Official forums: Real names only
 

For those who missed it:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

The official forums are moving to Real ID, all posts will be identified by your real name (as in your billing information). You can choose to ALSO display a character, but you can't choose not to show your real name.

This does NOT affect the existing forums, but you won't be able to post to them any more.

FWIW, I think that's it for me. I really enjoyed WoW, but this is ridiculous.

I have to 100% agree with you.
Not sure if I will stop playing the game but that's the end of official forums for me.

For those that intend to stay in-game (at least until such idiocy is forced upon us there too)
feel free to file a complaint here:
https://www.esrb.org/privacy/contact.jsp

I already did.

I'm not a huge fan of the forums at mmo-champion.com, and here I get to be associated directly with my addons, giving me some sort of creditibility. Would there be any chance of some more forums here to give anyone displaced from the official forums places to post those sorts of things here?

I may just quit using the forums, but this is the first change they've ever made to WoW where my response has been "I feel betrayed" instead "I like this" or "I hate this". I hope I don't get to the point where I do feel like I have no choice left but to leave the game.

It's so very upsetting that they're soiling the integrity of the official forums with this. :rolleyes:

Astonishing, closing in on 400 pages in that thread. LOL

I almost never visit the official forums. When I do, it's to look for blue posts.

Since you can get the blue-tracker digest at MMO-champion, I think I'll just do that and forget that the official forums exist. Of course, that's what they want, REALLY. They're as tired of the forums as anyone else. And this will kill 'em, real quick.

Ok, Cairenn... Out with it... You've really topped yourself with this April fools prank, but it's time to come clean. I mean aside from the fact that it's 3 months late (or 9 months early... Half-empty, half-full) it's a masterstroke that you were able to get Blizz to go along with this. Grats on the great joke, but forcing people to use their real names in forums? REALLY??? C'mon....

I disagree with it, but I also don't use the forums. I think they are taking this RealID thing to far. I love the idea in-game, but anywhere else? Nope.

wow, this is really ridiculous. i guess the time is now for all of us who value our online presence to start using fake names and game time cards.

What gets me is that the tone of the blue post tries to make is sound as if this is the greatest thing EVAR! As if submitting your personal info up for grabs is something we've been just begging for, and now that it's here we should be jumping for joy.

One step closer to identity theft? H@#L YEAH!

Of course, if you use a fake name, you can't recover the account if it's compromised.

I'm on my way out. Wrapping up auctions, and so on, gonna probably send 30k worth of stuff I had up for sale to a friend just to make the bag space thing be someone else's problem. :)

Needless to say, unless this gets reverted and we get a hell of an apology, this is the end of my time working on addons, pretty much. :(

I'll miss wowi a lot, you guys have been a really good community.

Come on, people are going to Stop Playing the Game, stop writing addons just because of a change on the WoW forums!!!


Give me a break. If you don't like the changes on the forum, DON'T post there!

There is way to much name calling and crap on those now you can hardly find any thing usefull. Any questions are answered by 20 different people with 20 different answers.

Identity theft, come on from having your real name listed with a post on a web forum, get real.

As stated I only go there to find Blue posts.

what's next? real id on the armory with your address and phone number right under your /played time?

Yup.

Exactly. No tech support or customer service for me, then -- because if you call tech support, they tell you to post on the forums. No posting on the official UI/macro forum. No posting on my realm forum to look for new guildies.

Yes.

Yup. Say you post asking for technical support. Someone now has your name, the model of your computer, the OS you use, and possibly other information about you. Nice start on a social engineering hack.

How many people do you think will realize that the person calling them from "Blizzard" to help with their problem logging in is actually a gold farmer, not a real Blizzard rep?

So in other words, you're not one of the affected users, so why should anyone care what you think?

One of my in-game friends is, so far as we know, one of two people in the world with that particular name...

Just a reminder folks, you are expected to follow our Site Rules, as always.

We recognize that this is a hot topic and we have no objection whatsoever to people discussing it here. However, we won't allow it to turn into a flamefest nor will we allow personal attacks. Disagreement is fine, but keep it civil. :)

Funny you should mention this! :) We have thought about reorganizing, etc. our forums a few times in the past, and started getting serious about the idea again over the weekend.

We plan on cleaning things up, moving things around, adding some areas... We just need to buckle down and get it done! :banana: The planning stage is already in the works.

We realize that many people in our community enjoy using these forums for more than just UI talk, too. :)

This is part of the post I put in the official Blizzard forum but I am also posting it here as a warning/caution.

The change has already been introduced - not the showing of your real name but the legal right for Blizzard to use it..

A bit stupid of me not to read all the embedded links when I agreed to the new Terms of Use that I had to sign when I logged into account management today. The agreement for Terms of Use was last updated on May 26, 2010. There was nothing in the Terms of Use relating to this new policy that Blizzard is going to introduce to the Blizzard forums in the fall.

However, if one does follow all the links then one will find that (and I quote from the privacy policy as updated on June 30, 2010)
"...Blizzard sites may also have message boards, forums, and/or chat areas, where users can exchange ideas and communicate with one another. When posting to a message board, forum, or chat area, please be aware that the information is being made publicly available on-line and the user does so at his or her own risk. For certain forums, anyone posting or replying to a post will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their full first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character. ... " (Does "chat areas" here refer to in game chat?)

So a caution to all. If you even want to pay your monthly bill, change your password, or what ever you will be giving Blizzard the right to use your real name should you post on the forums once the new ones are implemented.

Seebs, I have to agree with at least part of ricks322's post (although not his tone). Don't make a big decision (like leaving wow) based on this admittedly stupid decision on Blizz's part. Just forget about the o-forums. I plan to.

@ricks322; I stated previously that giving out your real name was a step toward I'd theft. Your actual name combined with your e-mail address is an increasingly potent threat to personal security, and if you don't believe that, then that's your right. But I refuse to take unneeded risks, and this definitely qualifies as that.

Pretty much. Check any other major sites and count the number of people who plan to/have cancelled if this comes.

As it's been said, to not post is to forfeit legit reasons to use the forums. As also pointed out, phoning tech support directs you to the forums to seek your answers. So yes, posting is essentially a requirement.

That's what keyword searches are for.

No offense, and I'm not trying to start an argument here (I know, SHOCKING! :eek:), but if you truly believe this then you are quite naive when it comes to the "information highway". Go plug your name here or here (this is hardly all inclusive for resource sites, mind you). I already did it with my semi-unique real name and my info was the top of the list. You'd be amazed at how much you can get from just a name.

The question I still ask is simply this: How long until in-game chat displays your RealID? It's literally one step away at this point.

It's really not that big a decision. This is a hobby. I play WoW to relax. It just stopped being relaxing.

Posting in the forums is the only way to actually get technical support -- email and phone both direct you to post in the forums. The forums are not optional.

Basically, though... I have too many friends for whom this is a much bigger deal breaker. If I stuck around and kept handing Blizzard money because it didn't directly affect me (it's not as though I keep my WoW hobby a secret), how do you think my friends would feel, the ones who loved the game but who have serious reasons not to be associated with their legal name? I think they'd feel like I didn't really care about things that matter to them. Blizzard screwed a lot of people over here. Even though I'm not really one of them, enough of my friends are that I feel like I have to stand with them on this matter.

I really like using the forum and I dont mind doing the
work for blizzard helping ppl with their addon problems but if/when they
find lawyers that make this happen in a free country I will stop using/helping the forum. Consider who we are playing with ... publishing kids names that have
problems with knowing what they can post and what not in a forum is just criminal ... Someone who wants to find my real name has probably no problem
since I mix the info too on some sites but I know it and I can live with it.

I really hope the storm gets louder out here ...

I honestly can't find a valid argument against that.... And people here know I can find an argument against anything:rolleyes:. So I'll just remind you that even if you don't play WoW anymore, (and I think I can safely say I speak for most of the people who regularly post in THESE forums) that you will always be welcome to join in to any discussions taking place here. Don't forget us...

Indeed. :)

Well, lemme just say: I'm not deleting my bookmarks or anything.

I dunno, though. This is pretty awful. I have a close friend who plays this game, who's transgendered. And who, obviously, just cancelled. This was his/her favorite game for the last four or five years, and (thanks to lack of medical coverage) was quite literally the only part of his/her life where it was possible to have social interactions not overshadowed by "hey, your voice sounds sorta like you're a..."

It's bad enough that I can't imagine how anyone could think this would be okay, meaning that even if they revert it, I still won't feel like I can trust Blizzard anymore.

Before the Real ID thing, I basically trusted Blizzard to be honest with me. I mean, they changed their minds sometimes on patches or features, but they were basically honest. Now, they just spent two weeks telling us all that Real ID was only for use with people you know and trust in real life... and it turns out they really meant "it's for absolutely everyone to see".

I kinda dont see why people stop playing because of this.
Bliz dont force realID on anyone in game, yust on the offical forum, and its not there yet.

As far as I know, people can now, and then/if they make the changes to the foums, still stay as anonymus in game as before.

Myself, I dont use the bliz forums mutch, or at all.

Voting with your wallet is the only thing that works.

But why should we believe that it won't be? And that it won't end up in-game, too?

Yesterday, Blizzard employees said that Real ID showing your real name was not a security risk because you only show that name to people you know and trust in real life. Today, they no longer say that, because they can't -- because they've declared that you show it to everyone.

I don't mean to troll or be mean, but to the OP, why would you quit wow? Just stop posting on the forums if you're against it.

It's being implemented, I think, because of trolls. Do you really care it's showing your name? :P I bet hundreds, maybe thousands of people have the exact same name as you.

This wouldn't be wise either, considering if you ever got hacked and Blizzard asked you to prove your identity, you would be out of an account and couldn't play.

If anyone is entirely concerned; Don't use the Real ID system, and don't post on the official forums. The forums, as a GM once told me, is a privilege, not a right. :( Sad to say, I miss the forums myself, but if I had a choice as to post there and show my full name, so be it! I don't mind :) It also sort of proves I'm one of those elusive women who play. :P

The difference is that in-game realID is an option for people who would like to use it. In the O-forums it apparently will NOT be optional.

Frankly, I believe I have posted in the O-forums only two or three times, so it really won't be that big of a deal for me personally, but (and there's always a but) there are a LOT of WoW players who rely on the O-forums for everything from tech support, to information about building different specs, to finding out where a particular piece of gear can be found, to... The list goes on and on.

The info that can be found in the O-forums spreads in a ripple effect through the entire WoW community, so in effect, if Blizzard goes through with this they will not only be damaging themselves, but every WoW-related site existing today.

Blizzard has flung themselves onto a very slippery slope with this decision. Privacy is the number one concern for most intelligent people on the internet, and now Blizzard is subverting even their own rules by displaying their customer's real life names. I know in the O-forums posting rules it says something about posting a player's private information is expressly forbidden.

They're doing this in an attempt to cut down on the enormous amount of trolling that goes on there. I hate to say it, but even trolls have a right to free speech.

Did I just say that??? Oh my god! I don't even know who I AM anymore!!!

Except when you need tech support. Then it's no longer a privilege but a requirement. Everyone seems to miss this detail....

As far as not minding, keep that in mind later on when your email is spammed from gold sellers who googled your name or plugged it into a background site.

Maybe it's blizzards plan to not have people post period, to not like it so they don't post unless they have to?

Chaos, you just got another signature on the petition. Thanks for the link. Maybe if enough people sign it, Blizz will listen... Even if they haven't responded to the thousands of posts crying out for them to reconsider this incredibly stupid policy decision.

Ah, I found it.

Ladies and gentlemen, direct from Blizzard's very own Code of Conduct for the O-forums I give you;

Let's give them a big round of applause! They're great, aren't they? They'll be here all week! Two shows on Saturday and Sunday!

As seebs posted earlier, one day the RealID is something optional to use as a friends list and the next it's mandatory for the forums. I haven't used Blizzard tech support but others have stated the forums are mandatory to receive support.

Given what they just pulled in the last couple of days, who is to say that at some point in the future RealID is implemented into other aspects of the game? Maybe your RealID will be used in chat channel system. What the /who system or perhaps transactions in the auction house? Can you opt out of those by just not using them?

The whole point of canceling is to send Blizzard and Activision a message they can understand since 800+ pages of, "NO!", don't seem to be getting through to them.

I don't plan to cancel my account just yet. I'm going to give it a little bit of time to see if they reverse this decision or not. If it does come down to it though, I will cancel and I will not purchase anything that has the name Blizzard associated with it ever again.

Exactly. Which is a good enough reason for me to not post there anymore.

Not to play devils advocate here or anything, but in all fairness... all that means is that you can't post personal information about other players. It doesn't mean you can't post personal information about yourself. Because it's now in the terms of use and you have agreed to those terms, you have now agreed that if you post on the forums, you are freely giving out your first and last name, which is personal information.


Not true.

I'd quit WoW because it's a betrayal of my trust, and I no longer trust Blizzard. I no longer want to have a business relationship with Blizzard. People will be raped or killed because of this. People are already getting harassed and attacked occasionally over video games; all Blizzard's doing is cutting out the months of effort trying to get someone's name. When people are seriously harmed because Blizzard is unable to comprehend the idea of privacy and security, they will not be doing it on my dime.

That excuse is pure bull.

1. It won't have any effect on trolls.
2. If it could have an effect on trolls, it will have that effect also on legitimate posters.
3. Blizzard's got a deal with facebook. Follow the money.

You'd lose that bet. Learn some basic statistics. Most names are uncommon. In fact, most people have uncommon names. In my case, if you google search on my name (go ahead, try it, it's super easy to find my name given that I post as "seebs" everywhere), the first result that's not me is on page 10, where it's a geneology database listing someone who died in 1898, and the first result that's not me and could be within the last forty years is on page 14.

I don't believe this.

First off, posting in the forums is the only way to get technical support. If you call in, they tell you to use the forums.

Secondly, I know a few women who play WoW, and they are all, without exception, vehemently opposed to getting even more sexual harassment than they already do. And they all know that, if they post, and it shows up with a female-looking name, it will result in harassment.

Try it. Go ahead. Contact support and see how long it is before you get told to post your issue on the forums.

I have, numerous times. Once for a repeated error 134 caused by bad ram, and several times after that for persistant black screens in game, which was caused by a bad video card. After those two instances, I decided I needed to learn more, so I became a volunteer in tech support for over a year. Ive seen it said more times than I can count by the forum techs that the forums are there only as a courtesy, and if you want guaranteed support, you have to call or email them. Bluespacecow now volunteers over there, and I can say with certainty that he too has seen those words written over there.

Everyone should watch this video, and then come back and say whether or not they think the girl in the last segment would use any personal information she could get to come back and cause physical harm to a former guild-mate.

Go ahead... watch it... I'll be right here...

Guess it's time to stop posting on the official forums then.

Seems a bit extreme calling it an effort to thwart trolling.. surely there has to be other ways? On top of my head they could have just made you select an alias that you post from. Or they could make it so you could only post from your highest level character (yes, multiple 80s = issues, I know).

I guess luckily for me I share my name with a semi-famous person so if I google it I'm not first in line. But there's a real possibility that your name is somewhat unique, especially if you live in one of Europe's smaller countries.

Blizzard's proposal is idiocy in spades. If they were honestly addressing the problems of spammers or jerks or whatever, they'd just have you assign a nickname to your battle.net ID and display that to post with. But they aren't doing that, are they: ergo, that 'explanation' is straw-man.

Solve problems with the most efficient, least negatively impactful solution. This 'cure' is so much worse than the extremely minor problem it's supposed to 'solve' that it requires scientific notation to express.

Using your real name...no company with the remotest grasp of gaming or the internet would take that step without a ulterior motive someplace.

Since I'll be forced to use the forum for support and such, for which they provide no alternative, and as the official forums are a primary vehicle to communicate with Blizzard, my options are: forgo the support and communication that I'm paying for or open myself up even wider.

See, the address I use for gaming is unique to each game -- my personal email is used with the company only -- so it's fun to see how compromised my email address is (e.g., the one I use for this site) as I get 5-8 emails a day ostensibly from Blizzard and, hey, since they're on that account I never worry about them being bogus or not.

Taking my real name and google -- not even any investigative sites, all FREE material on the net -- and I would have found me in 3 phone calls; found my wife in 1; found people in my guild who live within 100 miles of me in, respectively, 3, 1, 1, 2, 4 phone calls. Sad part of that is I found the SSN of one of my friends embedded in a URL -- go-go-online-privacy.

I had to work a little harder with the ones in Canada and Australia but not enough to deter me if I wanted to play the scam-game.

It is, of course, disgusting how much of our personal information is made available by companies without our honest consent (honest-consent being: I have a real choice that doesn't negatively impact me) but it is unconscionable to force us to expose ourselves to even more of it, to open ourselves up to a wider audience of scammers for the EXTREMELY MINOR benefit of zipping the mouth on trolls just to access the services we pay for.

To the folks saying "you won't really quit over this, will you?" to people...well, let's hear it: delineate our options here: how do we access what we paid for in terms of support without exposing what can only be considered "Private, Personal Data" (Private, Personal Data is data that can be used to find you in the real world)

I play games to relax and as an inexpensive hobby I can enjoy with friends, not to paint a target on my ass.

This is a breech of faith and likely a terminal one. This may be end of not just WoW but every Blizzard product from now on.

(P.S. Everyone's been looking for the WoW-Killer...good job, Blizzard, ya found it!)

If this is the case, why have we been told to "post the problem on the forums"?

Yeah, I know, crappy tech support and the 'any answer to get them off the phone' but, seriously, it's not an isolated response from Blizzard.

Interesting. Multiple people today have tried calling in and gotten an automated message which told them to post in the forum, then hung up on them.

Maybe the world's changed since you last needed support.

I, too share a name with a semi-celebrity who actually died years ago. Fortunately for me, there are still several pages devoted to his life story. Unfortunately for another person who lives in the same town as I do and also shares my name, he owns a large real-estate company and his name appears in google just a few links down on the search results page. As bad as I would feel if someone came after me because they didn't like the way I played a video game or something I said in the O-forums for that matter, I would feel a million times worse if someone ELSE were hurt simply because we have the same name and live in the same town.

I have Googled my name, and sadly..... I can't find myself :(

OP - Don't feel so hardened, after it is a video game. Continue to play :) Its a fun game! Don't worry so much! :) Is all I was trying to say.

One of my friends may well commit suicide over this, because this was his/her only outlet where he/she didn't need to deal with gender dysphoria. He/she just got moved from a scheduled appointment to start on gender-related therapy to a "waiting list" and was desperately trying to find ways to stay distracted long enough to survive until that could turn back into progress. An online game where you could be anyone you wanted was just the ticket... Until Blizzard came out and said "but if you ever need to use the forums, people are going to see your current legal name that you hate so much that even seeing it written sometimes makes you cry".

Yeah, that's fun.

Nope, sorry. It's not fun anymore. It can't be fun. The magic went out of it. It's no longer an escapist fantasy alternative, it's now just another aspect of the exact set of things I play RPGs to get away from.

Had trust. Trust was betrayed. It's no longer fun. It just got real.

you're changing the subject, and that's weird. O.o Above has nothing to do with the new policy, because you're friend has personal issues that need to be taken care of in a professional manner.

I have Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia, in addition to having a Medication Phobia (aka Pharmacophobia), and I won't be worried one bit about the game changes, because you should always take games into moderation.

Someone who needs to play wow in order to feel normal, have something wrong with them, no offense. :O

Come on, folks! Lets keep this discussion civil. The tirades on the O-forums are getting close to being out of hand, and I'd prefer for all of us to be able to come here for a more rational discussion of the issues at hand. Lets work to preserve our small island of sanity in the vast ocean of...

I'm so tired I can't even finish the thought I just had...:o

I'm being nice! I'm being rational, by stating that i have mental issues as well! I think everyone does! :P But they don't become dependent upon a video game, is my ... point?

:) /smile

This was posted on the epic thread at the forums just a little bit ago.

Battle.net(R) and Facebook Integration Announced

Old news my friend. Look at the date on it:

Old news, yes, but it's the first I've seen it. I knew they had their app for Facebook but I didn't realize things were going to be as integrated as this makes it sound. If this all comes to pass in the worst case scenario I have in my head, then I will probably quit playing all together.

[Drama]I don't trust Facebook and my trust in Blizzard has been severely compromised by this RealID fiasco. I use Facebook only because it is somewhat required by work I do for a client. My account there is locked down and contains only the bare minimum of information required to open an account. I don't want my Blizzard information anywhere near Facebook's lack of concern for its users privacy.[/Drama]

I'm really not trying to sound like an overly paranoid drama queen here with it. My job requires that I be overly protective of data and beyond overly protective when it comes to security. This whole thing just rubs me the wrong way and puts up too many red flags.

this is a monumentally stupid idea and they have to know it.

i would sign the petition somebody posted a while back, but it ironically asks for my name and email address so i passed.

picking the name "real id" is just asking for privacy evangelists to get upset given that was the name of the fed gov'ts proposed national id system.

Yes, he/she does.

And signed up for the initial evaluation, and got an appointment set, and then got bumped onto a "waiting list" due to insurance hangups. Which means that he/she is now in the middle of waiting anywhere from a few weeks to a few months in order to start on the very long and expensive process (which may at any point turn out not to be covered by health care) of trying to get that treatment.

In the mean time, there's nothing to do but try to hang on and not think too much about where the knives are.

Well, no **** sherlock. That was my entire point, you know? My friend is mentally ill. Mentally ill enough that he/she is at a pretty high risk of committing suicide without treatment for which there is an unknown waiting period, anywhere from weeks to months. And the one thing he/she could do was get into a fantasy universe, get engrossed in that world, and get a bit of a reprieve from hating him/herself, while waiting for that professional treatment to come along.

That's all there is to it. Must kill time until the waiting list turns into an appointment, then kill more time until the appointment happens. It'll be months of being cripplingly, suicidally, depressed. And that one last safety line just got yanked away.

Lucky you, your issues are less severe than my friend's are. I guess that means my friend is unimportant.

Easy guys .... step back, breathe, count to 10.

Eh, I'm gonna go sleep for a little bit. Got someone else keeping an eye on my friend for a few hours.

Sleep is good. :)

Sign at everything seebs said, his friend included.

I'm playing WoW as something to relax into a fantasy. Part of the fantasy just went poof. I really hope they will keep the ingame part of the fantasy but I'm sceptical now.

And I don't care about trolls. No problem to ignore them.

You are certainly right about the facebook connection. This Blizz decision is shurely money oriented. The community has to make shure they shoot themselves into the foot with this (if that is understandable in english). The same goes for facebook as their official policy is "anti-privacy".

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=128252

Now this is really disgusting

For the same reason Comcast, Microsoft, and all other major companies tell you over the phone something like "for faster service, press one for automated troubleshooting". They get busy and overwhelmed with calls. The forums are merely an offer for a secondary choice for support.

Let's not make this something that it's not. Phone tech support isn't going to answer the phone and say, or have a message telling you, that they no longer take phone calls and to go to the forums. Phone techs have to answer the phone. The forums techs do not have to answer posts.

Back on topic.... I certainly will not be posting on the forums anymore unless this new change is reverted.