Real ID comes to WoW

[Quinton]

No, he's under the delusion that he's special and unique and somehow his abilities will shine through all prejudice.  Don't you remember being the same way before you hit the professional world and realized just how interchangeable you are?

It depends what you do and where you work.  The fact that I indulge in some online gaming, I'm left-leaning, I've posted to the linux kernel mailing list, etc, etc has zero impact on my career.  However, I also recognize that many people do not have such a luxury and worse many don't even realize just how readily available information about them can be.

Further, I strongly feel that forcing your users to reveal personal identifying information is a really, really bad idea.  Serious legal liability bad, especially if you're a big, profitable corporation in this highly litigious country.

[zwohand]

That whole shit was Koticks idea.

[Arthur_Parker]

Blizzard Real ID

[Fordel]

Blizzard Real ID

The Dance 

[waffel]

Go to the official forums, post "Hi I'm [Real Name], I don't see what the problem is with releasing personal information like this" and you'll get a phone call explaining the problem.

That pretty much sums it up.

"I don't care about Hitler because I'm not a Jew"




edit: page 11. Too soon to 'Godwin's'?

[Ashamanchill]

Sorry I'm posting so late with this.

For all those who are questioning the opposition to this, lets stand back and do a small pros and cons list of it all. At it's very best, it can brighten someones day' 'Oh hey, the forums are the snarling morass they once were! Neat!'  The worse case scenario is someone, or god forbid there kid, ends up getting severely harassed, denied jobs, or stalked. The scales seem tilted a little out of whack on this one. Forum trolls were a slight nuisance before, but the kind of potentially criminal behavior this empowers is staggering.

As for the theory of nuking the forums from orbit, I find it a little hard to believe that Blizzard can be that stupid. They must have their lawyers telling them what a legal can of worms this is opening. If anything, their forums will have to me even more tightly moderated. If someones life does end up being fucked over by this, I hope they manage to successfully take Blizz to court and wring every last penny out of them, I really do.

This idea is just jaw droppingly bad. It reeks of what you all have said, an out of touch corporate wanker who is being simply obdurate now that everyone else has exposed all the glaring flaws in his pet project. The thing is, with this stupid plan, it doesnt matter what they get right with cataclysm. The xpac could be the best xpac in the history of releases (not likely), but if one of the many scenarios we described happens it takes far more precedence then any game.

The more and more I think about it, this looks like a line in the sand, and one I'm not willing to cross. I can't tell you how badly I was looking forward to playing wow in two (long) months. But not with this. To me this exposes the total derision they have for their customers. To not care about the potential hazard this opens on them just to make some blood money of facebook maybe, in some peoples eyes, morally neutral, but it is absolutely unethical.

Senjinn (sorry forget how it's spelled), DLRiley, and all the other wow haters on these boards, I hope you are eating your hearts out, I really do. There is no defending this move. Period.

[Ashamanchill]

On the lighter side of things...

I'm trying to picture how this one is going to work out in more authoritarian markets, like China.

**A man gets a knock on his door in the middle of the night**
'Hello, we're from the Ministry of Peace and Justice, are you Zhou Wang?'
'Um, yes sir.'
'The same Zhou Wang who posted on the WoW forums about how hunters should be nerfed?'
'Yes'
'Well, as you know, our eminent Premier plays a hunter. You're coming with us.'

[Vision]

The whole "keeping the forums clean" concept wouldn't even work in the first place if personal information wasn't already abundantly available on the web. It would hold no weight if Jon Smith 1 threatens to defile Jon Smith 2 mom. Real names would be as pointless as character names. Which means that this entire "honor" system relies on the info trade within the net itself, thereby in turn promoting the idea of personal security breaches even further.

The whole thought process behind RealID relies on the threat of personal security compromises to "encourage" WoW players to learn morals.

Fucked up IMO.

[WindupAtheist]

Just for shits and giggles I sent a civil but hurfblurfy email to billing, claiming that my account is played by my imaginary teenage son, and that it was only established in my name because he was a kid at the time. I don't mind Junior posting on the forums, you see, but I don't want all his bullshit appearing under my name for obvious reasons. So I'm demanding they change the name on the account. I'm pretty good at the whole "I'm not gonna go bonkers and say fuck so you can write me off, but I'm gonna be a demanding prick" thing.

It'd be nice if they changed it, but mostly I think I'm just trolling Blizzard CS. Fuck 'em, they've used up all my goodwill.

[Modern Angel]

Pretty cool harassing dudes making 30k a year to carry out Blizzard brass' harebrained scheme, bro.

[WindupAtheist]

Spare me. They get paid X dollars to read bullshit email for X hours. The fact that I'm shitting up the system with my fake email doesn't really change their day one bit. Besides, I gave them my real name before all this bullshit existed. Now that it does, they owe me the chance to change the entry. I doubt I'll get it, but hey.

[Modern Angel]

You're allowed. I've gotten to see the opposite end of the email, the guy at the terminal wondering why the fuck the company he works for makes so many bad decisions but he's got rent to pay, kids to feed and a car to fix so what the fuck can he do about it? Tear it up but it doesn't make you any less of a fucking asshole for contributing to the nice big greasy dump those wage slaves get to go through everyday.

[WindupAtheist]

Yeah, those poor bastards, having to read civil but firmly unhappy emails like mine and mostly respond with form letters. It's a fucking salt mine they work in. Hell it's not even phone work we're talking about, where some tard gets on and won't stop talking and you can't hang up. It's email.

You know what? Fuck you. It's an easy, easy job they have.

[Modern Angel]

Oh right, the civil letter with the imaginary people in it, asking them to waste some time doing things with imaginary people. Nobody said it was hard. Man the fuck up and admit that being a douchebag was THE ENTIRE FUCKING POINT.

"but I'm gonna be a demanding prick"

You said it right there. Don't fucking backpedal and say what you're doing is some nice, unobtrusive thing and I have you read all wrong. You're being a prick, the stated goal was to be a prick so don't go saying "I'm not a prick!" when I point out that MISSION ACCOMPLISHED you're a fucking prick.

[Simond]

From the US forums via EJ:

Got in touch with my ex-flatmate, whose sister works as a GM for Blizzard, to see what the internal buzz on this was. Apparently, at the moment the employees are largely as pissed as the players, and she stated that despite attempts to keep it hushed, it has become known that the big creative players within Blizzard are pretty much as unhappy about this as we are. Everybody has been told they are not free to comment on this situation outside of specially prepared statements.

It's still going ahead, however (and here's where in-house rumours and hearsay really start coming into play): from what they've picked up, the Blizzard leads have been told in no uncertain terms that the non-gameplay-related direction of the game is working to a different blueprint now. GC and company are free to play with shiny new talent trees all they like, for example, but for the first time the decisions regarding Battle.net implementation, Real ID, and plans for the general acquisition of new players for the business are no longer in Blizzard's own hands, and that's not going down too well.

Bobby Kotick strikes again!

[Modern Angel]

But this time it was supposed to be different!

Someday all these dev houses are going to figure out that signing on with a big publishing conglomerate, no matter how many honeyed promises of total creative control forever and ever, simply isn't going to be the best thing long term. I mean creatively. Obviously they could fire everyone at Blizzard tomorrow and the brass are going to make out like bandits.

[Tebonas]

I better get used to Torchlight being the closest to a Diablo 3 I will ever see on my computer then.

And I look forward to illegal filesharing being blamed for the diminishing sales instead of fuckwits like Bobby Kotick.

[Simond]

Fuck it, why not pirate SC2/D3/etc? It's probably more morally justifiable than giving Activision money at the moment.

[Trippy]

Vivendi still owns Activision Blizzard. At some point they are going to have to step in a fix the mess that the Activision part of the holding company has become. Vivendi was very careful to let Blizzard be Blizzard when they were part of Vivendi Games as Vivendi knew Blizzard was the goose laying the golden eggs for them. If it's true that Activision is now mucking with Blizzard Vivendi better put an end to that pronto.

[kildorn]

I don't think it's being done to protect me.  I just see all positives for me personally from this.

Then you're very shortsighted

Why?  I don't post.  This only improves the signal to noise ratio for lurkers.  Everyone needs to relax.

edited

Wild guess: you have a penis, and have not personally had friends who lack such equipment have ... let's say Issues on the internets.

This improves the signal to noise ratio for lurkers in a very bad way. People lurking for game information? Not really. People lurking for personal information? Woo! Signal's loud and clear!

[Malakili]

I just see all positives for me personally from this.

Oh, so you just don't care what happens to anyone else as long as its good for you, thats cool then.

[Stabs]

Well we still have no indication that outrage will actually lead to significant revenue loss. People may grumble but keep playing.

This is about money. Money from lead generation. I'm sure most people understand this system already but the basic idea is to collect personal data about people. It already happens all over the internet. Netflix keeps track of the type of film you like so that your netflix page will show stuff in the same vein. Google will show different search results depending on past searches so if you search for Eve you'll get game-related stuff if you've googled game stuff in the past but more Christian stuff if you've googled mainly biblical themes.

What precisely their eventual business model will be we don't know but this part is the hard part: getting the client base to accept that it's ok for the company to publicise their real name. From here it's only quite small not terribly controversial steps to ask people what music they like and where they shop.

If you have enough data on people you can market much more effectively. Suppose you're trying to sell music to 10 million people. You could just pick something generically popular like Frank Sinatra and send it to everyone. But if you have specific data on each person you could sell Metallica to the metal fans, Verdi to the classical opera buffs etc. That's a much more effective advertising campaign than trying to sell Metallica to everyone, including the classical opera buffs.

Why it's so bad that they are doing it this way is not that your real name is made public, most of us are in the phone listings anyway. It's that your ID is public in the very heated context of gaming.

Corpse camp someone? While he's lying there maybe he's alt tabbed to google finding out where you work. Undercut someone on the auction house? Race someone to a rare mining node and win?

So there's a real chance that a really angry person might be sitting there thinking how can I fuck this guy up while looking at your personal information. Expect pizzas to start arriving. Expect anything vaguely embarassing that appeared online at some stage to get re-posted somewhere.

It's the lethal cocktail of nerd rage with accessibility to other players real lives that makes this disturbing.

I'm a librarian. I work with children. I'm also a gamer and have been known to swear at other gamers. I really don't want to be called into my boss's office and be told "erm, Colin, did you upset a nine-year old girl last night? Her mother's just phoned and said you told her to fuck off and die and now she's still crying and scared to log into her World of Warcraft account."

Now from my perspective the cocksucker corpse camping me was just an Orc Warrior, how was I to know she was a young child? But that could still end my career.

Now you could say well don't swear at people, don't let your guard down, wear your professional face when you're kicking back zerging Warsong Gulch and so on, act as if each person you meet is your boss. That wouldn't be a lot of fun though, and it certainly wouldn't be the destressing I'm looking for with games.

The next problem is the internet justice system. You are innocent until proven funny.

Once you're proven funny, like Star Wars kid, the meme will never die.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPPj6viIBmU
He had to have therapy after other children uploaded this without his permission, his family took the other children to court and won and the video is still frickin everywhere. If this boy plays WoW he now has to post with his real name. How long before someone outs him as Star Wars kid and he has to go through it all again?

It is a feature of the internet justice system that you never finish serving your time. In the real world after a certain time (in the UK) convictions become "spent". I believe most other countries have similar legal systems for rehabilitating ex-offenders. You don't have to declare that nicked a snickers bar 20 years ago and society no longer brands you a criminal.

Not so on the internet. Embarrassing personal information never dies. Look how easy it was for us to find some of the ancient Serek Dmart shenanigans from 15 years ago.

Another aspect that will impact WoW will be a guild management crisis. There's a correlation between real life responsibility and in-game responsibility.  How many of those teachers, doctors, and lawyers will want to continue being guild officers? So I hope you're willing to step up and recruit on the forums and do the hateful jobs of guild-kicking and loot assignment because white collar workers won't want to do that stuff any more.

[KallDrexx]

No, the blogging and f13 wouldn't go on my resume but they would invariably show up in a Google search of my name (along with lots of other boring things) and there's nothing I can do about that.  If my potential employer decides to confuse the two, at that point that'd be both our problems .

Edit: Potential employer, and that's being generous I suppose.

Just FYI my company while it was a small 50 person shop googled people prior to the in person interview.  There were quite a few that we found interesting forum postings (some not even relating to facebook) that pretty much disqualified them pretty quickly.  It's a lot easier to get past any prejudice after an interview than before, but most employers don't wait until after the interview to start forming their opinions.

Meanwhile big companies actually pay firms to do all the research about potential employees.  I've gotten to a job having to sign some form having to explain why they couldn't confirm some aspects of my past (namely a job that was out of state and another job for a company that no longer exists) and it listed jobs that I did not even list on my resume.  Companies get paid a lot of money to do in depth background investigations for potential employees. 

[Lantyssa]

Really now?

To Musashi's point (and tangentially Modern Angel's), it's not like I don't understand that assholes exist and that people can make mortal enemies through the course of their life.  I just don't think the possibility of someone wanting to do me serious, or not-so-serious, harm is cause to transgress against everyone else.  That's going to seem completely bonkers to some, I know.

Having been a guild master for a PA I inherited in SWG I've seen some messed up stuff.  This was one that tried to screen for good people.  It turns out one of our original founders was sexually harassing every player he thought was a real female.  One received threats of bodily harm from 'friends' for bringing to the leadership's attention.  No one had pieced it together because they all thought it was just them and went elsewhere or stopped playing.  Would it have gone further had he access to real names?  We can't know, but should we take that chance when these women were already being emotionally devastated?

As a woman, I've had online suitors I'd rather have not dealt with.  Including ones I told flat out I was not interested.  For no reason more than my character was female and I was helpful and involved in the game's community.  I didn't ever give them my real name for a very specific reason -- I didn't want them finding me in real life.

As someone who has worked closely with the transgender community, I've seen enough problems with identity and harassment to last a lifetime.  Difficulties with name changes ranging from monetary reasons to differing state laws.  Company policies which don't take into account the reality that people's names change.  (Besides transition, just about every married woman in western society, and even one of my close male friends when he and his wife took a new last name.)  Try getting your name changed with an MMO company that has a policy of never doing so.

Such a thing forcefully outs individuals who suffer harassment for just trying to be themselves, risks triggering emotional distress, and one that often turns to games that allow them some protection through anonymity from an existence that shits on them at every turn.  This is a group with massively increased chances for self-harm and being victims of physical violence.  One often ignored by law enforcement, stigmatized by the community at large, and treated as subhuman.  But hey, who cares?  Let's post their name for all to see so some hater can threaten, intimidate, and maybe cause them real harm.

I know real people who have been attacked or are dead for being trans.  It might be a minuscule portion of WoW's population, but they're still human beings.  I know a lot of women harassed just for being women.  They actually are a significant portion of WoW's population.  This only heightens the risk to all of them.

[Wolf]

Vivendi still owns Activision Blizzard. At some point they are going to have to step in a fix the mess that the Activision part of the holding company has become. Vivendi was very careful to let Blizzard be Blizzard when they were part of Vivendi Games as Vivendi knew Blizzard was the goose laying the golden eggs for them. If it's true that Activision is now mucking with Blizzard Vivendi better put an end to that pronto.

Ditto. If I remember correctly Vivendi owns 51% of the stock in Activision-Blizzard and Kotick is CEO. I don't think they will step in, unless revenues decline considerably, though. One could always hope Mike Morhaime goes to cry to big daddy to fix this :)

[patience]

Anyone who thinks this is being done to protect us from the nasty trolls needs to pull their head out of their naive ass.  It has everything to do with Blizzard's recent deal with Facebook.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gamehunters/post/2010/05/blizzard-and-facebooks-friendly-social-networking-deal-launches-with-starcraft-ii-/1

I wouldn't say that's the only justification. Korea represents a major source of revenue for the starcraft market and while wow wasn't that big in korea that country is a major mmo market and they initiated a law requiring authentication like RealID. Google restricted youtube comments made in that country instead of implementing authentication.

[Mosesandstick]

AFAIK one of the core tenets of the merger was supposed to be Blizzard's autonomy. If Kotick is telling Blizz what to do that's going to end up being fubar.

[Modern Angel]

Unless Blizzard's autonomy begins and ends at what goes inside the game, per a quote above. If Activision has free reign to fuck around with business models and stuff like that there's fuckall Blizzard can do (assuming Blizzard wants to do anything at all) unless Vivendi gets involved. Vivendi's not going to get involved unless there's a big drop in revenue. There won't be a big drop in revenue.

[sickrubik]

There has been nothing about Activision games including battle.net stuff, so I have a hard time swallowing the idea that it's all Kotick's doing. If they were forcing it, there would be no reason not to also be forcing it in other games and using that as their platform to go against XBox Live, with whom Kotick's always been pissed at because he can't get money from it.

[Modern Angel]

Oh I don't think this is a Kotick thing at all. I think it's a Kotick STYLE thing and I figure he's been consulted but I agree. Until I see b.net and RealID creep into Activision's entire catalog I'm assuming this is a Blizzard thing.

[DLRiley]

Really now?

To Musashi's point (and tangentially Modern Angel's), it's not like I don't understand that assholes exist and that people can make mortal enemies through the course of their life.  I just don't think the possibility of someone wanting to do me serious, or not-so-serious, harm is cause to transgress against everyone else.  That's going to seem completely bonkers to some, I know.

Having been a guild master for a PA I inherited in SWG I've seen some messed up stuff.  This was one that tried to screen for good people.  It turns out one of our original founders was sexually harassing every player he thought was a real female.  One received threats of bodily harm from 'friends' for bringing to the leadership's attention.  No one had pieced it together because they all thought it was just them and went elsewhere or stopped playing.  Would it have gone further had he access to real names?  We can't know, but should we take that chance when these women were already being emotionally devastated?

As a woman, I've had online suitors I'd rather have not dealt with.  Including ones I told flat out I was not interested.  For no reason more than my character was female and I was helpful and involved in the game's community.  I didn't ever give them my real name for a very specific reason -- I didn't want them finding me in real life.

As someone who has worked closely with the transgender community, I've seen enough problems with identity and harassment to last a lifetime.  Difficulties with name changes ranging from monetary reasons to differing state laws.  Company policies which don't take into account the reality that people's names change.  (Besides transition, just about every married woman in western society, and even one of my close male friends when he and his wife took a new last name.)  Try getting your name changed with an MMO company that has a policy of never doing so.

Such a thing forcefully outs individuals who suffer harassment for just trying to be themselves, risks triggering emotional distress, and one that often turns to games that allow them some protection through anonymity from an existence that shits on them at every turn.  This is a group with massively increased chances for self-harm and being victims of physical violence.  One often ignored by law enforcement, stigmatized by the community at large, and treated as subhuman.  But hey, who cares?  Let's post their name for all to see so some hater can threaten, intimidate, and maybe cause them real harm.

I know real people who have been attacked or are dead for being trans.  It might be a minuscule portion of WoW's population, but they're still human beings.  I know a lot of women harassed just for being women.  They actually are a significant portion of WoW's population.  This only heightens the risk to all of them.

Well on the positive side at least we would know how many girls are in my non existent wow guild  
"Wanna fuck" javascript programs being written right now; selling them for a $1.95  

You know bnet could be the beta test for this. I wouldn't be surprised if bnet 2 can be used for console game networking for at least xbox.

[kildorn]

bnet will not. RealID will creep in and become a steam friends thing for activision games. This I can assure you of.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a Kotick thing, but I can assure you that the API is being left open to other games. Just because it makes no sense to develop such a system for 3 gaming properties.

[Wolf]

I don't remember where I read that, but there's an activision suit above Mike Morhaim in Activision-Blizzard's structure. Technically outside of Blizzard, but his only concern is what Blizzard does. One of those packaged goods guys, Bobby is so proud of bringing into the gaming industry, I'm guessing.

It just makes so much more sense if someone else is making the calls on all of these (RealID, missing bnet 2.0 functionality, etc). I just don't see how Blizzard can turn from "the good guys" into money grabbing asswipes over the course of a couple of months.

[sickrubik]

bnet will not. RealID will creep in and become a steam friends thing for activision games. This I can assure you of.

I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't a Kotick thing, but I can assure you that the API is being left open to other games. Just because it makes no sense to develop such a system for 3 gaming properties.

Blizzard has at least one other IP game, so of course it would be open to other games a well. Having the API be left open for other games seems to only be a smart move, even if it is just for Blizzard games. I don't see that as any evidence of creep beyond Blizzard.

[Kageru]

Already had one guild member say if it gets implemented they'll be canceling. If this information is available from in-game tools (you can sort of opt-out of the forums) I can't say I blame him. I also can't see any advantage to gamers from their implementation. Having a system so you can link your wow user name to your facebook is fine, it's a feature. Making it so you have to leak personal information, given to them for the exclusive purposes of billing, just to play the game is flat out retarded.

I can't tell if it's Blizzard getting fat and stupid from lack of competition, Activision running out of new ways to be evil or some horrific merge of both.