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WoW - Musings & Discussion

It's kinda fun watching people lose their shit over the Real ID feature, but is there actually anything to their concerns? So far as I can see, folks are choosing to exchange info with randoms and then whining about it. What am I missing here?
 
I have no idea, people lose their shit over just about anything you can think of when it comes to Blizzard and this game.

Too bad Ruby Sanctum isn't open yet.
 
The main concern is you're giving out your battle.net address which is used to access your account. It's possible for someone to abuse that. Even if you don't think your friend will, you never know if they'll get compromised and someone able to find a way to use the information to scam you too.
 
i dont get it... if you dont trust the person, don't add them as a realID friend. my real ID friends are my wife, and a couple of co-workers. i totally trust them to not scam me, if i didnt, i wouldn't add them.

the main thing, it's a new feature. if you dont want to use it, you dont have to use it and you get the same experience you had before.
 
i dont get it... if you dont trust the person, don't add them as a realID friend. my real ID friends are my wife, and a couple of co-workers. i totally trust them to not scam me, if i didnt, i wouldn't add them.

Why the 'friend of a friend' thing, though? You might be friends with someone, but why would you want all of their friends having your RealID? It seems silly; if I'm understanding it right, which I may well not be.

Well a lot of kids play WoW and will probably just give out their email address without thinking. In that respect it's a little dubious.

RealID can be disabled for children via Parental Controls.
 
here's a good post about it
http://thestoppableforce.net/2010/06/22/real-id-heres-some-info-now-stop-with-the-righteous-indignation/

i think a lot of people see and treat Real ID as a "global handle" and in a sense it is. but this Real ID is really supposed to be used for people you know and trust in real life. not just casual acquaintances or guild friends.

so, i've been on this BBS for around 8 years. there is only one person here i would give my Real ID to, and it's a person i've known, in person, since jr. high (almost 20 years).
 
It makes a lot of assumptions there, that people will use it as intended, that bugs, exploits or loopholes won't be found. That it can't ever be abused... it's too easy to pretend to be someone else or to misuse that information if there's a falling out.

Do you know some top raiding progression guilds are already forcing their players to use it or be removed from their guild? In otherwords, they have no choice in the matter. Sure, they can always go to another guild but for them this isn't just some inconvienence and it's not Blizzard's fault people are abusing it, but nonetheless it is being abused and people who might use this need to understand it's not the safe, secure thing some people are blindly calling it. It can be abused, misused and in fact was the minute it was released.

So no, I'm not using it and I don't know many who are, for more than just security or privacy reasons.
 
Well a lot of kids play WoW and will probably just give out their email address without thinking. In that respect it's a little dubious.

That's the reason kids don't have cool (ie "dangerous") toys anymore, people with this attitude want Blizzard to parent their children and let them play a social game like Warcraft without knowing what "spam" is.

"Don't click on the strange link or answer strange emails!", is that too much to teach your 9 year child? I think we're getting to the point where anyone with young children grew up or is familiar with computers and video games and the Internet and all of this shit, how long do they get to keep playing the ignorant card?
 
here's a good post about it
http://thestoppableforce.net/2010/06/22/real-id-heres-some-info-now-stop-with-the-righteous-indignation/

i think a lot of people see and treat Real ID as a "global handle" and in a sense it is. but this Real ID is really supposed to be used for people you know and trust in real life. not just casual acquaintances or guild friends.

so, i've been on this BBS for around 8 years. there is only one person here i would give my Real ID to, and it's a person i've known, in person, since jr. high (almost 20 years).

That doesn't address my concern. Why does the friend-of-friend thing exist, period? I may be RL friends with A-E, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in A knowing that I'm friends with, say, C. And against this potential issue, the friend-of-friend feature offers... what?

Not using Real ID isn't exactly a satisfactory option, in that absent the seemingly pointless but mandatory friend-of-friend feature one may very well wish to use it.
 
Exactly, the kind of people who will get abused by it will be abused by it of their own volition, because they gave it out to anyone and everyone they ran across. Precisely three people will have mine.
 
i dont see how not using Real ID isnt an option... people seemed to get along fine for 5 years before this optional feature went live 2 days ago. if a guild is forcing people to do it, the guildies can leave and form a new guild. and really, people will find just about anything to make noise about that is new and tracks information... but then that noise dies down...

i remember when Acheivements were going to rip guilds apart because everyone would check their acheivements and they'd get kicked for that. and i'm sure it happened at first, but i bet that noise has died down significantly... same with armory profiles... i suspect Real ID will go the same way. a bunch of noise over something far less intrusive (you can't (as far as i know) opt out of the armory or achievements).

as for the friend of friend... the best they can find out is the persons name (maybe they can see the character they are playing) but they dont get the email address. Xbox Live is the same way. Trek BBS functions in a similar manner (i can check to see who you have friended on your profile, and i dont need to be your friend)

all i am saying, it's new, people will make noise, it'll die down in a couple weeks and people can really asses it
 
i dont see how not using Real ID isnt an option...

Of course it's an option, but it's not a good option. The question is why the system operates in this manner at all. The ideal solution is for Blizzard to change it, or provide the option for doing so.

I'm not a fan of how the features work on TrekBBS either, but it's not at all the same thing. With RealID you presumably have RL contact with everyone on your list; and thus RL reasons to prevent that kind of information propagation.
 
Well a lot of kids play WoW and will probably just give out their email address without thinking. In that respect it's a little dubious.

That's the reason kids don't have cool (ie "dangerous") toys anymore, people with this attitude want Blizzard to parent their children and let them play a social game like Warcraft without knowing what "spam" is.

"Don't click on the strange link or answer strange emails!", is that too much to teach your 9 year child? I think we're getting to the point where anyone with young children grew up or is familiar with computers and video games and the Internet and all of this shit, how long do they get to keep playing the ignorant card?

1. Many kids are unbelievably ignorant as well as cocky. The current culture is to spread your identity out as far and as wide as possible, how many FB friends can you acquire etc.. safety on the internet is a hard sell with a lot of kids because they are invested in already knowing everything about spam, ripoffs, piracy etc.. proclaiming you know all this is just a big pissing contest for them.

2. A lot of parents are just ignorant. They wouldn't know how to find parental controls in WoW and they wouldn't always know there is a need for it. Maybe they get alarmed after some horrible internet thing is on the news, rush into the kids room and do a little lecture about safety and then that's it. My female friends have never played an internet game in their lives. If the kid is lucky they have a dad who invests some energy into the safety topic, but for a lot of families the internet is like Playstation--something your kids do and you don't do.

So while NO, Blizzard is not the parent, given that their customer base has a lot of minors I think they need to take that into consideration. In that respect Real I.D. is a bit suss. I think it's been designed for adults and the stupidity of kids has not been taken into consideration. Many people on this thread have said they will only be giving out real ID to their RL friends or family, but kids may well end up treating it like Facebook--the more contacts the better.
 
1. Many kids are unbelievably ignorant as well as cocky......

2. A lot of parents are just ignorant....

So while NO, Blizzard is not the parent, given that their customer base has a lot of minors I think they need to take that into consideration.

Convince me why we should keep catering to ignorant, cocky people in society by molding and contorting ourselves to suit them. If people don't have self control, fuck 'em.

Blizzard's obligation is to keep personal user information private. If people want to voluntarily give any of that information away that's their decision.
 
I'm not saying there should be a law about it. I'm just saying it would be good of Blizzard to take into consideration the minors in their user base when they implement new things like Real I.D.


If people don't have self control, fuck 'em.

Sure, but I don't think that applies to minors. Blizzard has been bending over backwards to cater to a younger players, these are going to be issues they need to consider.
 
I don't even get how the RealID thing works or what it is. Does it affect my current friends list, or if I want to add people to that list?
 
I'm no help as I've been unsubbed since before the RealID thing hit; actually for about eight of the last twelve months. I'm waiting on Cata.

Speaking of which: I've been following the beta info that's been emerging recently, and from that I've pretty much nailed down my characters for the expansion:

Female Undead Fire Mage*
Male Worgen Fury Warrior
Female Dwarf Holy Priest

* Existing (Level 80) character.
 
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