Blizzard - makers of World of Warcraft - goes off the deep end!?!

[sojourner]

Forgive me if there is another thread on this, and I put this in misc because it has to do with forums, not gameplay.

Blizzard just announced that they will be converting their forums to use the REAL NAMES of the players!!! Who the hell thought this was a good idea? I can think of so many reasons not to do this, but they only gave one reason they are doing this. To stop trolls. Really. They want their users to be opened up to attack from pedophiles, misogynists, and general wackos. I just don't get it. What are they doing? Are they trying to get rid of players?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

That sounds really odd to me. Why wouldn't every player just get a single forum account, tied to their WoW key? Since the keys are not transferable (as far as I know), it should be pretty hard to be an anonymous troll on their forums. There's no need to know anybody's real name on the forum. They could just have it in your profile, and visible only to admins. Then, if they need to take legal action, they can, without you having to let the whole world know you roll Horde.

 

[sojourner]

^yea, the forum ID's currently are tied to your game account, so Blizz already knows who you are. This just opens everyone up to griefing from anyone on the internet. (you can read thier forums without having an account)

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Then I seriously don't understand their reasoning here.

 

[Rett Mikhal]

Have you ever gone mad without power? It's boring. No one listens to you.

 

[Rii]

What Blizzard should do is allow other users to see all characters above a certain level (to discount placeholders) linked to a given account, and disallow posting on low-level characters for accounts which are also linked to high-level characters. Or require users to select a single character persona for the forums. Or something. But this ... I dunno.

Are they trying to get rid of players?

Three-fifths of fuck all of the playerbase posts on the forums. What they're obviously trying to do is cut down on the chaff:wheat ratio by making folks accountable for their posts.

Have you ever gone mad without power? It's boring. No one listens to you.

Heh. I forget where that's from.

 

[Kestra]

Yeah, this is kind of crazy. Plus the WoW forums can be unintentionally hilarious and they're trying to take it away.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I think that's from Portal.

Yeah, I can see them wanting to get rid of trolls, but this seems extreme. It just opens them to all sorts of legal issues. Here's an interesting story about something that's already happened:

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/5...l-ID-Safe-Or-A-Playground-For-Sexual-Deviants

 

[JonathonWally]

Then, if they need to take legal action, they can, without you having to let the whole world know you roll Horde.

Cool people roll horde. Alliance are pansies.


So does this mean no more Bus Shock?

 

[SeerSGB]

How the fuck would they know it was or wasn't your real name? IP address, worthless. Credit Card number, worthless; I buy a $20 prepaid Visa, tie it to a fake name and address (they don't verify that stuff, I know this from experience), and I'm effectively whoever I say I am on the card.

Talk about your hair-brained ideals.

 

[EyalM]

Have you ever gone mad without power? It's boring. No one listens to you.

Heh. I forget where that's from.

The Simpsons movie.

 

[Marten]

How the fuck would they know it was or wasn't your real name? IP address, worthless. Credit Card number, worthless; I buy a $20 prepaid Visa, tie it to a fake name and address (they don't verify that stuff, I know this from experience), and I'm effectively whoever I say I am on the card.

Talk about your hair-brained ideals.

But how many have done that in their Wow-account?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

How the fuck would they know it was or wasn't your real name? IP address, worthless. Credit Card number, worthless; I buy a $20 prepaid Visa, tie it to a fake name and address (they don't verify that stuff, I know this from experience), and I'm effectively whoever I say I am on the card.

Talk about your hair-brained ideals.

And if you're a troublemaker on the forums I wouldn't blame them one bit for just canceling your account. Then you can't even post anymore.

 

[FPAlpha]

I guess no big deal because there must be tons of WoW boards on the internet.

I can understand their reasoning but then people will vote with their feet.

Personally i don't care since i don't play WoW.

 

[Teelie]

There are a lot of other boards and due to the plague of trolls on the official forums and a complete lack of effective moderation of them, people use the alternatives.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has caught "social networking" fever and this Real ID bullshit is part of it. They want to connect to everything (you can already link your account to Facebook) and now they're doing this hot on the heels of letting you use your Real ID info (ie; your account name [aka email address used to log in to battle.net services]) as a way to friend other people across servers and even games. It's all "harmless" until you realize people know your real name and it's already been compromised after less than a month.

Phishers, scammers and all types of malcontents are celebrating this stupidity.

I've never been a regular on Blizzard's forums and now I'll never post there again.

 

[SeerSGB]

How the fuck would they know it was or wasn't your real name? IP address, worthless. Credit Card number, worthless; I buy a $20 prepaid Visa, tie it to a fake name and address (they don't verify that stuff, I know this from experience), and I'm effectively whoever I say I am on the card.

Talk about your hair-brained ideals.

But how many have done that in their Wow-account?

Were I to play a MMO with a monthly subscription fee, it's what I'd do. Get a prepaid card with a year or two's worth of subscription value, register it for online purchases with a fake name and that'd be that.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Only the most dedicated of trolls would go to those lengths.

 

[Kestra]

Were I to play a MMO with a monthly subscription fee, it's what I'd do. Get a prepaid card with a year or two's worth of subscription value, register it for online purchases with a fake name and that'd be that.

Why would you do that, though?

 

[LitmusDragon]

It does seem drastic, but those forums really are a massive troll-fest. I could imagine the moderators are rejoicing at this news. The community, not so much.

There's something hilarious about a level 1 Orc posting rants about end-game raiding content (because he wants to remain anonymous) and all the replys criticize his level and lack of accomplishments.

Also the Wow-forums brought us the classic meme "Killing a bear should aggro every bears". The original thread is gone sadly but here is a thread about that thread which is almost as funny. The gist of it is that an angst-ridden player with the mining skill was distraught when the game was changed so that nearby mobs (NPCs) aggro onto you when you mine. He thought it only fair the when you used the skinning skill (another gathering skill) that the nearby bears in the area should aggro (attack) you. His reasoning was "after all, you are skinning their best friend." And this started a meme.

 

[SeerSGB]

Were I to play a MMO with a monthly subscription fee, it's what I'd do. Get a prepaid card with a year or two's worth of subscription value, register it for online purchases with a fake name and that'd be that.

Why would you do that, though?

Past experience with online stalkers and online games have prove to me that letting out personal info in general is a dangerous thing.

Only the most dedicated of trolls would go to those lengths.

Not really. I know people that do it as a matter of daily life. They want even buy anything in a store that requires giving out their name, much less order online from some place like Amazon using their real name and address. Some do it cause they want to be "off the grid" others do it for the fun, playing a character or characters through out life.

Hells, even I don't use my real (ie legal/birth) name for anything that doesn't contistute a legally binding order of the court or contract. Use variants of the spelling, the original family name from the old country.