Real ID comes to WoW

[Xanthippe]

http://us.battle.net/realid/?rhtml=y

A New Way to Connect With Your Friends on Battle.net

One of our goals for the new Battle.net is to create the framework for an online gaming experience that is even more accessible, more engaging, and more entertaining than the previous Battle.net. Our new Real ID feature is an integral part of this effort, providing you with advanced ways for forming and maintaining meaningful relationships with your friends on the service.

Real ID is a completely voluntary and optional level of identity that keeps players connected across all of Battle.net. When you and a friend mutually agree to become Real ID friends, you'll have access to a number of additional features that will enrich your social gaming experience in new and exciting ways.

Read the Real ID FAQ for additional details.

• Real names for friends...
  
• Cross game chat...
  
• Rich presence...
  
• Broadcasts...
  
• Friend once, see all characters...
  

I wonder how secure this will be? 

[kaid]

Well unless you have an authenticator probably not very. Seriously I still cannot understand why blizzard chose to use your email address as your username for battlenet. Now with real ID you are giving people your username. For a lot of people guessing their password is not brain surgery. It just seems like a huge security faux paux for a game thats all ready having issues with account theft and hackers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

i like being able to see my friends cross game, why i wont be using this is because sometimes i dont want them knowing im ditching their raid to go play alliance.

[Malakili]

i like being able to see my friends cross game, why i wont be using this is because sometimes i dont want them knowing im ditching their raid to go play alliance.

This is definitely part of my concern for the system.  In fact, its the same reason I don't care for facebook/twitter, etc.  I just don't want people to know what I'm doing all the time, nor do I care much what other people are up to.  Sure, it would be nice to shoot the shit with the occasional person while I'm playing Starcraft 2* and they are doing their dailies in WoW, but over all, it isn't that appealing to me.

*I won't be buying SC2, and I just cancelled my WoW subscription again, so this is hypothetical.  Maybe Diablo 3 will get me back into Blizzard games again.

[K9]

Ugh, they've really dropped the ball with this one.

[Sjofn]

i like being able to see my friends cross game, why i wont be using this is because sometimes i dont want them knowing im ditching their raid to go play alliance.

Yeah, pretty much that. I didn't even like the global in CoX for this reason. MOST of the time I am happy to chat or get dragged into instancing when all I wanted to do was dailies or whatever, but once in a while I want to be a hermit, and I hate shit like this that makes it unpossible. Maybe if I could go /anon it would be more appealing, but I won't be able to, so screw it.

[Nevermore]

In CoX the cross faction/server chat is a very nice feature because you can /hide and /ghide if you don't want people to bother you.  WoW is the only MMO I recall playing that doesn't have any kind of /hide function, which makes this Real ID thing even more intrusive.

[Sjofn]

People begged for that function in WoW's beta, too. For whatever reason, they were completely against putting one in. Just one of their weird hang ups or something, I guess!

[Ingmar]

You may as well use it, since I'll be using it and people will just bug me about where you are anyway. 

[Sjofn]

You can tell them you're not my keeper, so shove off!

[Sheepherder]

I wonder how secure this will be?

Roughly the same if you haven't taken any measures to isolate your username email from the internet at large.

[Righ]

I wonder how long it will be before OCD control freak guild leaders start demanding Real IDs for raid attendees. I guess you just transfer the raid character to a new raid account and keep the personal account personal. It will sell a few more accounts, I'm sure.

[caladein]

I wonder how long it will be before OCD control freak guild leaders start demanding Real IDs for raid attendees.

I wouldn't have a problem with that, but I don't have a problem saying, "No, I don't want to raid tonight."

Honestly, the only thing Real ID is going to save me is having my friends list full of 8-10 people's alts.  (The cross-game-ness thing isn't that big a deal since these people also know my Xfire/cell number and I'm not a big RTS guy.)

[apocrypha]

Yeah, pretty much that. I didn't even like the global in CoX for this reason. MOST of the time I am happy to chat or get dragged into instancing when all I wanted to do was dailies or whatever, but once in a while I want to be a hermit, and I hate shit like this that makes it unpossible. Maybe if I could go /anon it would be more appealing, but I won't be able to, so screw it.

This entirely. Won't be using it because sometimes, just *sometimes* I feel like an antisocial grumpy git and I reserve the right to choose not to inflict that on my friends.

[Lantyssa]

It does feel like an attempt to be like Facebook.

I can't say it affects me much since the people I'm likely to add can get a hold of me if they really want, and if I'm in a pissy "you probably don't want to chat with me right now" mood I'll warn them.  It does add to my security concerns since we're now tying a real name to a mandatory e-mail address.  It'd be nice if Blizzard starts taking security a bit more seriously if they're going to keep adding real-life data to our accounts.

[Paelos]

Fuck this. I'm glad it's optional, because there's no way I want all my little raid-monkies knowing who, what, or where I am at all times.

[Selby]

Fuck this. I'm glad it's optional, because there's no way I want all my little raid-monkies knowing who, what, or where I am at all times.

Yup.  I like to go and hide for a reason.  My 10 characters in guild are there so they can find me when I'm playing one of those.  If I am not on a character in my guild, chances are I am either not playing or hiding elsewhere.

[WindupAtheist]

Between the giving out of email addresses and real names, plus the inability to go into anonymous mode, this whole thing seems designed to be as obnoxious as possible. Count me out.

[Ingmar]

I'm just using it with people who already know my name and email address anyway, it is pretty convenient for that.

[Selby]

Count me out.

I did as soon as it came out.  I like being anonymous and no one knowing my real name!

[Paelos]

I can't tell if this is a good idea, and we as a community just hate the idea of an extra social layer that's impossible to turn off, or if it's just a really shitty idea.

I think it's probably just a shitty idea, but you know kids these days...

[caladein]

My friends list consists almost entirely of the characters of the 11 or so people who play WoW and I've known for 5+ years.

With Real ID, my list is sync'd across all characters and I don't have to go "Oh, that's who *Random Level 11 Hunter* is on my list?"  Sure, I could do that before with mods and on the one server/side we all play on.  Now, it's cross-faction, cross-server, and cross-Blizzard-game so I don't have to idle in Vent for "Tell me if you need me." reasons just because my guild leader or friend refuse to use Xfire.

It's not revolutionary in any way, but I like it.

[Nevermore]

If this had aliases, a hide feature and the ability to turn off that 'friends of friends' nonsense it would be a great feature.  As it is, I'll never use it.  A game like this is about competition and conflict and as such breeds way too much drama for having a facebook overlay added to it.  Having aliases works just fine in XBox Live;  I don't see why Blizzard insists on real names for their version.

[Lantyssa]

My friends list consists almost entirely of the characters of the 11 or so people who play WoW and I've known for 5+ years.

With Real ID, my list is sync'd across all characters and I don't have to go "Oh, that's who *Random Level 11 Hunter* is on my list?"  Sure, I could do that before with mods and on the one server/side we all play on.  Now, it's cross-faction, cross-server, and cross-Blizzard-game so I don't have to idle in Vent for "Tell me if you need me." reasons just because my guild leader or friend refuse to use Xfire.

For your situation that works pretty well.

And if I could use an alias I'd be fine with it.  There's no reason people need to see [real name here] instead of Lantyssa.  I'd happily use it so I could chat with my internet friends across servers.  As is?  Nah.  My name is pretty much unique.  If you know it, you can find me.  If you know a bit of it and a tiny amount of relative information, you can find me.  While there are those I don't mind knowing, neither of us can control it going beyond them, and there are some people I'd like to keep one layer of anonymity with because we're still acquaintances.

[fuser]

I concur there has to be some restriction put in place of sharing your id past mutual friends. I don't want anyone knowing my name past a two way handshake I have agreed upon.

Actually my surname could be considered a naming violation in the TOS

[Fabricated]

I sure do want to give out my identity to friends-of-friends-of-friends. What a shitty implementation. Why not just use a unique ID for battle.net and let you tie THAT to RealID if you want your friends on Facebook or what the fuck ever flavor-of-the-month social network to know you're grinding boar asses?

[Lantyssa]

Brilliant!  FB spam:  WoWnerd has completed Kill 10 Boars.  WoWnerd has completed Kill 10 Kobolds.  WoWnerd has achieved Obtain Level 2!  WoWnerd has...

[Rendakor]

What's with the 'friends-of-friends' complaints? Can you really see your RealID friend's friends? If so, how?

[sickrubik]

What's with the 'friends-of-friends' complaints? Can you really see your RealID friend's friends? If so, how?

From zee FAQ

What is the "friends of friends" feature of Real ID?
Similar to other social-networking platforms, when you click on one of your Real ID friends, you will be able to see the names of his or her other Real ID friends, even if you are not Real ID friends with those players yourself. If you happen to know someone on that list, you will be able to quickly send a Real ID friend request to that player. This feature is designed to make it easy to populate your Real ID friends list with people you might enjoy playing with.

[Rendakor]

Oh, wow. That's intrusive as fuck. Glad I've only given mine out to people who a) I know in real life and b) are also paranoid.

[Ingmar]

The one plus about that is you can right click those people and send them RealID friend requests without having to know their battle.net ID, which is nice.

[kildorn]

From a guy perspective: enh. A little overboard with the friends of friends and no way to disable it. But still, I mostly plan on using this for people who I've pretty much met all of them before and have them on facebook anyways.

From an internet perspective: hello creepy guys friend requesting every female name they can find! 

[Ingmar]

You can't actually see anything about the friend of friend people besides the name at least, so while someone might be able to look at my list and see a bunch of names they wouldn't know the characters associated with them.

I do expect them to eventually cave over the privacy criticisms to a certain extent, and make this a little more robust in terms of being able flag yourself to be hidden from friend-of-friend lists and the like. I doubt they'll ever let you use an alias and going anon seems kind of unlikely too since you've never been able to do that in game.

[kildorn]

Or they could go the opposite route and try to tie in farmville and let me upload pictures from our raid kills so all my realid friends can see it!

[Ingmar]

Or they could go the opposite route and try to tie in farmville and let me upload pictures from our raid kills so all my realid friends can see it!

There's already an Armory/Facebook feed app that does that. 

World of Warcraft Feeds
Share your proudest in-game moments with your real-world friends online with Blizzard's official World of Warcraft application on Facebook. The app lets you share a custom feed of your characters' activity and view the game activity of your friends.