I don’t need to bet, I know my name is world-unique!
I haven’t posted in the forums in ages, but I sure won’t be doing it now.
How can you be sure your name is unique? I mean I could name a kid Shebang Shebang doodle woodle, and I still wouldn’t bet my life that someone else hadn’t done the same.
Not firstname, name plus first lastname. The number of people with my lastname in the world number less than 200; getting all our mailing addresses would be a matter of calling my father’s sister and asking her for the patriarch’s phone number. One of the reasons for my firstname is that the one my mother wanted was already “taken” (although the woman who has it has my first lastname as her second), so a similar name was used instead.
Yeah, same here - my first name/last name combo is just mega-weird.
Thanks for that blog post link - I posted it to my guild’s message board. Notice that the “what’s the big deal” Blizzard employee deleted his Facebook page after that.
I’m not sure what all the fuss is about, don’t like it don’t post on the forums.
Yeah, that was exactly our response.
FWIW, it won’t be retroactive, and you’ll be warned before the first time you post with your real name… if it ever goes live.
So I’m never again allowed to contribute to any discussions about game mechanics, class balance, etc., or, worse, get **customer assistance **if I run into a problem? :rolleyes: Just because I don’t want to be stalked or harassed in real life, or be discriminated against by potential employers who find out I’m a hardcore raider? (And yes, I’m another one of those people with a fairly unusual name who it would be very easy to track down. The top few Google returns for my name are me, as well as several farther down the list.)
There is literally **NO GOOD REASON **to force us to post with our real names. They’d be able to combat trolling **JUST AS EFFECTIVELY **by making us pick a single, unique alias for our account. Y’know, like we do to post on a forum like this one.
I am a very, very good Blizzard customer who buys quite a few things outside of her monthly subscription fee… and if this proposed change goes live, there’s a very good chance I am going to walk away from the game. Which makes me sick to think about, but there you go.
You can just add a new shipping address to your account under a fake name, if you really want to post.
Customer assistance is the real problem. All the forums are completely optional except that one. Unless you want to spend hours on hold with 1-800-Blizzard, anyway. The shitstains who think it’s funny to dick with people RL are going to be trolling the tech support forum hard looking for meat.
Agreed. I’m generally very laid back when it comes to developer decisions. Most things people nerdrage about, I laugh off or don’t even waste my time on. People spazzed about Sparklepony, and all I regret is that I paid $25 for it. But this is the first thing Blizzard’s done that’s making me seriously consider canceling my subscription and going back to City of Heroes. And the stupid thing is it wouldn’t affect me; none of my habits related to Warcraft would be affected by their RealID shenanigans. But a company who thinks it’s okay to share information about their customers, even something as ostensibly innocent as a name, is not a company I want to associate with.
And what happens when I lose my authenticator and I have to call up Blizzard and prove my identity?
I shouldn’t have to do shit like that.
You’d still have your real name under your billing address, duh.
Assuming what you say is even possible, why should I have to do shit like that? Why should I have to lie in my personal contract with Blizzard so that they don’t broadcast my personal information to the public?
And I’d really like you to show me where it says that it’s possible.
You don’t have to do anything, if you don’t want to post. It’s possible because displaying the shipping address is the way RealID works. It’s been in the SC2 beta for weeks.
Except for when I encounter a technical problem and I have to go to the forums.
As a corollary issue, I run WoW on Linux. There are sometimes weird issues that occur with new patches, where it takes people smarter than me to figure out the solution. And where do those people post the solutions? On the forums! Or maybe not, if they’re also opposed to having their name there. Et voila, I lose my knowledge base.
It’s so stupid. “Just don’t post if you don’t want your name out.” “Change your name, duh.” I didn’t have to do either of those things before, and now they’re screwing players over because of some misguided need to be social media. DUH.
All cars will now be outfitted with LED signs that display the driver’s name. “Just don’t drive if you don’t want people knowing your name. :rolleyes:” It’s a stupid, nonproductive answer.
In addition to all that, it’s not a question of whether I, personally, would post on the forums. It’s a question of whether I would support a company who makes that their policy. I do not want to support a company like that. Ergo, I should stop paying them money.
Exactly. It addresses *none *of the legitimate concerns about this, frankly, *massive and disturbing *invasion of my privacy.
And my E-mail address has my RL name in it, to the point where it wouldn’t be too terribly hard to track down who I am from that. I haven’t read anything about including that in posts - yet - but it wasn’t that long ago that Blizzard was saying “never reveal your account name, you need to provide it to register for the forums but you pick a screen name that is displayed.” Then they switched it to where your E-mail address is your screen name. Then RealID which you have to opt into, but has friend-of-a-friend enabled. Now all of a sudden our forum posts are tagged with real names.
If they figure out that people are putting fake names into the shipping info slot, they’re probably going to change where the forums pull the real name from. They may do this without warning. If you try to change the name on your actual account, you’re screwed if you want to go to Blizzcon or if your account gets hacked and you need to prove who you are.
I don’t know, tomorrow they may well tell everyone our E-mail addresses too. Silly me, I thought I was paying Blizzard a monthly fee that provided a disincentive to reveal public information about me, compared to free things like Facebook that need to make money in other ways and tend to tell a lot about their participants.
I know a guy and girl who used to be dating, and used to be in my guild. He has bipolar disorder and either isn’t on meds or isn’t taking/doing well on what he’s on. I’m wary of ever answering tells from him because I’m not sure which version of him I’m going to get, and I don’t want to be sucked into any drama that he might create. The girl quit WoW, but before doing so she told me about his rages, and about him hitting her. If she’d ever want to sneak back into the game, maybe play on a different server, she’d have to worry about Blizzard randomly deciding to totally ruin her privacy if she had to post about a technical issue when directed to by a GM.
I honestly don’t understand why anyone gives a shit about the Blizzard forums. They’ve been a cesspool for 15 years. If you want to post about game mechanics, post on EJ like you should be doing to discuss game mechanics. If you need technical support, email them.
Not being able to post anonymously on the Blizzard forums isn’t some cataclysmic event. I’m not trying to tell you it isn’t a stupid change. It is, of course, just like most of Bob Kotick’s decisions. I’m telling you that your reaction is a bit over the top.
You’re right (about the forums not being a big deal) and wrong (about the reaction being over the top).
My concern isn’t with the forums - I’ve never posted there and never intend to. My problem is with dealing with a company that has my personal information and has made a series of decisions that lead me to the conclusion that protecting it isn’t their highest priority. In fact, they seem to be heading down a path where I will be required to reveal my name in order to play the game.
I’ve never seen good results from E-mailing Blizzard with tech questions; I just got cut-and-paste responses from some low-level tech about stuff I’d already done. The forums have been helpful, but it looks like if I have tech issues I’ll have to hope that someone else has posted with my exact problem and I can get help from that.
My husband is a guild officer and actually (yes, I know, it’s shocking) uses our server’s forum to offer advice to new players/new transfers who post and get “LOLz n00b u suk” responses. He isn’t thrilled about the change either.
Edit: Normally I’m not a fan of the “slippery slope” arguments but Blizzard has shown every sign that they are plunging headlong down a slope, so I have to believe that at some point in the future, it’ll be more than the forums. The RealID system already shows that they want to develop gamer “social network” features. Are they going to expand the Armory into that, since it has an online interface and app? Maybe slap your RealID info on the Armory and tie your other gamer info into it?
1.) Blizzard doesn’t necessarily read EJ to see what people think about what’s going on, what’s working, and what’s not. They DO read their own Suggestion, Technical Support, and Customer Service forums.
2.) The phone and email channels are chronically and notoriously backed up. Posting forum threads is often the only way to get someone to actually pay attention to your problem. Not to mention, threads with technical problems (versus in-game bugs or account security issues) will often garner very useful responses from other users.
Yes, it is. But you’re probably a white cisgendered man with a relatively common name who is never planning to apply for a job where the company might care that he plays MMORPGs.
You are allowed to contribute you are choosing not to.
I’m not sure I think it is a good idea so I wont use the forums. I have not used the forums once since I started playing so I’m missing nothing.