Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Made Me Change My Name
First of all, the reason that my account is in violation is that my name contains a title prefix. It took dozens of inquiries to get that explained. 'Cmdr' is the problem. I'm told that since the game has an internal honor system with titles, my name is not allowed. Never mind the fact that 'Cmdr' is not one of their titles. Never mind that countless other titles abound in the game: Mr, Sir, Sensei. Am I in violation of their policy? Probably. Is the policy stupid, meaningless, or inconsistent? I think so, but that's not really why I'm writing this.
I've been using 'CmdrTaco' online for around a decade now. It predates the existence of this website. It has followed me from game to game, both local, networked, and massive. My only problem with it is that as Slashdot grew in popularity, I started finding places where an impostor has taken it. I was excited when I was able to get it in Warcraft. It's like a warm blanket. It's stupid I know, but it's mine.
But Blizzard chose to take it from me. Now let me be clear: this is certainly their right: They own the dice and the board and the rulebooks, and I only play in their world. But If the US Government told me to change my name... let's say Congress passed a law making it illegal to have a first name that is a verb (Don't laugh, the White House cease and desisted The Onion!) Well I guess 'Rob' would have to go. My friends would still recognize me: I'd still have the same face, address, and social security number. I'd just have a cool new name like "Captain Fantastic Malda". With a name like that, the auto mechanics would never try to rip me off!
In this virtual world, two levels gives me a couple new pieces of armor, and suddenly I am unrecognizable to anyone who may have run an instance with me. In guild chat, I am a total stranger to people I may have chatted with for months. My history with other players has been erased. It almost makes me wish that I spent my first 45 levels ninja looting!
It's not like Blizzard decided to change gameplay dynamics. I spend a lot of time working on the Slashdot moderation system, and I never have any problem changing any "Rule" in the system if I believe it will improve the overall functionality of the whole system. If blizzard wants to make my mace have 5 less DPS and 3 less stamina because it's unbalanced, well I can accept that. Balancing gameplay is really hard. But in a massive multiplayer game, your name is different- that isn't about balance, it's about identity.
A friend of mine actually quit Everquest over a forced name change. His name was Marilyn Hanson and while fighting something he was disconnected without warning. When he returned, his name had been changed to a randomly generated one. When he asked GM, he was told that he could not have celebrity name. When my friend asked who Marilyn Hanson was, the GM could not answer, but instead just said arguing wouldn't matter. My friend quit EQ that day.
I don't think I'll quit WoW over this, but I will take away some lessons. The GM I talked to had a nickname of something like Lathanian. I found this disconcerting. If you were arrested by Officer Snuggles or found guilty by the honorable Judge Lawtron, it's hard to take that seriously. In this case 'Punishment' is being dealt. A real human is wearing a shroud of anonymity and handing out the bitchslap to a total stranger. That really makes the whole experience even more dehumanizing. In a massive virtual world, we're still people.
You don't see names and faces, which is why you'll see a 60 corpse camp a 30. When you don't see the real person on the other side, the tendency is just to forget. You expect it from opposing factions- but it feels different when it's the GM. Personally this is something I struggle with in my work too. You deal with a hundred support requests and it starts becoming abstract. Unreal. Virtual. I doubt it's much different if you work at the support counter at a retail store, but I think it's easier to forget when the only communication is chat.
Second, the GMs at blizzard really have no power. I asked for contact information. For email information. For names. For an appeal. To talk to a supervisor. And the best they would give me was the generic help phone line or a mailing address. Like with a stamp! I was told that almost every question I asked was unanswerable in game. I gave an email address but they never emailed. They wouldn't even tell me what was wrong with my nickname until after a half dozen inquiries of why. You have really no recourse against a GM. That scares me.
Lastly, I didn't really realize that I was so attached to my nickname. It's not because I'm "Famous"- We have a lot of readers, but these days very few actually know who I am. And of those, the percentage of people who play warcraft, and are alliance, and on azgalor... well it is very tiny. As CmdrTaco I probably had a total of 5 people actually recognize my nickname (and nobody ever gave me gold because they read Slashdot!). As Violated, nobody ever will recognize me for my day job. But that's really not what bugs me. I was really attached to my name. This character bounded through Azgalor slaying monsters and meeting new people. Now that character is erased and another character stands in its place. Same armor. Same class. But different somehow. I like my nickname. I wish I had it on every system I used. I'm annoyed that someone else registered my nickname on gmail before I could. It's always the first name I try when a system asks me to create an account. I feel strangely possessive about it. I doubt I'm alone in being attached to a pseudonym. And I feel kind of stupid admitting it.
Anyway, I've said my piece on the subject. And just to be clear, I'm not really mad at Blizzard. I think what they did was needless and inconvenient, but not evil. Their policy may be silly, but I still was in violation of it, so I guess I got what I deserved. But I wonder about others. And not just in Warcraft, on any online forum. I wonder about our attachment to virtual names. And if nothing less, it will make me take changes in Slashdot a little more seriously next time.
While I too find this somewhat ironic, he does bring up a good point. In a virtual world where the only truly identifying characteristic is a character's name, how does a name change (forced or voluntary) impact relations with others in the game? A follow up question would be: how could developers, if they so chose, account for this to minimize any negative impact?
If the idea of MMORPG social circles seems trivial or unimportant to you, what about something like a seller's account on eBay? In a digital world when all someone has to go on is the reputation of your "unique ID," what happens when that ID changes such that it is no longer recognizable as you?
Speech is not an abuse of power and Slashdot is his journal.
I might also point out that he specifically said, more than once, that he was not complaining about an abuse of power.
Please keep the petty bitching confined to livejournal.
Et tu? Ahhhhh, the irony.
KFG
It disgusts me how little sense of real community /. folks have. CmdrTaco has been a major force in keeping this place together for years, and you constantly make use of the fruits of his labor. Now he wants to let off a little steam and all you can do is insult and yell at him? What's most interesting is that at least one of these posts are telling him he has no right to bitch, then in the same paragraph complaining about the quality of slashdot itself.
The "abuse of power" charge doesn't hold well, either. He's not asking for any action to be taken. We have plenty of basically editorial articles posted here every day, and many are much more trivial, biased, and/or political. If you can't stand it, maybe you should take your time and energy somewhere else instead of telling him what he can and can't post here.
Please keep the petty bitching confined to livejournal.
Isn't that exactly what Slashdot is? A blog site. Run by a guy called Taco and his friends. Albeit very popular, sold to a larger corporation and run as a business.
Is it his fault he came up with the idea and coded his own system long before Live Journal took off, copied the concept and then gave it to the masses? Does that suddenly invalidate his use of his own site for the purpose he came up with first?
I think we get proprietary about Slashdot. Because it's such a great service, we spend so much time with it, we forget it's someone else's and start to see it as our own. Thus, much like someone coming in and bitching all over our own blog, we take it personally. But, we forget, we're in his house. If we don't like it, we're welcome to leave. Hell, he even shares his code so we can make our own. But, no, we'd rather bitch about his use of his own site.
Everyone, take a second to look past that the submitter is Taco...
This article fits the requirement to be on slashdot even had it not happened to Taco.
1.) It is about technology
2.) It fits into the Games category
3.) It is a legitimate technology concern as to what you can and cannot do on someone elses network
With few exceptions, I've been "Short Circuit" or "shortcircuit" or some variations thereof since the mid 80s, when I could first pick up a CB mic, and when I first logged into a dial-up BBS. Almost 20 years, and I'm only 22.
I like my name. It's been my identity. It's simultaneously an indicator of my taste in movies and what I do for hobbies. People still see me in public places and shout, "Hey, Short, how's it going?"
And I still get irritated whenever someone registers my name on an IRC network, or on a free email server, or whatever. I still get hung up when trying to log into a friend's machine where he had to truncate my username because it caused formatting issues with tabstops in the config files.
There's a lot in a name. Especially when you've spent years with it, not constantly nym-shifting whenever your inbox got filled with spam.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Plus, it isn't like he does this ALL the time.
so I think I'll give him a pass on the occasional rant.
Not that Blizzard would ever be so smart as to apologize or anything. I wonder if they care? (not)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Thanks for saying it! Slashdot has always been my soapbox. It was my soapbox before any of you read it. And it still is. I just choose not to use it as often today as I did 8 years ago. But I felt that this was important enough to talk about.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
This has also been a rule in EverQuest for a very, very long time.
In response to Taco's claim that "Cmdr" is not one of the PvP ranks, I would just mention that "Commander" is, in fact, such a rank - it's the third highest rank, and the server I play on only has five of them at the moment.
In other words, whine more, noob.
http://www.blizzard.com/support/wowgm/?id=agm01723 p#titles
Titles
Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:
* Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)
If a player is found to have such a name for their character he/she may:
* Be prompted to select a new name for the character upon next login
pooptruck
When a name is all you know. I've got two perspectives on this. First, I a have had the same email address cross domain since my first in 1991. I Passed up on some services because my email name was not available and I was offered those annoying 'number+name' combinations. I value that name as a way for people to know I am me. As it stands now, I try to use Monkeyboy4 as my email name was a fairly common combination.
Second, I do research on virtual groups and social identity. Our names matter when we interact fora long time online. A name represents a person exclusively online. Even pictures are minimal in effect compared to names, because the name occrs every time you interact with the person. Psych research in onthis question is showing the importance of our online names both to us as individuals and to the smooth running of social structures.
Finally, to all those crapping on CmdrTaco for postin this, leave the discusion. If you don't think it is worth discussing, then DON'T. If you have aposition within the discussion that disagrees with his stance, byu all means chime in. But to dicuss about whether the post is worthy of being in discussion is ironic and a waste of time.
How did I feel when the clerk at the airline check-in desk told me that I was on the "no fly" list? He then corrected himself and said someone with my _name_ was on the "no fly' list.
You have been using your online name for ten years. I have been using "Daniel P. Smith" for, uh, my whole life.
The airline ticket clerk takes my driver's license away from me, along with the driver's licenses of my wife, son, and daughter-in law, and he and another airline ticket clerk took them to some inner sanctum and did something mysterious, and after about five minutes came back and said we could be issued boarding passes.
On contacting the TSA I'm told that I can submit a form called a PVIF along with notarized copies of three forms of identification (driver's license, birth certificate, passport, etc.). This will accomplish... well, it's not exactly clear what it will accomplish. "Please understand that the TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists."
So what does it do? "Instead this process distinguishes passengers from persons who are in fact on the Watch Lists by placing their names and identifying information in a cleared portion of the Lists."
And what does THAT do? Well, here's what it doesn't do: "Clearance by TSA may not eliminate the need to go to the ticket counter in order to check-in. While TSA cannot ensure that this procedure will relieve all delays, we hope it will facilitate a more efficient check-in process for you."
You're upset because some online game doesn't like the name you've chosen for yourself? Please.
_I'm_ upset because my government doesn't like the name I was born with. And, yes, I'm upset because I can see the look in the clerk's eyes... and in the eyes of the notary at my local bank stamping the notarized copies (yes, of course I caved... what do you think I am, someone with principles?)... thinking "Well, he's probably OK but, gee, he's on the TSA's list..."
I think I'm going to get a court order to change my surname to Cmdrtaco. Hopefully there aren't too many people on the no-fly list named Daniel P. Cmrdtaco.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I think SilentChris might be missing the point.
Our beloved CmdrTaco doesn't dispute that Blizzard has the rights to set and enforce naming conventions in its virtual world. I suspect that if his forced name-change had occurred early in his WOW career, we wouldn't be reading this monologue.
It's the forced name-change of an apparently well-established character in the WOW world, without having an effective avenue to appeal to or complain through that is the problem.
What's happened isn't necessarily wrong (in the "against the rules" sense, at least)...it's just very poorly handled.