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.
This is all spelt and punctuated correctly, and contains no duplicated paragraphs!
Who are you, and what have you done with the real Taco?
I'm not sure about names but the whole Warden issue made me rethink the whole Wow thing. The bottom line is that this game is Blizard's to create policy however they see fit. If you don't like it, talk about it. If the cons outweigh the pros -- it's a no brainer, but otherwise it makes for a good discussion about our online rights and who can control your online identity. Then again... I might go by God online. Does that mean people should worship me?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm sorry to say this, but for the love of god, ITS JUST A FRIGGIN NAME.
Also, this entire post looks like an open letter form cmdr taco to get his account stats back.
Grow up dude.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
A real human is wearing a shroud of anonymity and handing out the bitchslap to a total stranger.
When did the topic become the moderation system?
You could a) take your money elsewhere
b) keep giving them your money, and give them some publicity on /., too
With enemies like you, who needs friends?
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
...if you're playing a Paladin, you deserve everything you get.
"Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend." - Emil Michel Cioran
if you really want something done about it, why don't you link to their webform in the article. i think they may reconsider your case once they get slashdotted..
-- lol pwned
Geez - Get a job Taco.
Heck, I even registered it, defensively, at DKos.
Best Slashdot Co
I'm surprised in your story that your friend on EQ was disconnected and had his name changed. I had a druid on EQ quite a while back named Girlon and everything was fine until I made the surname Girlaction. Anyway, they just sent me an in-game message saying my surname was going to be changed and asked what I'd like to to be. It was really pretty simple.
Finance tutorials and more! Understandfinance
I agree... this is a JE put on the front page.
I know its not intentional, but on the surface, this looks like:
They f*ck around with me? Do they know how I am? I'll show them!
I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard decides to let him have the alias back, but I doubt it would happen (never back someone into a corner on a judgement call).
The call was a petty one... this article is doubly as petty.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
... to my coworker. He had a game name which was pronounced like "car bomb" (He recounted this to me verbally, so I'm not sure how it was spelled) and was forced the change it. The irony? He actually used Blizzard's in-game random name generator to come up with the name. Oh well. I like WoW, so I'll still be playing.
I don't know who you are, but you might want to pick a different username. CmdrTaco is the guy who runs this website and he'll be mighty upset.
qntm.org
Dear Sir -
The blatant lack of spelling and grammatical errors in this post can only lead me to the conclusion that this story was posted using CmdrTaco's stolen identity. I beseech you to end your ironic postings with his account.
Thank you.
Completely unrelated, but there's an interesting story that happens in just about every Navy that uses the title "Sailor" for enlisted personnel. (So far I've heard second hand reports from both the U.S. and Russian Navies.)
:-)
Every so often a fellow enlists who's last name actually *is* Sailor in the native language. More often than not, this drives his superiors nuts as they have to address him as "Sailor Sailor". Since he isn't an officer they can't give him an honorary promotion to prevent confusion, so more often than not he gets his first promotion free just so everyone doesn't have to deal with with the double name.
(Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
This is a pain I know all too well .
I have been kicked from chat rooms and had an account halted on UO for the same reason as the guy on EQ .
My name is satirical , not a troll and I am not pretending to be the president of Cuba
Fidel catsro comes from a sketch I was writing about turning Communist leaders of the 20th century into small fluffy animals who were trying to take over the world.
I had decided to go with catsro . I had the choice of Chairman Meow , Pol cat
I am very attached to this nick name , and really get annoyed if i am forced not to use it
(Though I very much doubt Casrto would ever use his real name whilst playing Ultima online)
on a total side note
I have had several questions posed to me about my Human rights record , these people were serious and got really angry.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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?
After the bnetd garbage, I've refused to purchase any new Blizzard titles. In my eyes, Blizzard has gone from one of the best video game makers in the world to pure evil, deserving nothing but derision. Perhaps you, armed with this fresh experience, will now agree?
Now we know why Taco has so many dupes. He's play WoW all the time!
If you regard this as petty, I understand, but I tried not to write in an agressive tone. My intentions are anything but petty.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I see violations of the naming policy all the time on my "Normal" server, Eonar. Frankly, there are too many to realistically enforce on all servers everywhere. Those that do get picked out feel (rightly so) that they are being picked on.
IMHO, only Role-Playing servers should have a strict naming policy. The only enforcement on other servers should be for profanity/crudeness. No "IfckedUrMom" or somesuch.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
No prefix?
Guess the obvious solution would be:
* TacoCmdr (postfix)
* TheCmdrTaco (infix)
* Taco (nofix)
* AlmightyCmdrTaco (dogmatix)
I think that the real meat of the issue got overshadowed by your commentary on your personal experience. What happens to our virtual identities? What happens when you can't have the name you've built? The same thing happens on AIM and other sites. When you are forced by circumstances to develop a new name, something changes. I'm hoping the discussion here will start to address issues like prospects for a global name registry or a solution to this issue.
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.
It'll be a sad day when CmdrTaco is a celebrity name.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
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.
when did slashdot start having legitimate articles?
Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".
Which, of course, never leads to embarassing and uncomfortable remarks.
Slashdot used to run quite a few opinion and rant pieces written by the editors. Probably the most well-known of these is JonKatz's "Voices from the Hellmouth" series of essays on his thoughts on the whole high school shooting thing of the late 1990s.
Yeah, this hasn't happened on Slashdot in quite a while, but honestly, I'm glad to see it happen again, and I hope that this means it will happen more in the future.
Of course, I think the reason why it ended in the first place is that the comments section for every single opnion piece that Slashdot ran was filled to the brim with slashbots' knee-jerk rants and flaming of whichever editor wrote the article, to the point that the opinion pieces brought Slashdot comments sections to a new low in that absolutely no intelligent discourse would happen whatsoever.
Given that your flame of CmdrTaco hit "+5, Insightful" so quickly, I have a feeling that things haven't changed much since the first time the slashbot crowd killed opinion pieces on Slashdot. So yean, even if I want them back, I admit they probably shouldn't come back.
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
Abuse? Hardly, my friend. Rob created Slashdot. Rob feels personally maligned by a large corporation, and with no success in pleading his case with Blizzard, he's taking the next logical step: publicize the issue.
I respect that this is Rob's playground, and since the subject matter does fit within usual Slashdot fare I do not see how this is "abusing arbitrary power," no matter how livejournalish it may be.
Nathan
It works on macs.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
"The Editor I talked to had a nickname of something like 'CmdrTaco'. I found this disconcerting. If you were arrested by Officer ScuttleMonkey or found guilty by the honorable Judge CowboyNeal, it's hard to take that seriously."
/. staff go about their business in exactly the same fashion that the WoW staff do. Feels different when it's someone else with the pseudonym, eh?
I find it hard to take Taco's complaints seriously when he and the rest of the
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)
I played Everquest for almost four years heavily. I really liked it, but I hated the GM's. Everyone I spoke to in the game had some crap thing happen to them because of a GM. Name change. Disconnect because you said "ass" in /ooc. There's nothing you can do about it.
They're not cheap either. Shit, you can get basic cable for almost the same money as some of these online games per month, and if you have a problem with your reception a cable guy comes to your house! In an MMORPG, you can't even get a name of a supervisor, let alone any actual help.
The customer service in online games is positioned in a way that the customer is always lying, cheating, and trying to pull a fast one. It's not true. The vast majority of players just want to play the game and have fun doing it, and the customer service people should be happy to make their customers happy.
So, I'm glad to see a gripe like this on a busy site like Slashdot. Maybe with more pressure from the actual players of the game, they'll start to pay attention.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
We actually have a well written faq entry that tries to address that very thing. Just because I'm pro linux doesn't mean that I'm against something proprietary. I love video games. I love movies. I love music. I have no problem paying for things that I enjoy. I can still believe that freedom of speech is important. I can still believe that open source is better than closed source. I see no hypocrisy in this. I'm quite pragmatic- especially about closed source and video games. For gameplay reasons, you need to obscure implementation details of some types of games.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I thought this was suppose to be a discussion on how we are attached to our virtual names and not a let us all bitch at Blizzard post but instead it seems to be a let us all Bitch at CmdrTaco for raising a serious question about online identities. Yes, WoW is just a game but just like everything else that is online there are people behind the characters we see on the screen and we sometimes forget that being used to doing what we will with the AI of non online games of the past. I am attached to certain nicknames I use in the virtual world and like CmdrTaco I do get bummed out if they are used by someone else. If there was such a problem with his name why did they not just make their software check some sort of rules for naming or in fact say something 5 months ago to him. It is sad that most GM's are not accountable for what they do. There is noone to turn to if they abuse their power. Blizzard would be wise to implement a supervisor GM model you could call to resolve some problems with GM's themselves. As far as using /. to bring up an interesting topic I say it's about time we discuss something other than the same old DMCA, MS vs Linux or BSD and how Google is taking over the world. Thanks CmdrTaco!
You express your anger with abuse of arbitrary power in a virtual realm by abusing your own arbitrary power, in your own personal virtual realm?
/., you deserve to use it to opine on topics. It's his work capital, if you will. Those complaining about abuse of power are just jealous of that power. And based on my short time (har har) on /. (look at my number) I'd say he rarely uses that capital so he has a lot saved up.
I am disappointed in you. Please keep the petty bitching confined to livejournal.
Wait - so he has spent time, probably a bit(or a lot) of his own money to build this site initially, and this is an abuse of power? That's bullshit. Mod me down if you must - I will not stand behind the cloak of anonymity to voice my disapproval of this rediculous statement. I won't even use my KB.
If you build a site from the ground like
Personally this reminded me of years gone by when Slashdot had more CmdrTaco in it. I didn't think it was petty; you said clearly that you weren't mad at Blizzard, you were just writing a short essay on attachment to online identities. I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.
My troll is called "Slashdot" and I have had a couple of comments so far. But not from GMs as far as I know.
Any forced name changes should happen within a few weeks of signup, not months or years into it.
And to those complaining about the editorial, didn't you suspect it was an editorial from the icon and from the lack of a submitters' quoted blurb? Seemed pretty clear to me, which meant reading CmdrTaco's experience was a choice. If it was lame in your opinion, make better choices next time. Don't tell me you read all of Katz' stuff, for instance!
I for one have NO issues with CmdrTaco occasionally using it as a soapbox for personal yet Nerdly matters.
Been lurking in this place for years. Think its time to stop. When the board becomes the billboard for whining about WoW its time to stop reading. I don't need to see this crap here when I can get the same load of crap at the official WoW boards.
learn 2 play
Slashdot is his journal.
:p
True that. This is one of my favorite entries.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
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.
I can't wait for somebody with the last name "Failure" (or something that sounds like it) to enlist with the army.
Private Failure
Major Failure
General Failure
Mwuahaha...
Although this kinda reminds me of a certain sketch in the movie Spaceballs
Major Major Major Major thinks they're a bunch of pikers for worrying about it...
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Well, after you stated your comment it was quickly at a +5 insightful moderation. Now I can see it with 20% troll and 10% Overrated (with just 4, Insighful). Lets see how the moderation system works here... maybe those "secret powers" make this comment go down to oblivion
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
This is no different than Dvorak bitching about Photoshop, or MOG bitching about PJ, or PJ bitching about anyone she perceives as anti-FOSS. Taco has a platform, he'll use it to talk about whatever he wants to talk about, and you're free to stop listening if you want to. Furthermore, you didn't NEED to read the editorial, did you? It was perfectly obvious what he was going to say from the convenient summary on the front page.
Nonetheless, was this the place to post about it? You know what Slashdot's capable of. Hundreds of thousands of posters, countless lurkers, and even a small percentage taking it upon themselves to avenge a perceived wrong can cause havoc. Remember what happened to Alan Ralsky?
I strongly suspect Blizzard might be about to get some undeserved grief from the Slashdot Horde now. Not your intent, perhaps, to use Slashdot as a lever against them, but this is a very probable and predictable consequence. So: was this the place? Shouldn't this have gone on a personal blog, rather than the Slashdot front page?
This thing's a monster and you're Frankenstein. Careful whose village you point it at.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
If you're playing WoW, you deserve everything you get.
YetStillCmdrTaco (pragmatix)
"Teachers leave us kids alone
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.
Paladins are annoying for the Alliance too :)
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
Good question, bad example.
eBay's feedback system is an attempt to formalize the intangiable reputation-of-names system. It works well; I don't really care who I'm buying from, so long as they have decent positive feedback. If eBay assigned every seller a new random name with every auction, it wouldn't affect my use of the site.
A better example, in my opinion, is your URL. People spent quite a while building identity around their website, and if you have to change that URL then all that effort is lost.
- "I'll probably get modded down for this."
I'd write more, but I'm fairly busy these days. And honestly it's hard for me to write unless I feel something personally. I don't want to just phone it in.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Um... I was unaware Slashdot was a moderated forum sticking strictly to a set of germane topics. If Taco wants to publish complaints about an in-game problem, it's his forum and if you don't like it go read Digg, Technocrat, or Kuro5hin.
I had the exact same thing happen to me, I ran into the same bureaucracy trying to fix the problem, and it made me feel exactly the same way. While Taco's article is written from a personal perspective, this is more than just some cheap blog post. There is a faceless bittwiddler from Blizzard out there giving people a hard time for using names they have used everywhere else, and no way to reign him in.
M
Dude, it's warm because you peed in it with all the excitement...
. . . But wait, is 'Cowboy' considered a title? Because if Blizzard made CowboyNeal change his name, that would be something to get upset over.
I've noticed most of the people complaining in this forum about this editorial are those with higher uid numbers. Now, I'm sure many of them will claim they used to have really low numbers but "forgot their passwords" so they had to create a new account, but we all know that's bogus.
Taco has the right to post whatever articles he wants here. This one does bring up some interesting points for discussion, albeit points that have already been talked to death in other forums. However, he could have posted a long diatribe about the way the bagger at the grocery store put his canned peaches on top of his eggs in the same bag, and that would have also been a valid submission. If he replaced every article with that sort of thing, it would obviously change the whole character of Slashdot, but he (and his corporate parents) can go that direction if they so choose.
I also remember the JonKatz articles, and while Katz was a pompous blowhard who loved to hear himself type, it was a valiant effort at creating original content for Slashdot. It seems the editors have largely given up on that concept, probably due mostly to the slashbot issue you mentioned.
Oh, and don't listen to anyone who compares WoW's GMs with Slashdot's moderation system. Tell me, does WoW have meta-GMs??? If one GM slaps you down, can two more GMs bring you back up? Slashdot is really the only discussion site on the web worth looking at, despite the occasional misspelling or duplicate post, and it is all due to your moderation system.
Party on!
-Brian
Phbhbhbht!!! I'm still trying to figure out when it stopped.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But when I was asked in Dark Age to rename my Infiltrator ("Sofonda Cox"), my Cabalist ("Flaymin Nainus"), my Cleric ("Dawn Keebawlz"), and my Minstrel ("Grabbin Mcgroyn"), I wasn't really that put out. I drew the line when my Mercenary, "Meatmissile," was told that his name was inappropriate. That's when I bailed. I've since learned my lesson and my WoW Shaman is called "Jamin," which is actually just part of my real name ("Benjamin"). I only know one person in WoW whose name was changed, and it was done after he omgwtfpwned the hell out of Alliance in AB for a month and people got sick of it and reported him. His name was "Boodah" which was too close to "Buddha," a deity/religious figure, and thus a rule violation. He changed his name to "Dahboo" which I thought was rather clever.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I really understand about your online identity. I have two names that I use online. One is for gaming and the other is for everything else. I have been online using them since '91 and used them prior to that on BBS's. When I log into a new system, they are the first names I try to choose. In fact my name here is the one I use 'every where else.' If you google my name you find me. I have email addresses on several major mail servers just to keep other people from using that name. I am VERY attached to my names and do not want anyone else using them. Interestingly my gaming name, Babba Lou, would break WoW naming policy as well since Babba could be considered an honorific. Anyway, just my two cents.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
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
I can completely understand. I chose IkkonoIshi because it is a string of letters that is both easy to say, and not likely to be repeated. When I play games that let you have multiple characters; I always prefix the name with Ikko so anyone will know which characters are mine. Should someone decide that "Ikko" is some sort of title, and change it then I would find it very difficult to continue to identify with that character.
Also the whole idea of titles being banned is stupid. Who determines what is and is not a title? What if some obscure book had a title named "Ikko" for someone who placed books under furniture legs in order to level them? Would that make me in violation?
To be fair I'm not exactly sure how long it took. 10 minutes maybe? The GM apparently had to talk to his supervisor before telling me it was the prefix that was the problem. I type pretty fast, so it might have been 8-10 lines of me asking various questions, it might have been like 25. I also explained to the GM that I was a journalist, and i would like to write a story about attachment to on-line identity, and asking to get contact information with someone with some authority so I could get some quotes or feedback for this article. I don't know if he wasn't taking me seriously, or if he thought I was just trying to threaten him. None of that was my intent, but as everyone who communicates via a chat system knows, subtleties of communication are often lost when translated to line-by-line text ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
They guy on Blizzard jot mad because to many of his stories got rejected
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You mean you were able to talk to him? I can't ever get into his office, except when he's out.
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!
The one thing I can't get past in this, is why they "waited" (granted it was probably someone just scanning names one day and just happened to find that one) until level 45 to change it? Change my level 3's name and its not that big of a deal. I borrowed my character's name from an old fantasy novel, and it doesn't violate any of the ToS agreements, but I know I have made friends far and wide (I play a holy/disc priest, I get invites by the dozens daily) and I've even had experiences where someone I've never partied with has heard of me because their friend or guildmate partied with me weeks or months ago. Needless to say I'm always excited to hear that kind of thing, so I can see how a forced name change would be a really bad thing. All of a sudden my name wouldn't exist, and I would again be a stranger to all those people who have heard of me. How do you let those strangers know that you're not who you used to be? Run around Ironforge shouting about your name change?
Now on the flip side, I don't think that each name picked should have to be validated first, otherwise we couldn't make instant characters. I personally feel that Cmdr is hardly a designation of rank. Not to mention you can easily see rank (as its a separate word from your name.) If its in their policy, then I guess Taco is right, and they should have changed it, but I don't think GM WhatsHisFace really understands the impact of a namechange like that.
On a side note, I used to play SWG a while back, and there was a thread about stupidest names. Two that caught my eye were: Emperzizzle Palpazizzle, and one post that said 'I don't know about stupid names, but I just got my ass kicked by a wookie named Tony Danza'. I couldn't stop laughing out loud for at least 5 minutes. Taco, I think you could have done a lot worse than the guy who had all his characters named 'Steveswarrior, Stevespally, Stevesmage, Stevespriest'. (I think his real name was Chuck.)
And they said zombies weren't real!
I've bitched about it on the forums over at worldofwarcraft.com since beta (when it was started)...
The policy is stupid, harmful to the overall community and just lame. It is one of the reasons I cancelled my WoW subscription.
You vote with your dollars, folks. If you find this policy stupid--or it has affected you in a negative way, VOTE. Stop paying Blizzard money to Violate you.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I'm really curious to see if Blizzard will change its decision.. I believe in the power of the media (they did get Nixon..). When I have something that bothers me, I get on my soapbox (my blog) and I talk about it... And since very few people read it, it doesnt do much. When Taco gets on his big soapbox.. I'm sure his voice his heard like thunder at Blizzard.. and anywhere inside this industry. In every company where I worked, most techies read slashdot.. Because like it or not, hundreds of thousands of readers will read this, including many many of their customers.
To be fair, my main currently is a Horde Mage and azjol-nerub. I'd actually agree with your point about alliance- there are many similiarities between horde and alliance (each side thinks the other is unbalanced) but the alliance seems to feel it stronger.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
ThePlayerFormerlyKnownAsCmdrTaco
Rob,
Don't let it get you down, man. I mean, c'mon, try living in the real world with a name like mine. I'll let you ponder that for a while. Ok, enough, you don't need to get any more images. Anyway, I'm rather attached to my real name. It is, after all, mine. But, when I tried to sign up to Orkut, they wouldn't let me use it. Nope. The username 'yocum' is verboten because of those last 3 letters, in that particular order. What's a guy to do? Move on, there's more important things in life than a stupid username.
Cheers,
Dan
I know someone who contemplated joining the Navy, but decided against it because he couldn't bear being addressed as "Seaman Sample".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
At one of my commands there was a sailor (E-3) whose last name was "Guzzler". You do the math.
They temporarily assigned her the title of "Fireman" in spite of her rate. Good order and discipline and all that
Sadly this comes as no surprise to me. Due to a bug I was kicked from the server (while my net connection was fine), on immediately reconnecting I found my my WoW character lost tens of thousands of XP (de levelled!), lost gold and had the quests I'd done still marked as completed (so I couldn't repeat them to get back the XP).
I very politely contacted support 4 times over next week and a bit about this issue, including contacting GM's in game and via the site, pointing to there AUP/EULA agreement which explicitly says they will try to reinstate character data, items and gold in such an event (which was clearly due to a software fault) [ unless, it states, the rollback was part of a forced server roll back, which it was not. ].
Eventually, each time the GM responded with a poorly written reply which made no sense (as if he didn't speak English particularly well and / or hadn't read my ticket at all) saying they 'Don't reinstate characters when there has been a server roll back'. Though I got no response back from interim support query I had made via the web site. I indicated they hadn't done a server roll back at all of course, but they kept replying with the same old canned response.
Faced with the choice of grinding mobs for XP to re-level, re-rolling or quitting, I quit.
Bizzard, like SOE, employ some (not all, I'm sure) very poor quality support staff and GM's, that act seemingly randomly (enforcing rules on a whim, merrily ignoring some blatant abuse - even if it's reported multiple times by different players) and abuse customers in a way that, if they behaved like that in any other industry they'd be fined by watchdogs and/or have legal action taken against them by consumers and consumer groups.
Some of the customers are rude, abusive punk kids I'm sure (and I have very little sympathy for them should they get kicked off - which sadly they rarely seem to) but if you treat customers like scum by default, they will abandon you for the competition the first chance they get.
You'd think, given what we've seen happen to SOE, Blizzard would have noticed that (and how much gamers distrust and dislike SOE - the antics of some of the support staff there are legendary, with repeated tales of abuse by GM's and players calling for them to be sacked following repeated abuse).
You'd think, at the very least, they could employ support staff who can actually read and write English.
Of course the network performance (particularly for some of the servers, the ones in a separate data server in Paris) really, really sucks here in Europe - after ~6 months away I just rejoined so I could play with people I knew recently as that's what every one is playing and it's poor for everyone on our server (to the extent you just can't play sometimes - not helped by the fact that if it goes south on Friday afternoon, you're screwed till Monday morning). That's assuming you can log in (not due to server queues - due to the unreliable login system we seem to have).
I'm sure if the Penny Arcade or GU guys had a problem like this on the US servers there would be a huge stink about it, but the media don't cover it and we don't really have any gaming community representatives of our own to draw attention to it.
Ah, so he descends the throne to post among the proletariat. ;)
;)" In the case of "CmdrTaco", yeah, it's pretty much spelled out right there, and even though your online identity in general revolves around using that name, once you get into the game, that identity has to fit through the "Carry-On Baggage Size Checker of Justice". The GMs should try to help you maintain that identity while conforming to the rules (suggesting "Taco" as an alternative, for example, assuming you're not on a RP server), but they can't treat you any differently than anyone else whose name they've changed.
;)
I will say, though.... Back in the day, I was a senior guide in EverQuest. One of the things that senior guides did was enforce the naming policy. Mostly this consisted of changing obvious troll names containing misspelled profanity or an off-color reference. But it also included rules such as "no title prefixes" (this was long before EQ added AA and tradeskill titles, way back in 1999) and "no non-fantasy names". And yes, there were times that I changed character names despite the pleadings of their owners and their friends. Made me feel like a turd doing it, too. These characters had gotten well into the 30s or 40s (50 was the limit at the time) with no problem, and in a way, their being able to get to that point without having a GM or SG talk to them was almost tacit acceptance of their name - and by that point it had in some fashion become their identity.
However, I am lawful neutral at heart, and when a name fairly obviously violated a rule, I had no qualms about changing it - in many cases where the violation was obvious (even if it wasn't vulgar), the person would laugh and say, "You finally got me.
Of course, you probably already know all this, but I think it's important to drive home the point that the society of World of Warcraft or any other MMOG isn't the same as society IRL. There are different rules in this society that go right down to the essence of one's identity. But they're there at the outset, and the decision is ultimately up to the player as to whether they want to participate in a society where the rules might not grant them the freedom to choose or make use of a particular online identity.
On a side note, I don't know why you would want to name a character "CmdrTaco" anyway. Seems like an invitation for constant spam tells to me
Well, I did post it using the 'Editorial' topic icon, which I thought might subtly imply that I was editorializing ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Problem #2: These games require naming policies of some kind that are non trivial to automate. Since they are non-trivial to automate, there will always be people who slip through. Even if you have a human monitoring each new name (Everquest used to do this), Borisyeltsin may slip through because the human monitoring name approval that day happened to not known who Boris Yeltsin is.
In this specific case the core issue wasn't that CmdrTaco was not a valid name, or even that it was changed, it's that it was changed at level 45, after 100s of hours were invested in the character. This makes the impact of #1 very real.
In WOW name petitioning is basically a form of griefing. There is no review process for names. I've seen people who have petitioned and spoken with GMs (who obviously saw their names) and then weeks later their names were changed because someone petitioned them, their name was reviewed, and then changed. All name petitions come from players essentially. Why did the other 10,000 people who saw Taco before not petition? Probably because they weren't jackasses, and the guy who petitioned was.
I don't have a perfect solution but it seems like the best one is a combination solution:
The grandfather-clause policy would apply to a player's name after some period of time (say 48 hours of play time and one week of real time have passed). It would basically say, by this point a number of humans have seen you and have not complained about your name. Your name was reviewed by customer service. At this point while we can still change your name, we recognize the social impact, and as thus will be more lax in applying the policy.
---
I support spreading santorum
You know, Slashdot doesn't evolve, it's all Intelligent Design.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Are you fucking kidding me? If that's how you feel you really don't understand this site. What would you have said if you were around back then. I wonder.
/. not being like a normal news site. About editoral control not being what it would/could be at CNN. Guess what, that's the point. This site still has character. It's still personable. And as much as I disagree with all the OSS crap, I still read it after years and years _because_ of it's quirky personality and distinct viewpoints from it's readers.
/. ten times a day.
Many people bitch about
The fact that Taco can get up on his little soap box and say "what do you guys think?" is the reason most people read
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
CdmrTaco
If read it quickly it'll pass and most everyone who knows you will recognize it.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
So should slashdot and every other news outlet stop having editorials?
http://www.windmeadow.com/
Subtlety? You must be new here...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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.
A hard pit began to form in the depth of my soul, and I began to realize that my life as I knew it was gone. I had been cut off from everyone who knew me, from who I was. I was faceless, nameless, alone in the world. Now I would wander the shadows of the worlds, a piercing invisible wind, striking terror in the hearts of the GMs. Not just for me but for all who are Violated.
Jeez, man! Should he have written "'''impostor'''" so you could see that the word "impostor" was meant to be ironically entitled?
Malda's is a good and interesting account (ok, maybe not front page material for some, but I liked some of Jon Katz's rants too), and this particular point is not as bad as you make it out to be. The feeling of attachment to a nickname is very common.
I know about this feeling firsthand: I have been using the aka 'Candyman' in offline life since co-workers gave it to me (with a name like "Candeira", I was also called all the variations of "Candy*" during the years before Barker's film). I too feel like anyone who gets "Candyman" before me is some kind of impostor, as I am sure anyone who has been using the nickname and finds I have taken it before them feels I am the impostor.
If anything, CmdrTaco was stating the obvious from a personal perspective, but he was definitely not being contradictory, using some other person's nickname, or mispelling "impostor" as "imposter". As to hypocritical, you can call him that when he starts changing people's nicknames at whimsy or enacting Blizzard's braindead policy. Last time I looked, the anonymous coward posse was still there, as were a bunch of priest impersonators and unlicensed quacks.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
Take any newspaper, it will have rant from the editor everyday dealing with some aspect of concern he/she would raise opinion on, from this aspect, slashdot isn't any different and this story is suitable.
As for the name thing, they should use some sort of filtering while registering users or rethink their internal rank systems instead.
Randomly abusing paying customers has tendency to lower income in any business.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Just a quick side note, I think if you and the other editors participated more in the discussion, you would receive less criticism and seem more "part of the crowd" rather than above and beyond as some posters like to make you seem. It would be good to see someone such as yourself bicker back and forth with someone on the merits of say running a large clustered site or if a game is worth playing. Flame on! :-) Excellent essay by the way, its important that issues like these are verbalized so innocent gamers can see the problem is on a larger scale than just them being personally targeted and unable to do anything about it. Regardless of what others are posting, I think this was a responsible use of your position and abilities (the site is after all *yours*).
Regards,
Steve
You occasionally hear ingame about someone well respected selling their account. Their gameplay changes, but their avatar/gear/chat stays the same. I imagine it to be very awkward. There are a dozen players I look for, that i want to party with. Who are good players, and fun to hang out with in a virtual world. To suddenly find yourself playing with someone that looks the same but acts different is something totally new. Something that happens virtually but not IRL. It's a new issue in a virtual world.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Don't think that the irony of all this is lost on me either- I've said many times that over/underrated mods on Slashdot are problematic. We're definitely removing them when we rewrite the system. And we've talked a lot about some sort of feedback system so moderators and meta moderators can figure out a way to explain their actions. My problem with that is that I don't want the thing to degrade into namecalling. I don't have time to meta moderate the comment on a meta moderation ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I get it.
Mostly because i've been 'solemndragon' online since '94.
It's derived from my name, and i guess i'm pretty attached.
It bothers me when other people use it, because i feel there should be some recourse for the user of an online name. I would like to be able to say that there were no other solemndragons. Never happen- the more i use it, the better the odds that someone will like it and steal it- but it's still mine, and it was original when i came up with it.
(On the other hand, i had a great uncle named john smith, and he wasn't able to use his name anywhere without someone assuming it was fake. There were so many John Smiths in the world, both real and alias, that his name lost value. He said it came in handy when people WERE looking for him. He liked his name, but there were too many similar ones for his to be identifying. A superunique name loses value when copied, a common name comes in handy when trying to hide but not when trying to stand out. The world needs more 'anonymous' possibilities so that we can choose which aspect we want.)
Know what I'd like? A name registry, same as we use for our websites. If i can demonstrate being solemndragon for ten+ years (or at least that no one else was before me) then i should get my name and the rights to use it. And be allowed to refer to that in using my name on games sites, etc.
I know it won't happen, and if it were, there are a half dozen problems with it that i haven't foreseen (buit someone will surely point out in triplicate) but i can still wish.
So I get it. It's not about can or should or how or why, it's about hey, you were you, and now you aren't that version any more on their game, and maybe some discussion of this is not really such a bad idea. I see this as relevant because it's related to online identity in a vital way. It's not quite 'your rights online,' but it's at least an opinion piece on the value of a name.
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Yeah well, since I didn't have an article to ignore, I just figured I'd skip the story instead. This is /., right?!
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
I am not a crackpot.
I think its refreshing to hear someone articulate something original. Getting rubber-stamped, reguritated news is fine and all but this reminded me there are people in here. And even better, people that think about the times they are writting in.
Let the lamers moan. Good article Cmdr.
Quack, quack.
The real CmdrTaco will never find out; it's been years since he last read Slashdot.
Seriously though, World of Evertux Galaxies would be an awesome game. Think of it, Massively Multiplayer Online Fighting Penguin Simulation!
The Farewell Tour II
Wow! Check out that UID! Can I buy your handle from you?
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Long ago I was 'bitch-slapped'. What did I do? I down-modded one comment, apparently the wrong one. For this crime all of my karma (which was significant at the time) was removed. Apparently the guy I downmodded was some buddy of the slashdot inner circle (if I remember correctly, the notorious Signal 11). I was not aware that one could be 'bitch-slapped' for downmodding a single comment.
I received no explanation and my karma was never restored. I tried to explain that even if my single moderation was incorrect (which is arguable), my overall pattern of moderation was consistent and sound (in fact I rarely downmod, then or now). My arguments fell on deaf ears.
Keep whining Malda. I hope they ignore you.
Why not just CommandHerTaco?
I don't think I ever want to think of the term "circumfix" again. It sounds like a certain surgery gone bad.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Right. CmdrTaco's male friend's actual real-life first name was "Marilyn." His last name also happened to be "Hanson." In a hilarious coincidence, it also rhymes with Marilyn Manson.
Any other dumb statements you wanna throw our way?
"Sufferin' succotash."
CmdrTaco, you are here providing insight about the virtual world. Slashdot has been reporting on this since the beginning.
/. readers I'm sure.
Those who accuse you of being "petty" or whatever seem to have forgotten the context they are in. The Internet!
If anything, this shows the limits, mistakes, and abuses of the virtual world by those who create it - that would be
Your post is insightful and informative about a regular subject on Slashdot.
My thanx, and sorry some people out there have lost perspective.
Bullshit. To discuss a concern of virtual identity without disclosing his own personal interest in it would be the height of dishonesty. Maybe you're just too used to reading journalists who write without a disclosed agenda, leading you gently by the hand down their path, and making you think the entire time it was all your idea.
Ultimately Blizzard has the same problem as the DMV, we're infinite in our creativity in coming up with offensive content that they are finite in their ability to filter it...
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I considered moderating you down as flamebait for cussing... but you actually express my opinion pretty accurately here. Slashdot is not a normal news site. Never has been. And if it ever has to be one, thats probably when I quit and move on and flip burgers somewhere.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Slashdot stopped being Taco's personal blog when VA Software bought it and employed him. Oh, and let's not forget the advertisements, slashvertisements and the subscription sales. This makes slashdot a BUSINESS VENTURE (granted a very poorly-run one, if VA's stock is any indication (it's lower in value than SCO's!)), and somebody's personal blog no longer. To paraphrase a previous poster: FoxNews may be Rupert Murdoch's property, but does that make it alright for him to have his "i didnt read the speed limit sign, how dare they give me a speeding ticket" story read as headline news by the anchors? Taco's bad experience belongs on his journal, because that's what the journals are for. He's abusing his ability as a site editor to put this on the front page.
This would be relevant to gaming if it were a well thought out article about online identity, instead of somebody whinging that they had to change their name in WoW because they didn't take the time to read the rules of the game. I've seen Taco point others to Slashdot's years out of date FAQ, so now I'll take the time to point him to one: Part 3, Section A, Subsection 13 (naming conventions) AND I QUOTE (though the emphasis is mine alone):
Now, if you're going to join a service that you must pay a monthly fee to use, that you're going to put in all sorts of time over, then don't you think it would behoove one to read the fucking rules of the service? it's pretty clear that Taco was breaking the rules, so what exactly does he expect to happen? Does he expect to get an exception just because he's That Guy Who Makes Slashdot Run? If it took him "dozens of inquiries to get that explained" then he needs to learn to read the rules of the game before he plays. I don't play Wow, and it took me about 10 seconds to find the relevant rules page and its section regarding names. It's really not that hard.
This is a non-story, the only reason it's on the front page is because of Taco's abuse of power. To be fair, at least it's something fresh and recent instead of the usual "news items" (or duplicate posts) that showed up on the BoingBoing RSS feed weeks ago...
Disgruntled-looking plainclothes GM, his hair ragged, storms into the office of the Blizzard CEO.
"Sir!" he pants, "We've got a problem on US Nathrezim. A bug is preventing an alliance guild from running Molten Core! They've got 40 living, breathing people with families and jobs who've set aside an entire day to get leet loot, and they've been bamboozled!"
"Great scot!" cries the CEO. "Did you reset their raid IDs? Talk to the server admins? The programmers? Metzen?"
"No sir! According to the GM Code, Article 3, Section 6, I am not allowed to do anything useful whatsoever, anything which may be construed as a favor, renumeration, or a meaningful and intelligent action!"
"You snivling little shit! Do you know what this means? I'm going to be up all night making phone calls to those people, apologizing and begging their forgiveness. These wounds don't just heal by themselves. We've gotta do something now, before this situation gets out of control."
"But sir! The code!"
"Damn the code! You mention that pile of marketing bullshit to me one more time and I'll have you flaggelating yourself with a rusty scourge til next month -"
"- I thought that was just a rumor -"
"- with no overtime pay! Now, go down there and grab the lead programmer by the scruff of his neck and tell him he's got to fix this pronto. In the mean time, get your ass out to GM Isle and start farming epics for these guys. Anything they want. [Perdition's Blade] or [Eschander's Right Claw]. Hell, give the main tank the full Wrath set. You don't go home until they have everything they want."
"Sir! Yes, sir!"
"And if I ever hear some shit on the slashdot forums about you not responding like a human being again, I'll bust your ass down to QA monkey for Ghost so fast your thumbs will fall off! In fact, you should consider every day I don't an example of my generousity and mercy. Aren't I generous and merciful?"
"Sir! Extremely, sir!"
"Now, get moving, GM!"
I find it disturbing how many people just say, "who cares", "shut up", "this isn't the right place for this", "stop whinning/bellyaching" etc.
First, stop whinning about Rob whinning. It's hyppocrittical and innaccurate. If you want to take issue with a point of view in the article, fine, but the one line bashing is immature, and a waste of time. You're not contributing anything, you're just flaming.
Second, this article nicely falls into the "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" category. I'm a nerd, this matters to me, so it's fine. If it doesn't matter to you, move along. There are planty of articles that don't interest me here, so I don't read them.
Third, it's an opinion piece, which I think is admerably objective. It might be a little preachy, and yes, even a little whinney, but it's heart felt. Why should that be a bad thing. There's no "call to arms to take down Blizzard", there's only a feeling of unfairness, with a realization that Slashdot has the potential for the same abuse and missgivings. There's a moral, or a lesson if you will.
Finally, this is Rob's place! HIS creation, brainchild, work, hobby, etc! Why would he not have a right to throw in something slightly personal now and then? Yes Slashdot would be nothing without the community, but the reverse is also true. And it's not like Rob writes these articles every day. So even if this were the fluff piece some of you seem to think it is, I think it's ok if he writes one every couple years.
The main point of the article, is that people with the power/ability to affect people they'll never see, should think before they act, and be accountable for said actions, and that Rob has a new appreciation for what this means in regards to him. And as a side note, he's upset he lost his name in WoW. Perhapse those of you who were so quick to object to the article, without stating anything meaningful, should take that thought to heart and put more thought into your posts from now on.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
Geez, you're in a grumpy mood today. Excuse me for trying to combat the invariable idiocy around here with some informative links. I'm sure you'd much rather have 50 more "This isn't CmdrTaco's blog!" entries as opposed to the variety of interesting and funny responses generated by my post.
You should change your sig to "Breakfast Pants: Working against intelligent postings for over 3 years!" (Replace the number of years as appropriate.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I've used my family's "nickname" -- rather than a long cumbersome Southern three-part name with a Roman numeral trailing it -- since about age five. Nothing in the world except my Social Security card and birth certificate had the long form.
Until this year when the PeopleSoft company took over my employer's staff database, and had to change everyone's name on record (they say because it has to match the Social Security database).
So Blue Cross simply terminated the health record file (close to three decades worth of records) attached to the name I've been using, discarded it, and created a new file under the Social Security file name -- with of course the same SSI number.
So they bounced a bunch of medical bills reporting "that subscriber terminated his health care coverage." Although they claim they do use the SSI as their internal identifier so they shouldn't have thrown the files away. And they told my medical practitioner's office to discard the old files as well -- and they did, the pea-brains -- and opened new empty files for the new SSI-official name Congress now insists I use.
Keep your own medical history as I have done -- else I'd have no health records.
You worry about an online game? Trying to get your life back after your identity is stolen by your government. Or maybe it's not the government, but PeopleSoft claims that's the reason they did it. Or maybe it's Blue Cross, but they blame PeopleSoft.
It's happened to other people I know too -- blindsided them as well when their files went away.
War of Worldcraft, I think this is.
What Taco says:
What Blizzard hears:
BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH I don't think I'll quit WoW over this BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
The other problem with the editor participation is that some percentage of people don't like "Authority". Why should my opinion be more valued just because I picked the story? I already said my bit by selecting the story in the first place- beyond that, I'd rather let the community voice their opinions.
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Erm, Blizzard's forums are "filled with a million whining kids bitching about 'game balance' or how X job got nerfed in Y update." Thats why a lot of people avoid them. I'm not sure what forums you're reading, but the WoW forums are pretty infamous about that sort of thing.
As far as censorship goes, I've seen plenty of posts extremely critical of Blizzard stay up on the top forum page, unlocked, for a very long time. Typically when a post is locked, it is because its extremely vitriolic and contains little to no constructive criticism.
There's a reason the government has a formal proceedure for changing names. They can still keep track of you - what else is a social security number for? But they understand that changing a name has signifigant consequences.
Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
I had a night elf named "Nymphshadow" - it seemed slightly clever on an RP server to have an elf with a nymph-like name. I was told at level 40 that my name violated their policy. I asked why and was told "it's sexual" I sucked up and changed my character's name to "Feyshadow" and still to this day see "nympho", "hooterz" and other similar names of characters well into their 50's. I don't mind a policy. I mind when it's applied to me and not others.
I think one way to come to grips with it is to try thinking about a seperation between an online identity and a character's name in a game. You can retain your online identity using it with accounts and such. But mentally speaking, when you cross the border into a game, your identity can be the one controlling the character, not the character itself.
That's how I've always viewed my identity. Maybe I'm Jekler here and everywhere else, but my character's names in games aren't usually named Jekler even if my account name/ID is.
Seriously: You broke the WoW rules. No use whining on /. about it.
"Cmdrtaco" or anything simular is a name that does not comply with the WoW Naming rules in more than one way. That's a simple fact. l33tspeak and cool modern culture nicks that are clearly recognized as such, just as unspeakable consonants-only silables go against the spirit of Fantasy RPGs and thus are rightfully prohibited in WoW. I'm so glad WoW has such strict rules. There still are people who get a kick out of pointless or twisted namings and they barely get through with it, but at least they don't suck entirely.
If I were a GM on WoW I had done the same and asked you to change your name.
Sorry, Commander, no Taco for you. Your imposing a fantasy character, so come up with a fantasy name. Or go somewhere else to play online.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
>> but as everyone who communicates via a chat system knows, subtleties of communication are often lost when translated to line-by-line text
Right. That must be the reason why human interactions, relationships, and perhaps even the entire scope of civilization could never advance until emoticons were invented.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
I've been playing mmorpgs since the beginning of UO. I'm sorry to say that I've found Blizzard's overall ability to respond to player concerns effectively inexistant in general
The only feedback mechanisms is the forums, which are unreliable, unsearchable, and lose their history due to posts mysteriously disapearing after a while with no evidence of their existence ever. I can see every post I've ever made to Slashdot over the years, but I can't see posts I made to the Blizzard forums just a few months ago. It's simply just appalling that with the resources their customer base affords them they can't put toghether a decent bulletin board system.
More importantly, however, I can't begin to count the number times I've seen posts with a lot of effort put into them and huge feedback from the player base not even get a single reply from an rep. there. After a while, when people don't get a personal response from their feedback, they stop making it. What's keeping the wave of feedback happening right now is the huge base of players who have yet to really experience the mediocrity of the wow player forums. Simply put, in my book Blizzard gets abysmal marks for community interaction.
World of Warcraft remains a fun game to play. However, in my opinion, without significant community improvements Blizzard stands to lose out massively to the next wow that comes out.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
As more M3, thats just to crazy ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
CmdrTaco, you can't take what you dish out? I've submitted articles in the past that have been rejected and then when I write to Rob, he says that his policy is to not discuss why articles are rejected. Well, that's VERY helpful. Think about your own processes before your condemn others.
I know how you feel, not that I had a name change forced upon me, but confusion arrose from an uncontrollable situation.
:o( :o(
;o)
:o/
I had been Yakumo online for several years before a German company decided to start using it to sell computers and parts online, god knows why, it's a Japanese name, genderless, but most comonly used for males.
The first time I heard of the company someone asked me why I was named after their keyboard
Since then Yakumo's have sprouted up all over the place and i have to fight for my nick every page I sign up on, or IRC server I join, and it never seems to be Japanese, or Anime fans, it's always germans who decided to name themselves after their PC
I end up with a lot of Germans PM'ing me on IRC demanding 'their name back', or their friends trying to chat to me in a language i don't understand, when I spent many years on the same networks without ever having any conflicts.
There's the Yakumo brand DVD players now, I don't know if it's a related company.
I figure it must be karma for all the european players I used to batter playing Quake....
I'm proud of my old Quake Clan(UNR, Clan Unreal) but I'd preffer not to have to attach it to my login, just nothing else seems appropriate.
As for blocking people for celebrity names, mentioned in another post, that's ridiculous, celerbrities have the same names as often hundreds of other people, many of them far older, people have a right to use their own name online, so if nothing else the usser should have been contacted.
anyway... many sympathies CmdrTaco.
This is stupid. CmdrTaco has the "Cmdr" prefix, as in Commander. This is not that big a freakin' deal.
Or rather, it wouldn't have been big deal if they didn't let him register the account. However, he got the name, played for months, and then was forced to change it.
I wouldn't have been too unhappy about not getting my preferred gmail address, but I'd be pretty annoyed at this point if someone came along and said I had to change it. If its really as simple as not having specific names, then the "Cmdr" prefix should be auto-blacklisted and you shouldn't be able to register it at all.
Since Bliz made him change his nick he wanted to make damn sure that everyone on his server knew his new name was VIOLATED.
Now he can continue to reap the in-game fruits of his fame. ;-)
Hear hear. As an old-timer I must say I miss this part of slashdot. This site used to be, in part, a vehicle for smart, engaged, motivated and with-it individuals to comment on how their lives, as technology enthusiasts, are affected by their use of technology. This is an outstanding article in that tradition.
Write on, Rob. Write more.
Paul
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
I wanted to reply with just an emoticon, but I got my own damn lameness filter ;)
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I considered moderating you down as flamebait for cussing.
You must be new here. You cannot post in the same discussion you are commenting in.
"My friend quit EQ that day." Sounds like your friend grew just a little bit that day.
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Remember?
I have no pitty for a millionaire bitching about how he can't have his username on WoW. Seriously, do you?
Most of you don't even know what the OSS community used to really be like. It ain't what you see here on /. today.
...
You're right there Obediah.
Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here bitching on slashdot?
Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a good compiler.
A command line based compiler.
Without an IDE or APIs.
Or a compiler!
On a filthy cracked C64.
We never used to have a computer. We used to have to code on punched hole cards.
The best WE could manage was to beg for compilation time on the mainframe at night!
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day on OSS, and pay Linus for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
Never piss off a user with a bigger soap box than you.
All these games WoW, Eq, etc. Could outsource the name validation system to a third party who would allow people to register specific usernames across all such (participating) games. Ask people to pay US$1/month (US$12/year) to maintain a username, password protected, on all participating systems. That way, people who *really* want their names get them. Any violations (copywright, foul language, famous people) would be dealt with by this 3rd party - at the time of creation of the name. Perhaps it takes two weeks, or whatever, to reserve the name - and maybe there is some kind of setup fee I don't know - but once you have it, they stand by it. Appeal to them. If they reject your name, you pay nothing. If you don't want to pay for a reserved name, you deal with (a) your name not available, (b) your name accepted then rejected later - but you pay nothing (extra) and it's handeled by blizard/SOE/whomever.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
The lack of oversight/appeal is a pure Blizzard-management problem. They chose to allow the GMs to run free, and must accept the discontent so generated. It may not be much in each individual, but at the margin it does sway large number of potential customers.
I was the FIRST person in the world to use the nick "MasterHacker" (with or without a space) since the first BBS days, I found it really annoying when people used it on IRC and stuff like that.
Now how about this one- I was the very FIRST person in the world to use the nick "Wanderer" anywhere for any reason. How can I make this claim?
I was using the damn nick in early 1976 ! And used it ever since then, from multiplayer games on atari 400s and 800s to vic-20s, TSR-80s, C64 hacking, later on PC BBSes, and onward.
its a weirdly personal thing. Something thats been *mine* for decades, literally, suddenly showing up somewhere by some gimp that doesn't know squat.
It really does feel weird.
and then you try using odd names you think no one else will guess. "ByteMe", that is another one I coined first. It's fun. And it gets taken all the time now.
it got to the point where it was almost impossible to log onto an IRC server for a while, every single name I tried, they were all taken, I mean everything.
Even my fabled "RouterSlayer" has been "stolen" by others, as well as my fabled "BitSlayer", yes even "NetSlayer". it was all me... used to be anyhow.
The point is, how the hell can you be original any more? Where's the uniqueness when every single name is already taken, how to identify YOU, you want your personality in there somewhere. something different from the norm.
I came up with a new nick recently, its actually borrowed from something. I will never say what it is or where I got it. But so far, no one has copied it. We'll see how long this lasts. Cuz after that, I dunno any more. Maybe I can think of something new, fresh, and unique.
But it's getting damn hard these days.
Also makes me wonder where all the old hackers I knew vanished off to...
so, its been a few decades, but greets to-
Trans-Net, PE, eaglesoft, KJ, The Cob! (heh), Shadow Rhyder, Covert Operations, TAPPS, TOPPS, and even TGI. God-damn I miss Sublime-Persuasion...
Yeah, that's a bum deal, alright. I've seen it with WoW before, and it certainly does suck.
But, aside from WoW, the idea of keeping ones virtual identity is very personal. I've been 'Lionman' for 18 years, but even in the worthwhile places we want to go, to take our virtual identity, we have to compromise, and use something different.
I think when we do that, find that someone else has taken our name on a system, what shocks us most, is that the name we've used for years, turns out to be a name someone else has choosen to represent themselves with, and makes us a little less unique. There's someone else out there who could be mistaken for us.
I've had friends ask me if various websites were mine, because they appeared to sport my virtual name. They weren't me, of course.
Most of it comes down to, IMHO, that we find we're not unique, that someone else has the same idea we had, or worse, saw ours and stole it. It's the slings and arrows of wanting to be someone that stands apart in the vast world that is cyberspace today.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
I've been using my gorbachev nickname for over 15 years now. First used it in an online multiplayer realtime war strategy game specifically cause I knew it'd piss off the people I wanted to piss off. No matter how overboard I went with my soviet alter ego, no matter how self deprecating satire I would write, people still believed I was a communist outside of my alter ego. They flamed me for it, they hated me for it, and I laughed.
I don't know what I should've felt about the Emails I got from people after Raisa Gorbachev passed away 1999. I received about a dozen or so Emails from people sending me condolences on her passing. I did feel flattered one of them said I'm the greatest person alive. Come to think of it, it's like The Greatest President. Evar.
Halo 2 is an interesting experience with my gamertag. Every 10 games or so I get the 15-year old redneck from Nuclear Shelter Bunker Town, Bumfuck, who thinks he's going to insult me by calling me a commie bastard bitch homo f***. They also like to kill me a lot, like in "I'm going to come and kill you, commie bastard" not like in "I'ma pwn you n00b".
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
And I suppose you're paying for your ability to post articles on slashdot...
The only problem with your FAQ entry is that it says "don't expect others to think the same." Yet the moderation system ensures that those opinions that disagree with the majority who have modpoints that day will be rejected. All it takes is one or two downmods, and you're below most people's threshold.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Nobody ever thinks that *they* need to be held accountable for how their actions affect others. It's always *other people*, people with "real power", who need to be challengeable or redressable.
Accountability is an inconvenience, and a threat to the target's power. Few people *want* to be accountable; it means that you can be penalized for doing something wrong, and people always do wrong things, so its inevitable that accountability will lead to penalty of some sort (however minor); the fear is that an irrationally vigorous redressing will over-penalize you (and this does happen).
The point is... Everyone says that those with power need to be accountable for it, except when it comes to the power *they themselves* hold. GMs aren't powerful -- not *really* powerful -- so they don't see any need to be accountable. Of course, they *do* have *some* power, but it's never "enough" to require accountability. (I'm using GM here as a relevant example, but it's hardly the only valid one -- insert the term of the agent of power you most love to hate here -- site admins, police, CSRs, etc.)
There's an annoying norm of disproportionate contraries, particularly in the online world. A GM making a bad, misapplied, or abused decision on another player will retort to complaints with "it's only game"; in the grander scheme of things (and there is *always* a grander scheme of things, in everything, which most people forget when they apply this adage) it "doesn't really matter". Well, if the actions of a GM aren't such a big deal, then accountability of the GM shouldn't be a big deal, either. But clearly, it *is* such a big deal, to the GM. The use of their power is not important -- but the fear over the questioning of that use *is*.
There's always a touchy-feely reason not to challenge the admins, either. They're volunteers, or they work really hard, or they are really good people, or they "could have done worse". All of these are provided as reasons why the individual should not be able to challenge the people who exert power over them. What this implies, of course, is that being a volunteer, or working hard, or being lenient (while still being wrong) all become licenses to abuse or misapply power.
I guess I can't entirely blame the unfortunate empowered individuals for treating accountability as a personal insult or unfair restriction on them; they for whatever reason don't recognize that they have power and that any power should come with appropriately proportional checks on it. Of course, the people above them, both within the paradigm and within society, are always looking to avoid accountability as well. Sometimes the people succeed in compelling accountability upon them; but sometimes they don't. And rarely does it work in your favor to wilfully invite accountability. You have to do it due to principle and selfless benevolence, not entitlement and self-aggrandizement.
What really is disappointing is that even intelligent geeks can't be expected to believe in the universal application of principles like accountability of power. They're just as susceptible to the allure of power, however minor, as the common masses. So much for geeks inheriting the earth.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
First, let me just say that I *like* the name policy on RP servers. It helps with the RP, yes, and it also helps get rid of l4m3rz. Seriously. I've found that most kiddies, when denied their 1337 names, decide to go elsewhere. As such, when the level gets high I will do some gardening by reporting names.
And I have, myself, been reported.
I had a gnome warlock named "CruelCoconut" early on (first week of WoW), and after a few months she got reported and had her name changed to a random one.
I looked through the TOS, through the explanations of the naming policy, talked to other people about "is this RP?" - I couldn't find anyone who would say that "CruelCoconut" was not a good RP name for a gnome warlock (well, there were a few who said it sucked, but that's besides the point ;-) ).
So, I emailed Blizzard at the contact email they provided with my argument, and a request to find out how my name violated the policy.
I don't think they even read anything beyond figuring out who I was and what I was complaining about. They emailed back a form reply that boiled down to "no" - they didn't even tell me HOW it violated the policy.
This, after saying that that email address was for appeals!
I would've felt a lot better about it if they had just told me how I violated the terms. As it is, I think it's left up to the determination of individual GMs, and I think they vary widely in their thoughts on the matter.
For instance, "FreshPrince" is around after being reported. I had a few other instances, but can't think of them now. I'm sure others can.
The point is that what's really galling is how hidden away the decisions are, and how indeterminant reporting is.
"A man is free who has to obey no man by the law."
At the very least, Blizzard should state what aspect of the naming policy is violated. Internally, they need to distribute a calibration test: a list of (say) 20 names. 5 firm violations, 5 firm non-violations, and 10 borderlines. Make sure everyone's on the same page.
But, of course, it's their game and their rules - they can do what they want.
I'd like to point out the * beside his name.
He is paying.
C17H21NO4
You bring up an intersting point about the logistics of the situation, but it still stands that in a purely virtual space there needs to be some way to identify people. Not necessarily in any sort of formal way, but on a personal level. Sure it's a huge world and someone might have the same name as a good friend, but IRL I can recognize them relatively easily. I can tell who they are even if they're going by a different name. In the virtual world of the Internet, however, we don't have that ability. Your name on a screen is the only way to identify you. Some people don't really care about this, they'll make up a new, random name everywhere they go or come up with some juvenile name whenever the mood strikes them. Others go for something more akin to an actual nickname. An online name and handle that is relatively unique and can be tracked and followed. In this way I can have a reasonable degree of understanding when I encounter people that I might know.
I've been using my current handle since... well, at least 10 years now. It's followed me over from local BBSs to the Internet and it's just about the only name I've ever used. At this point it's something I respond to like a real-life nickname. If someone yelled it on the street I'd turn around and check to see if they were talking to me. I feel normal and comfortable to receive snail mail addressed to me under this name. Most importantly I know that if a friend of mine sees a posting on a message board somewhere online or sees me wandering around IRC or wherever they'll be able to tell that it's me they're talking to. When you take away my name you've taken away who I am. Just like in myth names are power.
For further consideration on the topic of names online I strongly suggest Vernor Vinges' classic short story "True Names". I recall reading it back in '95 and being awestruck by how close he came to really getting it even back in the 70s when it was written.
If only to get parent modded up, yaknow, 'cause parent, you really should be, but I suppose many people might just go "bah, no link? That's no use" and just walk away, but a quick google search confirms that this little script rather directly takes on the problem CmdrTaco was noting with people not knowing who one is . . . so, here's the script for prefixing comments in WoW so people know what character you're an alt of; technically not the situation here, but obviously the solution would work exactly the same.
In other words, mod parent up. I mean, he may be wrong about Curse Gaming being down, but anyone reading parent and feeling like getting the mod will find it pretty much immediately through all-knowing (oh, if only that were true, one wouldn't even have to type the search parameters!) google, so again I reiterate, mod parent up!
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Don't make me stop the car, kids.
Mind the Gap
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.
This has been the fundamental problem with darn near every MMORPG: the "officiating" is often arbitrary, and even worse there is absolutely no appeal process. On some games, the rules are often so byzantine and conflicting.. when you can actually read them, that is.. that nearly every player has been in violation of one at some point.
This is what killed Photon, a laser tag style game center. There was rampant corruption in the referees, and it just got to the point where people stopped playing.
GMs need to be held accountable to somebody. There needs to be an appeal process. And, worse: the rules need to be clearly defined and human readable.. and every rule needs a reason, also clearly defined. If there's no reason, there doesn't need to be a rule. If the title "Cmdr" doesn't exist in the game, there should be no problem with CmdrTaco, because there's no reason to ban it. Worse: the fact that the character was allowed to play for over 6 months before there was any issue should also have bearing.
Until MMORPGs solve these problems, they will continue to be viewed upon by "adult" gamers as not a place they want to play. Adults expect fairness: after all, even if you get a photo radar ticket you are still entitled to some due process of law. MMORPGs should be no different.
yeaa, i'm gonna have to disagree with your higher UID numbers comment. I have been an avid slashdot fan/reader for many years, I actually don't remember the first time I stumbled onto this site(late 90's at the very least). However, since I'm now only 24, I tended to keep my mouth shut on the comments side of this site because well, people that you describe tend to make posting scary and intimidating. I can tell you for sure that there are much smarter people on here than myself. So instead of taking the risk of being called an idiot or uninformed(this is my teen years), I just decided not to post or even get an account (site is free). So for me, I'm a LONG time lurker, very very short time poster :) hence, my UID is huge..
As for taco's post. It's very understandable he is pissed off, regardless of what agreements we agree to by saying "accept" who the hell actually reads it verbatim, line for line. I'm not a lawyer so I really don't understand or care what is in them, so I just quickly jump past it and say accept(I'm being honest here :) . But remember, WoW players (myself included) pay a monthly fee to access this game which understandably is used to pay for the ongoing cost of creating and maintaining a persistant world. But the average joe doesn't give two shits about the on going costs, all they know is i'm paying money every month so I should be able to do almost anything I want including selecting a unique name. So after months of playing they just say guess what buddy, your name is gone pick another and people are supposed to roll over and say "ok SIR!".
Ok, sure, there is a commander designation in the game, but that came AFTER he probaly selected cmdrtaco, and to let him go 45lvls w/o a peep from the GM's? That's poor management of the realm and they should have let him keep the name..
my 2 cents.. hope it makes sense..
MrJynx
I had the exact same problem and was most frustrated by my in-ability to check-in online. I found it very ironic that "Thomas Paine" is on the terrorism watch list. I would joke that it's a really old list that we got from our former colonial masters. The saddest part is that it's not our actual name on the list, but the Soundex of your name. So in theory "Thomas Paine" could have the same soundex as "Osama Bin Laden", it doesn't but you get my point.
So I was going through the same dozen hoops that you were until I found this out, at which point I came up with a solution. The next plane ticket I bought I used "Thomas Anthony Paine" on my plane ticket and was able to check-in online (a necessity with southwest) without any issues. I still use the same southwest club card and everything, just a slightly different name on my card. Note that Thomas A Paine would not have worked because vowels aren't used to create a soundex.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
Second, some things are old. Know how many times I deleted 'funny' posts submitted with Bill Gates' mugshot? Probably at least two-thousand.
Third, some things are boring. I don't mean that they're obscure or uninteresting, I mean that they are boring in the sense that they aren't interesting or fun to talk about or discuss. There's not a whole lot to talk about when the subject is something like, 'Gosh, Microsoft Outlook really blows, and a study says so.' While it may create a lot of funny schadenfreude, it's pretty obvious to a whole lot of people. The people that it's not obvious to probably aren't reading Slashdot anyway.
Fourth, you might have a history of being a pain in the ass, and I might have rejected your story because you called me a jerk one time on IRC.
There are a lot of other reasons, but the primary reasons that people complain about getting stories rejected are usually untrue. There were conspiracy theories all over the place that somehow we were gaining financially through the spread of Linux (ha!), through adoption of perl over python, pretty much everything including phase of the moon. Totally unfounded. See points 1-4 above.
I would venture to guess that the reason Rob doesn't discuss why stories are rejected is because it's more than just him. I got very little top-down direction when it came to picking stories from Slashdot from Rob or Jeff. Rob and Jeff are totally different people, I'm very different than CowboyNeal and Jamie, and anyone who knows my politics knows that I am very different than Pudge (though Pudge and I seem to get along fine).
I think Rob's not trying to be secretive or coy, he's just being aware that there are more people behind Slashdot than just himself. Do you really think Rob wants to be in the position of having to chase down Slashdot authors every single time someone wants to know why their story was rejected? He'd have to send an E-mail, ask why, get a response, and then reply to the submitter. Also, he might have to do this two-hundred times a day. Not fun, and totally fruitless.
Anyway, there you go. Hope this helps, etc.
Emmett
It's just like the DMV, getting a passport, credit reports, 401k rollovers and traffic tickets. You're not special. Figure it out and take responsibility for the consequences of your actions. This is what it means to participate in an egalitarian community and belongs to the real-life world. This aspect of the game is not the "fun" part.
Now, for the real issue at hand: I think you've run into a dichotomy between your desire for an on-line identity and the WoW game concept. You want an ID which represents a general, online persona, WoW wants its participants to immerse themselves in their fantasy narrative. You want to express an externally consistent individualism at the price of breaking the game metaphor.
You can probably appreciate how I may be glad WoW made you change your name, and impatient with your pleading with them to tolerate it. WoW is an escapist construction. I play expecting to get away (at least as much as I can) from Chr1st_LUVZ_U and N8_IZ_GR8. I see some dude running around named Taco, a "Cmdr" no less, and I am suddenly in some stupid chat room all over again.
As a thought experiment, consider going to see a production of Othello. Halfway through some dude runs on the stage shouting "I am SlackArtist!!!" and runs off. I'm not saying that WoW is the same, but it is: a) something I pay for, b) escapist, c) depending for its effect on the suspension of disbelief, and d) an artistic expression.
One possible compromise may be for WoW to have an interface option which hides the names which violate the policy. This way, you can be CmdrTaco, but I don't have to look at you or know you're there. This would mean Bliz implementing another poster's suggestion: a database of violating names. Already, though, this technical solution is kinda creepy and suggests to me that if it's necessary, then maybe WoW isn't the place for you to blow off steam.
:P
Honestly, the moment I saw this, I was like, wow, a real editorial! In a real news media outlet, that's exactly what this qualifies as, and it is exactly for something like this that the opinions/editorial section is still present in every news media today. Op/eds were precisely where editors could rant, rave, and bitch, and I quite frankly was disappointed to find such pieces having disappeared altogether recently (there's an op/ed section every week for newpapers and every issue for mags). All we see today are repostings of reader submissions, which give the editors a mechanical (and therefore, rather unimportant) aura from the reader's perspective. To put it another way, while this entry indeed surprised me, it also made me smile and say to myself, "finally!" The lack of grammar and spelling errors is a definite bonus too. ;)
/. 7 or 8 years ago. This says a lot about where we are headed as a society, but I won't get into that.
/.), I was waiting for 1M. I just couldn't wait anymore because posting as AC has become so damn difficult these days.
The way I see it, anyone who bitches that this is in the wrong place, probably does so (besides the aforementioned reasons by ancestors and in other threads) because that person has never picked up a newspaper or magazine and actually read it front to back. The tendency of these people to have high UID's is largely because they are the youths who did not know
Anyway, to wrap it up, my excuse was that since I missed 500000 (which was about when I began reading
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
I swear, he must be a part of a troll organization. Every one of his posts, whether or not it is interesting or not, or even pertinent to the conversation at hand, is modded up to +5.
Banninate him!
Blizzard made the rules. You only have two choices 1) accept it and move on or 2) Don't play the game and don't pay the fees. You accept a LUA that states pretty claerly the naming rules. I have no sympathy. The fact that you are trying to trash Blizzard even makes the situation that much worse. Get over it. It just a game.
So expecting much respect from Blizzard is a futile and chimerical standing. Perhaps you should sue them in response, their rules may be unreasonable and / or unconsionable. If nothing else it will force them to spend thousands to defend their stand and perhaps might make them reconsider.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
/. CmdrTaco
Sir CmdrTaco
Mr CmdrTaco
Violated CmdrTaco
Sucks that you have to change it but the bottom line is that you didnt follow the rules.