In many cases, the Tuesday maintenance for World of Warcraft realms is followed by a patch with some delicious new content for players to absorb; however, today is different. Today players are awaiting to have their last scraps of online privacy ripped from them like a dentist tearing a delicious Mountain Dew bottle from a baby in the Appalachians.
While many of us have engaged in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media websites that we freely offer up private information on, online games have always been a haven of anonymity. When conversing with gaming friends, chances are you call them by their moniker not their real life name. And to be frank, there are many people we do not wish to extend our online relationships into the more personal realm because we are fine just knowing them in the game.
“But Krieg! You don’t have to use Real ID! Just talk to people in-game like you always have!”
While true, it is unfortunate that Real ID enables so many God-fucking-amazing features. In contrast to the above, we do often find ourselves exchanging instant messaging accounts or emails on occasion with those who we become close to. Since the dawn of WoW we’ve always wanted to be able to chat with friends on other realms and across factions without using some sort of third party messenger. And yes, as a former GM I can even see the great attraction to yelling at players whose StarCraft game is running into raid time.
Loading ...However, I wish there was a middle ground. I wish I was able to display either my real name or moniker – yes there are people that I would like to keep track of that I DON’T want friending me on Facebook immediately after they add me. Yes, I would love for people to see little updates, such as I am going to be late for a raid–but no I don’t want you seeing that it is because I am playing an alt. And no, I cannot always tell that in 3 months you’re going to turn into a batshit-crazy-rapist and constantly harass me wherever I go into a Blizzard game.
I am fine with Blizzard enabling new features that allow players to enjoy the game with their friends more. But I believe that Blizzard needs to acknowledge the fine line between online acquaintance and real life friend, as they are far from the same and for good reason.
If you would like to do some more reading on Blizzard’s Real ID, you can find it at the Blizzard website here.
Posted in General MMO, Social, world of warcraft
Tagged blizzard, mmos, privacy, real id
Written by Krieg
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Glad, you mentioned something about this as I was going to talk to you yesterday. The only part of this feature that concerns me is the friends of friends portion. If you choose to share your RealID with someone who decides to gather 1000 friends, you are risking having some random people getting your information and spamming your email or something of the sort.
I’m surprised you took this kind of stance on Real ID. If any of these features bother you, you could just not add people. It really opens the idea of really picking your friends and not just adding everyone in your guild. Those are the kind of “online friends” that I cannot stand. The people that have to friend everyone in the world and care about their friend count aren’t really communicating at all. It seems to me that they are trying to have the world look at them and only them. Maybe I’m getting old, but a friend should be something special and rare. More than an acquittance you met once in a dungeon or another trial member in your guild.
My view is a bit biased because I look at things from a former-GM perspective where I like to keep tabs on people. I would love to be able to have the features of Real ID without sacrificing bits of information I may not want to give out, as you said, to acquaintances. However, I would love to know where my guild mates are, even if we aren’t the closest of friends, so that I may communicate with them.
Also, it may be nice to keep in touch with people cross realm who you perhaps do not know too well yet and are slowly easing into the, “real friend” category. Perhaps just an option to toggle the vital details for certain people would be sufficient. However, I don’t want to blast my name to the world or be the recipient of 100 facebook friend requests as soon as I friend someone new.
I definitely agree that a friend is special and rare, which is why in those cases I have no issue with Real ID. It is the other scenarios where the features would be useful for non-friends that I find to be the issue.
At least they don’t paste your email as your user name. A first name is pretty harmless, but an email could get spammed like Vuo said. Perhaps they could add a feature where you choose whether to broadcast your friends list or not? I don’t know, but being able to see your friends friends is kind of annoying. INC tons of friend requests I’m going to deny. -.- <– Old and Cranky =P
I was under the impression that this tool was used to keep tabs on people that would know your name otherwise. IE: Real life friends. Regardless its not forcing anyone to use it, How is something that is completely optional an invasion of privacy? Is me choosing to tell someone my real name/occupation an invasion of privacy? No. Neither is this. Now, the only thing I disagree with is the friends of friends feature, that seems a little to much.
“While true, it is unfortunate that Real ID enables so many God-fucking-amazing features.” – REALLY? This is giving you SO MANY THINGS that you can’t live without?
What does the Real ID system really give you?
– Cross-realm communication. That’s somewhat neat I suppose, but how many people even actually use this? The majority of the WoW population only has time to play on one server, and their friends are also only playing on that server. How many people actually have REAL life friends that play on other servers? (and by “real”, I mean you actually describe them as a “friend” and not an acquaintance). And if you do have real life friends on other servers, don’t you already communicate them through vent and such? Are you really going to want to use a clunky chat interface to talk?
– Cross-game communication. Blizzard has no other games right now, so this isn’t much of a benefit. Not only that, but it’s likely to only provide communication between 2 games for another year. If you want REAL and EXTENSIVE cross-game communication, you probably log on Ventrilo and chat there.
What does the Real ID system cost?
– Generally public knowledge of your first and last name. You lose the “link” of your name to your alias, and for a lot of people, this is very disturbing.
– Lack of an “invisibility” feature. Once you have someone as a friend, you’re completely unable to go invisible, ever. If you’re playing Starcraft, they will see you playing Starcraft. If you don’t want anyone to talk to you, you’re S.O.L. If you have some anonymous bank alt that manipulates the auction house, everyone’s going to know who your main is. If you just want to enjoy playing some character on another server, too bad.
Blizzard’s voice communication feature flopped because it failed to recognize the fundamental benefits that gamer voice communication systems give: control over when you’re logged on/off, customization in channels and servers, and the ability to communicate outside of Blizzard games.
Blizzard’s RealID system will fail for a similar reason. It fails to recognize what social networks, at an abstract level, provide for users: control over how and when you appear in the online world, customization of what others see, and the ability to keep in touch with real friends.
Don’t mistake the RealID system for anything other than what it is: a marketing tool. Blizzard hopes that they’ll get enough people using it to invoke enough new buys of future games, either through Facebook or just regular gaming. They have, in no way, the interests of gamers at heart.
And Kreig, you’re way too pessimistic/paranoid… “former-GM perspective where I like to keep tabs on people.” Why would you feel the need to keep tabs on people? Coming from a current GM perspective, you should be able to trust people to log on and perform well.
For those wondering about the character thing, as soon as you and someone else become friends, you can right click on their name and hit “view games.” Under World of Warcraft, it lists every character they have.
I kind of like it. I have people who play on other realms I’d like to be able to chat with more conveniently on occasion, but on the other hand I don’t like feeling like I’m losing some sort of privacy. It’s nice to play on an alt out of guild in peace w/o being bothered or leveling a secret toon, as i call em, when you just want to play in solace. It doesn’t seem that will be as easily done now.
I agree, sometimes I just like to relax and be on an alt that nobody knows exists.
Oh and also, isn’t a GM wanting to *keep tabs* on people an invasion of privacy in itself?
After getting to play with Real ID some:
Disregarding a few of my own security concerns, I think it is a really slick system. However, I did notice that when you, “create a conversation” aka a cross-server chat room, you can only have 3 people in it at a time, including yourself.
Also, when you look at the “friends of friends” feature it only shows the person’s real name, not their character’s. I guess this is because they only want you to add a friend of friend if you know that individual personally. Otherwise, you really aren’t going to have any idea who the friends of friend are.
Blacksen – I definitely agree with you that it is all about control and that seems to be the underlying concern of most people, including myself. Right now there are only “birthday suit” and “formal dress” for visibility options, there’s no “shorts and a t-shirt” – if that makes sense.
Dexian – It would be no different than if several members gave me their numbers like they have in the past to call if they are needed–something voluntary that allows for a previously unavailable method of contact. Even the best players lose track of time or have events come up. As a GM your role is to organize, so communication is key. You definitely need to trust your players to show up, but contingencies happen.
“Disregarding a few of my own security concerns, I think it is a really slick system. However, I did notice that when you, “create a conversation” aka a cross-server chat room, you can only have 3 people in it at a time, including yourself.”
You can actually add others once the conversation is started.
I see what you are saying I was looking at it from more of a Mandatory viewpoint.
“You can actually add others once the conversation is started.”
I’m glad you showed that to me last night. I had Prat installed and it was disabling those buttons so I was not able to see the option!
and when i went to log into the old battle net i find a new ELUA in regards to them monitoring your messages? did i read that right ” MONITORING YOUR MESSAGES” ? i think that is blatant invasion of my own privacy and i will NOT take for it.i didn’t accept the EULA of course.and nor will i be signing up to them next month,and mark my words i will be taking a few people off their pay cheque’s also as i pay for a few accounts.blizzard you suck and everything you have started doing is no less of a big brother bull crap scam.making people by forcing them to agree with the ToS is pathetic.what happened to i disagree as well as i agree? instead you have an i agree [] and that’s it LOL