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Blizzard To Require Real First and Last Names For Official Forums
An anonymous reader writes "Recently, Blizzard Entertainment implemented a Real ID feature for some of its current games and all of its future Battle.net-based games. Today, Blizzard announced that it intends to require usage of the real names of Battle.net posters for its StarCraft II forums before release, and for its World of Warcraft forums shortly before the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. From the announcement: 'The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.'"
Do you need some help? Everyone will know your real name.
Whale
I know what to think of it.
It is a horrible, horrible idea.
You know that list of things every responsible parent teaches their children to never do on the internet?
One of those things is to tell someone your real name.
Blizzard is forcing them to in a way they are unlikely to notice first or are willing to do anyway because it is for all the new big games.
Blizzard is going to expose the identities of millions of people, including children and adolescents publicly on the internet. They can then be exploited by anyone, including the "wonderful" guys over at 4chan, and worse.
In the old EQ days (I know it's still around but who cares these days), all the forums for the game were run by the fans because there were no official ones. I have a feeling this change will cause similar forums to rise in popularity and Blizzard will accomplish little other than losing control of the conversation and pissing off their users.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
... with more and more people being forced to use their real names on the Internet, you'll see a lot less flaming, trolling, and defacing. People I believe will be less quick to turn a discussion into an argument and more interested in understanding one another.
However, I do not personally like the idea of my first and last name being made public everywhere, which is why I have generally shunned Facebook and would not use this feature even if I wanted to.
So in other words, chilling effects on free speech are a good idea, but only if they're placed on other people?
Rob
5. People stop posting legitimate, intelligent useful feedback because they value their personal privacy more than a video game.
6. Without the constructive feedback, issues without the game go unnoticed or unreported for longer periods of time.
7. These issues compound and add up making the game less fun, but it becomes more difficult to quantify why the game is less fun without this feedback.
8. Subscriptions slowly drop off and the game trickles away and dies.
9. Long term loss of profit for short term, nearsighted gain.
While a lot of people have gone on and on about how using real names will promote more civility and better discourse, something I seriously doubt is necessarily true, that is no where near the real reason Blizzard is forcing RealID.
It's a means to open up their TOS to allow dataminers access to a vast swath of information. Cha ching! Add to that anyone in game using RealID that then links up friends list? Cha ching! Even more information to datamine. And of course anyone who has played WoW knows that they log damn near everything. You can bet that gchat, party chat, officer chat, raid chat, general chat, trade chat, and every other channel that you type a letter in will be up for datamining. Cha ching!
It's all about the money people. Cloaked in a flag of good intentions.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
1) Did Blizzard ever stop to think that many (most?) people play their games as an ESCAPE from real life?
2) Anything on Blizzard forums goes on Google, and comes up in search results. That means anybody who uses their forums is going to be labeling themselves, forever after, as a nerdy computer game player to future employers, dates, etc...which is not something that is looked upon positively by many people. I would certainly discriminate against potential employees if I saw that they were a WoW geek.
3) People sometimes have bad days, say things they regret later...on a forum this is all saved forever. Luckily only the people who know their forum name can find it. So you protect your hidden identities more securely than you protect your email passwords. Blizzard aims to make all those mistakes unforgivable.
There is nothing that is possibly worth saying on the Blizzard forums that is worth sacrificing one's anonymity for.
No trolls here.
Hey, if you're browsing at -1, that's your problem, not Slashdot's.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Imagine for a second a 42 year old lonely man (with very little social skills) playing World of Warcraft and he learns that Night Elf Rogue is actually a girl. They chat for a while and become friendly online. He starts to fixate and fantasize that those trips helping her level her alt are "dates" and eventually he falls in love with her. Or at least her character and voice.
Fixation turns into obsession and after a couple failed attempts to woo her into a real life relationship, she turns him down (hell, he's a creeper).
He gets upset and from the personal information he has gathered over their time "together" he is able to locate her using her _real_ name that Blizzard forces you to use (not a fictional "eName" you make up to give out on the intertubes to remain anonymous). Fill in the rest with your imagination.
Or, someone harasses you in game and you look to take revenge. Ninja looters, stealing quest mobs/items, kicking you from group/raid, etc. Maybe they simply want to threaten you (which already happens [NSFW] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUOI7BTmmk0 [NSFW]).
Of course, this can happen anywhere with any site that shows real names (facebook, etc). But forcing people to drop their anonymity is a bad thing overall. How many children play Blizzard's _games_ of which are going to be forced to link their, or more likely, their parents names to their account and be seen? It's not that hard to track someone down when you know their approximate location and their last name.
I guess the short is, anonymity can be bad. People act like punks and you have to put up with it from time to time, I know, it sucks. But the good part is, little Johnny potty mouth won't have to potentially pay with his life. Hopefully he learns to grow up on his own without someone like the chick from the link I posted above hunting him down.
Yes, because trolls would never stoop to using fake "real" names.
Well, they'll find it very difficult to do that unless they figure out a way to spoof the same name on their credit card.
FYI, you can buy 'Game Time Cards' with cash at every big-box store in the United States.
I like how slashdot commenters love to use "won't somebody think of the children?!" as a device for sarcastic mockery of various Internet policies. Then this happens, and we get a thread full of ...
"But ... won't somebody think of the children?!"
If there are no girls on the internet now, there won't be any ever once this goes into effect.
There's no quicker way to be harassed, stalked, and otherwise massively annoyed by EVERYONE than to reveal that you are in possession of TWO X chromosomes, instead of the internet norm XY configuration.
And the absolute last thing I want is random assholes that I've pissed off on my server to Google my name, of which the first result is the staff listing on my current employer's website, and then start sending nasty emails to my boss.
While I think that overall this is a good thing for the Blizzard forums (as well as other changes they are making according to TFA, including rating up and down on posts), it completely removes my desire to post on their forums. I don't troll as a rule (but I can't say it’s never happened), but my last name is so unique that finding me on the Google is already ridiculously easy (my first and last name - all of the first page is me). I don't need prospective employers knowing about my gaming habits, and even less so prospective dates. Not that I go out of my way to hide these things from people, but I don't want it popping up as a matter of course just because someone googles my last name.
If I had to use my real name on Slashdot, I wouldn't post nearly as much. I'd make sure to restrict it only to things I was comfortable with all current and future employers seeing
I've said this on here before, but I was once employed by such an employer. They wanted complete editorial control over each and every one of their employees very thoughts. They even went so far as to consider firing employees wouldn't agree to vote the way the upper management thought was 'right'.
If your comments on Facebook, etc, ever caused such an employer to pass you by, then those comments did you a favor. Trust me. It is better to not get the job than to have to replace it because you're not ideologically compatible.
My thought: Internet Detectives are going to have a field day with this. Got ganked by a Rogue last night? Search the forums for his character name, find his real name, figure out where he lives, and get him right back with harassing phone calls, pizzas, etc...
Or they...
- Track him down and set his house on fire.
- Find his workplace and tell his boss/coworkers that he's a pedophile/rapist/etc.
- Find their SO and tell them the same as above.
It's sickening the amount of things that could follow through from this action and just one remark. The whole RealID thing is a problem in the first place for transgender folks who don't want others to know their legal names, but all of the above listed reasons.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
And yet everyone gives out their real name on Facebook when they have the choice to give a fake one.
People who read your Facebook page are less likely to be mad than people who you gank and corpse-camp in Stranglethorn Vale.
Well, for most people anyway... don't know what's on your Facebook page specifically...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
In a case like that, sure. Though actually in a case like that I'd make sure to get myself fired over a voting issue and then sue the fuck out of them. The voting booth is a pretty sacred right in the US and termination over it would be bad cause in every jurisdiction I'm aware of.
However what I'm worried about is a case of people who generally aren't like that, they aren't the "Everyone must agree with us in every way," sort, but that they happen to see something that they decide makes them say no.
You hear about this all the time, people post Facebook pictures of themselves at a wild party in university and find it hurts jobs later. It usually isn't that the folks doing the hiring are Puritans or anything, they are just dumbasses. They did the same kind of shit themselves when they were young but have conveniently forgotten about it. They think "Well this sort of thing doesn't reflect well for our company," and give the person a miss.
In my case, what I might be worried about is that I've posted stories about my work environment. Now I've never named my employer, mostly because that comes too close to making it too easy to identify me, but still. I'm not worried now, I work for a public institution and thus I have a right to do it (HR specifically says so) as the tax payers have a right to know. But at some time in the future I go for another job and maybe that company thinks "Well we like the guy, but he talks about his employer online. We really don't want that, have to give him a miss."
I just find it better that there is a barrier between my real name and what I post online. Not a strong or impenetrable one, but one that if you Google my name, you do not get results of what I've said in forums.
OK, then be sure to let us, the users know the REAL NAMES of the moderators, business managers, sales staff, marketing gurus of your business and I am sure that openness will be embraced by all!
People with very common names will not be impacted in the same way that people with less common names. Real names are non-unique. How does this help? cf. TSA "no-fly" list.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
facebook profiles are created with that intention. You are making an account that is you. No one makes their orc warlock thinking it is really who they are. (I'm preparing for contradictory comments below).
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
I happen to indulge in world of warcraft from time to time, and let me tell you this...
I've posted on the forums a total of maybe 3 times...ever.
If you don't want to show your real name, then just don't use the forums. You can get support in-game or over the phone.
And parents that want to protect their children: Disable realid (forum) access in the parental controls panel.
he demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot
Except, of course, for that time when your boss was considering you for a promotion but chose the other candidate because he doesn't play that "stupid kid's game" in all his spare time.
True story: I moved to a new town and started a new job working at a management level with a few other degree-level pros and also a large group of high-school and GED level workers. I joined an online dating site and set one of my preferences to be for at least college level education. Some of the ladies at work checked out my profile (you can hide your name, but not having a photo means no views), and it got quickly spread that I was "against" only having high-school level education. Oh, well, right? Well, then I got transferred to work under an older supervisor with "only" a high-school diploma who'd gotten his current position by working for 30+ years in the industry. Yeah, lot of fun working under someone who believed the rumors that you don't think people with only high-school level education are worth anything. Maybe it shouldn't happen, but people judge you both on what you do online and what you're perceived as doing online. That's just the way the world works. Forcing people to use their real names will have many effects, but one big one is that it will cause many thinking people to simply not post anymore, good or bad posts.
It's pretty interesting that a couple of random phone calls "Mr xxx is a pedophile" would pretty much destroy most people's lives.
Doesn't that underscore a fundamental breakage in our social system?
The problem is that the degree to which anyone is deterred will be determined by how concerned they are about their online image. People with careers and families will be even more cautious, and probably less like to contribute to a discussion. 13-y.o. dickheads will go right on being dickheads, because they have nothing to lose and it will be several years before they are in any position to worry about an online reputation. So, people who are most likely to say something worthwhile are the most likely to be silenced by lack of anonymity.