Real ID comes to WoW

[Arthur_Parker]

That's a silly example, it's 8 days early to be wishing Sheepherder a happy birthday.

Its the most common example because people like to throw around their birthday nilly-willy.

I was joking, I agree with you.

[tmp]

You're retarded, right?

Real ID doesn't direct you to anything contextual.  Without that you can't winnow the data down to a usable set unless that person randomly appears at the top of the list on a Google search for their name, an improbability given the fact that names are often not unique.  More importantly, you cannot verify that the person you have found is the one you are seeking.  If you are just harvesting names en masse, the names mean jack and shit.  If you are acquainted with the person and have managed to get them to install a mod, then chances are you don't need their fucking name.

You know, this is kind of missing the point.

Let's suppose you're right, and it's not possible to determine whether John Doe who pissed someone in WoW/Warcraft is actually the same John Doe who winds up stalked, beaten up or in a sack floating down the river. But how does it make things any better for the latter John Doe, exactly?

[Azazel]

You mean like Micah Whipple, from Blizzard?
http://asnowstormbyanyothername.blogspot.com/2010/07/micah-whipple.html

[Simond]

"The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

Hope nobody here has ever posted anyone on an official Blizzard board at any point in time.

[Malakili]

"The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

Hope nobody here has ever posted anyone on an official Blizzard board at any point in time.

Doesn't appear to be retroactive.

[AutomaticZen]

"The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

Hope nobody here has ever posted anyone on an official Blizzard board at any point in time.

Doesn't appear to be retroactive.

It's not.  They've made that clear previously.

[Draegan]

The gearscore author said it wasn't him, but I'm pretty sure he's not the only one that can add onto the code.

Which takes more effort, a working exploit or a table of names and a print command?

It's not very hard.  It's spreading to other games.

[Dren]

I ran into a rumor last night in our guild.  Supposedly, he read on the forums that GearScore 2.0 (or whatever version) can get your RealID and display it.  This caused a lot of commotion on the boards to the point where a macro was discovered that you could type in and it would whisper back to you through your RealID.  This guildmate typed it into our chat and it seems to work.  He said the only protection at this point is to put parental controls on yourself and completely shut off RealID.

I was just blown away that they defaulted RealID to be on and you have to go to such extremes to block it.  Once I did this to my account, the macro no longer worked.

Anyone else run into this rumor?  Blizzard blew away all the posts about it already.  Either way, if you are like me and want nothing to do with this, you have to go to the trouble of setting up parental controls for yourself to actually shut it off or block it.

[Khaldun]

So yeah, someone explain it to me.

Activision wants a social network to bring in the fat advertising cash.

Blizzard is Activision's fat cash maker for the online world. Blizzard also wants everyone tied to their system, which is Battle.net. Adding social network functionality doesn't, on the surface, throw up that many red flags.

Facebook is the leading social network, reputedly bringing in about US$900m in 2009. Blizzard copies the Facebook model because little thought and resources need to be involved in such a project - it's a social network, for fuck's sake, it's not like it is something important. A small team of 3 or 4 bang out the alpha in two weeks, saying amongst themselves they'd never use it personally.

End result: Real ID.

This about sums it up.

Yeah, I agree. This is why anybody who says, "This is about cleaning up the forums, GG Blizz, I won't have to wade through the retard pool any more" is just not paying attention. This is so transparently not about forums (except maybe laying off/reassigning forum mods) that it has to be about paving the way for something that Blizz execs (or Activision execs) have decided from on high is the new high road to moneyhats. For a company that's been relentlessly savvy about making money, this is a really stunning misstep, and a sign that we really are on the verge of another domino-like collapse of online businesses, because Blizzard is not alone in imagining that Facebook is magic money and that anyone can have some of the magic money by being Facebook Jr.  

[Khaldun]

"The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

Hope nobody here has ever posted anyone on an official Blizzard board at any point in time.

Doesn't appear to be retroactive.

No, but if you were to choose to post to the new forums under your real name, you might also choose to allow one of your characters to appear as associated with that post--that's also something they've said. At which point, anything you've ever posted to the "legacy forums" is now pretty easy to associate with your real name. I can think of other ways to figure out what a real named forum poster's characters are once I have the real name, particularly if there's a Facebook or Facebook-like implementation of Real ID networks down the line.

[Khaldun]

I ran into a rumor last night in our guild.  Supposedly, he read on the forums that GearScore 2.0 (or whatever version) can get your RealID and display it.  This caused a lot of commotion on the boards to the point where a macro was discovered that you could type in and it would whisper back to you through your RealID.  This guildmate typed it into our chat and it seems to work.  He said the only protection at this point is to put parental controls on yourself and completely shut off RealID.

I was just blown away that they defaulted RealID to be on and you have to go to such extremes to block it.  Once I did this to my account, the macro no longer worked.

Anyone else run into this rumor?  Blizzard blew away all the posts about it already.  Either way, if you are like me and want nothing to do with this, you have to go to the trouble of setting up parental controls for yourself to actually shut it off or block it.

Rumor's been discussed here already. The Gearscore version of it is flat-out false. Whether an addon of some kind could get Real ID is still under discussion.

[Pantastic]

You're retarded, right?

Real ID doesn't direct you to anything contextual.  Without that you can't winnow the data down to a usable set unless that person randomly appears at the top of the list on a Google search for their name, an improbability given the fact that names are often not unique.

Well, you can't except when you can. You know, like several people have already done on the WOW forums. It's really insane that you're saying it's not possible to do something that people have casually done (guy says 'haha, can't find me', gets a call at work 20 minutes later). RealID doesn't have to direct you to context, it reveals a huge, relatively unique identifier.

You've already got some context (they play WOW), and you've probably got a WOW character name (since the in-game RealID always links to character and if you're willing to post with your real name, why not character name?). Had connection issues in WOW and mentioned your location or regional ISP name in a tech support post while trying to sort out the problem? Whoops there's a location. Ever talk about the weather with someone in guild? After a few times of this, weather history tells you a location.

Your assumption that this is not a risky endeavor seems at odds with your other assumption that people do not ever reveal any contextual data, apparently because it's risky. Apparently you think that if someone mentions their state, or discusses their current weather half a dozen times in 3 months, or gripes about something job-related but non-specific, they're so foolish as to not be worth considering for releasing too much info, but think that complaining about having their name revealed is "retarded, right".

And 'names are often not unique' doesn't help people who's names actually are unique, and RealId doesn't do a check for name uniqueness before exposing a name.

 More importantly, you cannot verify that the person you have found is the one you are seeking.  

Well, until you call them and ask them, since people who feel safe like you do will tend to be shocked by getting such a call, and either their obvious shock on the line or something they blurt out will be the verification. Continuing on, 'Crazies might bug the wrong person instead of you, so who cares?' doesn't seem like a great defense of the idea either. Plus, if you believe this doesn't this mean that Blizzard's claims that this change will increase accountability is a complete lie, since if this is really completely untraceable, how is it increasing accountability?

If you are just harvesting names en masse, the names mean jack and shit.  If you are acquainted with the person and have managed to get them to install a mod, then chances are you don't need their fucking name.

Why do you think that listing two specific scenarios that don't come close to covering everything shows anything? What if you're in a guild, piss people off, and get kicked out. You are able to find the name of the GM because he uses the official forums to recruit, which requires his name. You get his location because he's casually mentioned it in chat when griping about something, and get confirmation about his line of business because he's griped about something related to work without mentioning any company name or specifics. BLAM no mod needed, no enmasse harvesting of names. Or how about if the mass harvester makes the database of names available on a shady site, and skeevy guy downloads it?

And I notice you still haven't posted your real name to any forums challenging people to give you a call at work or to post images of your kid's school. Why is that if you're so confident that this is a risk-free endeavor that you consider anyone concerned foolish? You're saying that releasing your name is risk free, but acting like it's extremely risky, and expecting people to act like it's risky in defense of the idea of using it.

[nurtsi]

How do you even enable parental controls? I tried enabling them on my account and it asks for the name of my child's account. I don't have two accounts. Do I need to create another "parent" account that I can use to control the privacy of my own account?

[AutomaticZen]

I ran into a rumor last night in our guild.  Supposedly, he read on the forums that GearScore 2.0 (or whatever version) can get your RealID and display it.

It's possible, but not true currently.

The trick is, you can see your own RealID.  Pretty straightforward right?  Now an untrustworthy addon can take information you can see, and release it.

This caused a lot of commotion on the boards to the point where a macro was discovered that you could type in and it would whisper back to you through your RealID.  This guildmate typed it into our chat and it seems to work.

 
And it works because you always have access to your RealID.  Nothing more, nothing less.

[Khaldun]

Keep in mind that I think this is a dumb idea both because Blizzard is embracing a flawed commercial vision for their future and because it's part of a general assault on privacy rights + keeping the Internet a public rather than private good, but there is something to remember about the danger of having your name and information out there.

What most of us count on in the context of having information out there is not having little information out there but having a shitton of it in a world where more and more people have a shitton of information out there. This is the point that David Brin made a good while back in The Transparent Society: if almost all information about everything was publically available, in a way, it's better hidden than if it's in plain sight. The East German secret service at one point had most of their population spying on each other and providing reports of each other's activities. The information was effectively useless in identifying probably subversives because there was so much of it: some Stasi files record everything that a subject ate in a given week, the timing of all his daily activities and so on.

This is what the anti-anonymity people argue could happen for the better in the future: if we were all known in all contexts by our real name, the only people who would care about us would be the people who already care about us: friends, colleagues, associates. And yeah, people who would have a real reason to hate you born out of context, which already happens now in the offline world, and yeah, the occasional crazy psychotic who would pick you at random, which already happens now in the offline world.

The thing that the anti-anonymity people don't understand (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is ESPECIALLY stupid about this) is that there are social circumstances which completely change the circumstances under which we think about other human beings. A classic example that's really well understood by psychologists is traffic and road rage. On the road, the ONLY THING I KNOW about another driver is how they're driving. That's it, that's the single dimension of my relationship to them. I don't have anything else human to modify my reaction to them. This is why it's possible to imagine that someone who you might think of as a buddy, an interesting person, a sweet little old lady, or a fuckable studmuffin is an evil monster who would give Hitler a run for his money--and contemplate hurting or killing that evil monster simply because they cut you off.

Forums that bring together relative strangers to talk about an online game are much closer to the psychological situation of traffic than to our fully-realized social networks. Online games are much closer to traffic. Facebook is much closer to traffic. Hence the social affordances and inhibitions that keep us from doing really hurtful things for almost no provocation in our fully realized social worlds are not present, and the mere addition of real names is not enough to change that.

[Paelos]

Here's a kicker. The day before I cancelled my account, after not logging in for two weeks, I got hacked.  

Check that, I got hacked literally an hour an a half after I cancelled... That's very odd timing.

[Dren]

For those of you that don't feel people can track you down with just your real name, you are dillusional.  I do it all the time to check up on people asking to belong to a few forums I run.  Even with just an email and some creative guess work, I always found who I was looking for.  Most of the time I'd find where they work or organizations they volunteer/work for.  Your name may not be #1 on Google, but it will be there and with just some other information (likes to play WoW for instance,) you will be found.

[Dren]

How do you even enable parental controls? I tried enabling them on my account and it asks for the name of my child's account. I don't have two accounts. Do I need to create another "parent" account that I can use to control the privacy of my own account?

I just used the same email as my account email.  You don't need two accounts.  They then email the access link to that email.  You click on it from your email and it takes you to the page where you can turn on/off certain things for your account.

A pain?  Yep.  I'm a bit upset this isn't just a normal toggle anyone can put on themselves really.  That's what I went looking for to begin with.

[Righ]

Blizzard customer service called me at 8:04 AM to discuss my cancellation. Wasn't awake. They called back at 8:45 AM and left a message.

[Pennilenko]

Blizzard customer service called me at 8:04 AM to discuss my cancellation. Wasn't awake. They called back at 8:45 AM and left a message.

I bet they are getting a lot of cancellations.

[Paelos]

My hope is that enough cancellations before the release of their expansion will help push them in the right direction by tempering this ridiculous policy.

[Azazel]

Blizzard customer service called me at 8:04 AM to discuss my cancellation. Wasn't awake. They called back at 8:45 AM and left a message.

Fuckers got your phone number!

 

[tmp]

Blizzard customer service called me at 8:04 AM to discuss my cancellation. Wasn't awake. They called back at 8:45 AM and left a message.

Did the message imply they're going to come to your home to sort out the differences in how you both might view your relationship face-to-face?

[Fabricated]

Bashiok or whatever the CM was that posted his name and got found has tendered his resignation and is literally living in a hotel now I guess? Wish I had confirmation.

The first address the kiddies found was his parent's house and they've already been harassed.

[Nissl]

Blizzard also wants everyone tied to their system, which is Battle.net. Adding social network functionality doesn't, on the surface, throw up that many red flags.

Facebook is the leading social network, reputedly bringing in about US$900m in 2009. Blizzard copies the Facebook model because little thought and resources need to be involved in such a project - it's a social network, for fuck's sake, it's not like it is something important. A small team of 3 or 4 bang out the alpha in two weeks, saying amongst themselves they'd never use it personally.

End result: Real ID.

Yeah, that's a remarkably succinct summary of what probably happened. Although from the "long time coming" comment I would guess they put in more resources than that.

I guess the question is whether they would lose anything from backtracking to a single fixed pseudonym across bnet/forums plus a suite of backdoor opt-in/opt-out facebook integration programs. Or maybe more to the point, how forcing a real name to be displayed somehow gets them a leg up on Steam/Xbox Live or otherwise increases their cash flow.

I suppose the idea is that if they can cross this line, fewer people will balk at aggressive future Facebook integration features. But I'm hoping it's like you and I both suggest and this was just a bad stumble in implementation.

[Azazel]

Bashiok or whatever the CM was that posted his name and got found has tendered his resignation and is literally living in a hotel now I guess? Wish I had confirmation.

source?

[Signe]

888-660-4834 was the number that called.  The first time Caller ID said it was "Unavailable", the second time it read "International".  Since we have family in countries other than the US, I answered the second time and took a message from Mrs. Howell for Righ.  I assume she's Lovey, the millionaire's wife.  I'm ascurred.  What if the next time, it's Gilligan himself???  

[Fabricated]

Bashiok or whatever the CM was that posted his name and got found has tendered his resignation and is literally living in a hotel now I guess? Wish I had confirmation.

source?

Like I said, no confirmation. Random scuttlebutt on the interwebs, SA, 4chan, etc. Supposedly the *chans got involved.

[Azazel]

if the goons and chans want to fuck with people, they should leave this poor bastard alone and go hassle Bobby and those further up the food chain.

[Musashi]

Privacy stuff.

All that stuff is a good post, and I agree.  But it's incomplete.  Zuckerberg the Facebook Open Society Field Marshall also completely ignores any benefits that come from anonymity.  There's a value to society at large when people have a release valve where they can say whatever the fuck they want without fear of repercussion under the guise of anonymity.  It's ugly, for sure, and it's unfortunate that it manifests itself in places on the internet where cretins congregate - like MMOs and related forums.  But it benefits us in that some guy who's contemplating wearing your skin for a suit has a way to alleviate whatever the fuck is going on in his loopy noodle.  Of course it's not a fail safe, and it's not even reliably measurable.

Zuckerberg view, which you articulately describe, ignores that value completely.  It is staggeringly Utopian, but unfortunately the cause celebre at the moment.  And it looks like Kotick picked up on this, not surprisingly, because he'll take it to the bank.

[Simond]

"The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting."

Hope nobody here has ever posted anyone on an official Blizzard board at any point in time.

Doesn't appear to be retroactive.

It's not.  They've made that clear previously.

1) Do you really trust Activision not to go back on that?
2) Do you really trust Activision not to accidentally fuck up the forum changes and unintentionally stick RL names against all the old posts?

[Fabricated]

Wow, they backpedaled!

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1

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

Never been happier to be wrong. Gonna laugh when this nets Blizzard actual goodwill though.

[Paelos]

Well holy shit, power to the people.

I guess I can go ahead and resub when the expansion comes out.

[Rasix]

I can feel less like a hypocrite now when I buy SC2 and resub for Cat.  Hooray. 

[koro]

Did we... win?

There's gotta be a catch in there somewhere.