[...] however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.(my emph.) Oh, man. That's a tremendous irrelevant conclusion. You'll just go from knowing "Grabby Rimbiter is a tremendous troll" to "Jon Doe is a tremendous troll". This has to be a feint for something else.
Blizzard is much more ambitious with Real ID than just Warcraft forum trolls. Despite years of trying, there's still no good online social network for games. There's Steam and Xbox Live and Gamespy, but none of those are really vital. Now that Blizzard's about to launch Starcraft 2, then Diablo 3, then the as-yet-unnamed-MMO, they're trying to figure out how to get the 12 million people and their social relationships out of just Warcraft and in to the broader Internet.Why the hell does everything need to be a "Social Network" now? I mean, why shouldn't I be able to pick some random name and join some random game and play against some people? Who says I even want to be friends in "real life" with people I play video games against? Maybe I'd rather not have my starcraft stats show up when someone google's my name, I mean given how facebook as steadily made more and more info public without telling anyone I odn't see why I should trust blizzard.
Because it's tied to a credit card, for one thing.Except credit cards aren't actually tied to your name. You can order an extra card with whatever name you want on it. And also, the way credit cards are authorized online, you do not need to enter your name as it appears on the card at all.
If a person on Blizzard's forums reveals their real name, yeah, people can "find out" information about them, but that information is mostly culled from other public information you would willingly put up about yourself on the internet - most likely a public Facebook profile. Knowing that ElderGod435 is actually Jim Stevenson is only as beneficial to you as the amount of personal information about Jim Stevenson that is readily available.Yeah, but now you know one more thing about Jim Stevenson: everything you know about his WoW account. So for example if he was playing during work hours, you could call up his boss and narc on him for playing at work.
This is not in evidence and probably, I think, wrong. Do you think Metafilter is a better or worse place for women to post because we do not allow anonymous comments? Pseudonymous ones, yes, but not anonymous ones. I'm a huge fan of using real names online.That doesn't make any sense. Metafilter names aren't gendered. No one knows who is and isn't a woman unless they say so, most people don't even check the profiles for gender/picture when they're talking to someone. With this new system, everyone will know if you're female. And it doesn't sound like it's just on the forums either:
* Your Real ID friends will appear under their real-life names on your friends list, alongside whatever characters they're playing.Ah, so it's "Value added" where the value is other people's private information. Now it does seem to be opt-in for now, but who knows if it's going to stay that way. It's bullshit that companies are doing this crap now.
* With Real ID, friends can now chat cross-game, cross-realm, and cross-faction across all supported Blizzard games.
* See additional information on your friends list about what your Real ID friends are up to.
* When you agree to become Real ID friends with another player, both of you will automatically see all the other's characters on your friends list.
So, real ID is optional, but apparently this person opted in somehow. And it's not just the forums, but your friends and all their friends. So this kid added his sister and mom, and then everyone who knows the kid knows these women. And they take the information offline and look up everything else about here there is to know. But blizzard can't find out who found her information off of facebook, and they can't monitor any offsite communications either. Again they can't monitor offiste communications. Even if the trolls who posted this girl's personal information should be punished, there's no way to do that if they used offsite communications.
"It's a nightmare that blizzard even thought this was acceptable on any level... The parental settings are almost nil. I decided it would be okay if my oldest son (16) was able to decided who he added for himself. He added his guild leader and I saw no problem in this matter. He added his older sister (24) and added me.
My daughter is now in the process of opening a ticket (8 day wait minimum) while trade chat runs rampant with her home address (thankfully not correct as she put it...), phone number, and real name.
How did this happen?
The guild leader decided it would be fun to tell people her name because she was a female. From Monica xxxxxxxx and a quick Facebook and or Google search they pulled up her life story and spammed it across trade.
Not 24 hours after it's release and my mistake to allow a 16 year old to add his sister and guild leader on Real ID *Really bull*%!#* already she's getting death threats and "pick up lines" on her cell phone (partly her own fault for having it on facebook...). Whitebooks (phone info), Google, Skype and Facebook. All you need is a name and a potential region to start looking and this happens.
Just to respond to those that don't think we read through all of these responses and threads, we do and have been. We will continue monitoring feedback as well.They've got a lot of "feedback" to monitor. The thread is over a thousand pages already.
We put a lot of thought into this change and have a long-term vision for the Real ID service and wanted to make sure that we communicated ahead of time and very clearly as to what will be changing and how. Keep in mind that posting is optional, and we recognize that some players will choose not to utilize the Real ID feature in game or post on the forums and support everyone's individual choice on using or not using it.
This is obviously new ground for us and for you as well, but we want to make sure we're creating a great social-gaming service that people will want to use. We just want to make sure that if people are sharing feedback, that they keep it constructive, and yes, as I said, we are reading.
BN_NEW_PRESENCEWTF? Seeing my real name inside WoW like that was a real shock. Despite me understanding Real ID and being totally OK with linking my real identity to my nerdy WoW toons. Very weird.
1 9
2 Nelson Minar
BN_NEW_PRESENCE
1 10
2 Flyp
Me: First and foremost, I want to apologize for calling you at work, and I also apologize if this doesn’t make sense, but are you Sikketh, from Thunderlord?Personal drama happens all the time between WoW players. It's inevitable with an MMO. Opening that personal drama up to the very real potential for stalking is more than a little frightening. I won't be going near the Blizzard forums any time soon.
MV: ::pause:: Yes.
Me: So yeah, that took me about 20 minutes and it was pretty easy.
MV: Wow. Ok.
Me: Also, just for shits and giggles, is [redacted] your address ?
MV: yep.
Me: Phone number 555-555-5555?
MV: yep.
Me: I know your parents’ names are Name1 and Name2, I know your room is painted blue and I know you have a cute dog. I know where you were on the 4th of July and I know when you got back. Don’t worry, I’m not a crazy, I’m not going to do anything with it, and I’m not going to post your address or anything anywhere. I just wanted you to know that what I did was very easy and very free, from just your name and toon’s name. You have a good day, and thanks for being a good sport about it.
What is the "friends of friends" feature of Real ID?This is entirely optional and in ni way is it required to play starcraft II.
Similar to other social-networking platforms, when you click on one of your Real ID friends, you will be able to see the names of his or her other Real ID friends, even if you are not Real ID friends with those players yourself. If you happen to know someone on that list, you will be able to quickly send a Real ID friend request to that player. This feature is designed to make it easy to populate your Real ID friends list with people you might enjoy playing with."
Go back to the previous Battle.net, Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam and other different networks in the context of gaming services. they are all kind of anonymous. That whole veil of anonymity has been an important part of the design. There are those who feel like I want to go escape and create this parallel identity to myself on a gaming network and I don't want anyone to know who I am in real life. What we have seen in recent years is that veil of anonymity has been cast aside largely. Culturally, I think we have become more and more accepting of social networking in the context of your real identity and Facebook, of course as the leader in the space, has led this charge. We're now at something five years ago I don't think any of us would maybe necessarily be comfortable with. We all now have our own Facebook pages and we have got a lot of our information on there. We've got our real names and pictures of ourselves on there and so forth.The degree to which he does not understand his userbase, or rather, the userbase of "gamers", is staggering.
/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,"RealID whisper from yourself..");break end endThat's right! RealID has been thoughtfully pre-enabled for you. And if you don't think that the botters and the scammers are, even as we speak, writing code that will exploit the hell out of this...well, then you have a higher level of regard for the botters and scammers than I do.
/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,"RealID whisper from yourself..");break end endI'm pretty sure this is only in effect on the playtest realms and/or the beta test. But then, in a vain attempt at limiting my WoW time I've got Parental controls enabled (and the RealID tickbox turned off). Trying to run this either from a macro or the chat does nothing.
To assume — as Blizzard seems to have assumed — that anonymity enables only "ugly speech" is the product of a failed imagination. Anonymous speech has always been an integral part of free speech because it enables individuals to speak up and speak out when they otherwise may find reason to hide or self-censor. Behind the veil of anonymity, individuals are more free to surface honest observations, unheard complaints, unpopular opinions — incidentally, all healthy contributions to an evolving gaming community.Time, and probably Activision Blizzard getting sued for wrongful death.
Blizzard is completely within its legal rights to set rules, standards, and regulations for its forum, but only time will determine whether or not they are making the right choice.
For the record; I watched someone code a lua file that grabbed my real name, even though I don't have Real Id enabled, AND I'd set up parental controls and set my age as 9. They were still able to grab my real name.Thank you, this is exactly what was trying to get at, and exactly what I expected. I hope some makes a video recording of this vulnerability, and it hits the front page of every WoW-related site on the web. I'll look into creating a trail account to be the guinea pig.
So, yeah...it can be done. It has been done. Both DBM and Gear have proof of concept code live and available. - SecretagentSockpuppet
« Older Picky Eating might be added to the DSM.... | Illusion Illusions... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:58 AM on July 6, 2010