for games...

Well, kinda. It'll happen if only one name is released like this. If there was an overnight conspiracy that had all of these sorts of forums require us put in true names for EVERYTHING I doubt it would happen because real world consequence would appear for everyone rather than the chosen few.

 

But there would still be 4chan.

[Tigranes]

I don't know why they close ever thread at 50 pages on these boards and spoil all the fun.

 

Spiders appear out of the cracks and destroy homeless people if we don't. (i.e. forum doesn't like it)

 

Good to know Blizzard took it back. It was a phenomenally bad idea, but many phenomenally bad ideas do happen.

[Purkake]

Are you sure he doesn't just harass people with his horrible dancing?

 

[Luckmann]

NeoGAF regularly has multi-hundred page threads and their threads have 50 posts per page.

 

I don't know why they close ever thread at 50 pages on these boards and spoil all the fun.

It's very common on most forums. They start having issues after a certain number of pages. I remember that the WoW forums did too and afaik they do lock threads that have become too big. But locking a thread with 500 pages just to immediately see another 500-page thread pop up an hour later is a bit futile, especially since no-one is going to take the time to go through the full thread anyway. And if they started to lock topics on the subject immediately, the situation would likely go from bad to worse in seconds.

 

But yeah. Forum software.

It tends to get dodgy in big threads.

 

I don't know why they close ever thread at 50 pages on these boards and spoil all the fun.

 

Spiders appear out of the cracks and destroy homeless people if we don't. (i.e. forum doesn't like it)

 

[...]

I am now imagining Arachnophobia II: New York. Edited July 12, 2010 by Luckmann