Battle.Net 2.0 - With real names in the forum ?

Crni Vuk

Crni Vuk

M4A3 Oldfag oTO
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Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Forums


Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - http://w​ww.battle.net/realid/​ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

Cant say that this sounds really that great. I have to say Blizzard gets worse and worse in my eyes with many of their recent decisions or at least the informations they give out. Like no LAN for their battlenet and a few other things.

All this smells to me like their conection with Facebook in the future to eventualy find ways how to track peoples behaviour so its easier to sell them advertises and products. But maybe I am reading to much in to it.
 
Bad link I think:

http://us.battle.net/realid/faq.html

What information about me will other players see when I use Real ID?

"If you are using Real ID, your mutual Real ID friends, as well as their Real ID friends, will be able to see your first and last name (the name registered to the Battle.net account). You will also be able to see the first and last name of your Real ID friends and their Real ID friends."
 
well from the forum it seems quite ironic:

Q u o t e:

This is from an article I saw on Encyclopedia Dramatica's front page:
To prove that Real ID wasn't that bad of an idea, Blizzard employee Bashiok posted his full name: [-----]. Within hours, his Facebook account, mother's name, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives were all found. Since then, he's been getting harassed nonstop, so much that he deleted his Facebook profile and stopped picking up the phone.

heh.
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Crni Vuk said:
To prove that Real ID wasn't that bad of an idea, Blizzard employee Bashiok posted his full name: [-----]. Within hours, his Facebook account, mother's name, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives were all found. Since then, he's been getting harassed nonstop, so much that he deleted his Facebook profile and stopped picking up the phone.
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Oh god lol. Fucking brilliant. :rofl:

I hope they see how much is wrong with this now.
 
The setup is just like Facebook which is something a lot of people are fine with: friends of friends can see my name, but I'd hate to rip off someone in EVE and have them prank call my mother.
 
Funny enough, the real name of their community manager was available in a lot Blizzard game credits already. So if people would just have read the credits, they would know the name already since a long time.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
The setup is just like Facebook which is something a lot of people are fine with:
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Which doesnt makes it really much better in my eyes.

I mean is it really for no one questionable how Facebook, Myspace and all this other social networks in general care about ther personal informations of their users ? I remember a time when anonymity and savety of your data was a right, not a privilege.

I dont see the issue so much with either Facebook or Blizzard to be honestly but more with its users that either share the idea that its not important cause they dont have to hidde anything anyway or that they simply do not care. Thats quite dangerous in my eyes.

Of course you have some options to hidde informations so only friends have access to it. Which is ok. But what about facebooks general terms and conditions or those from all the other social networks? Does anyone really take his time to read them ? I know that many of them got extremly bad ratings from independend German testing groups regrading savety and data privacy where some said it could be even potentialy dangerous ~ cause of bullying, retrieving informations, spam etc.

Lexx said:
Funny enough, the real name of their community manager was available in a lot Blizzard game credits already. So if people would just have read the credits, they would know the name already since a long time.
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Yes, its quite obvious that he probably was only bullied by some people just to prove a point.

But it shows how trolling can not be really avoided by real names. It will be just pusehd to another kind of level. Anonymity in a forum goes both ways. It helps not only the trolls.
 
To prove that Real ID wasn't that bad of an idea, Blizzard employee Bashiok posted his full name: [-----]. Within hours, his Facebook account, mother's name, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives were all found. Since then, he's been getting harassed nonstop, so much that he deleted his Facebook profile and stopped picking up the phone.
Click to expand...

Well done, 4chan!
 
I sometimes hate the direction the world is going…fuck social networking… :wtf:

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And thus 4chan did everyone a giant favor. Clearly Blizzard didn't realize that the social networking crowd and the gaming crowd are not one in the same.
 
4chan really didn't have anything to do with it. It was WoW forum posters that within 4 minutes of that guy posting his name had searched for him on facebook, then found his phone number and made thousands of posts.

Anyway what they need to do is have a global handle for Battlenet forum posts and some better guidelines to punish trolling accounts.
 
They should have kept it. I think the idea was fucking genius. People treat each other like shit and act like complete fuckwits when there's zero accountability, and nobody knows who you are. Take a look at 4chan for example. Do you think that cesspool would get any traffic if everyone was forced to use their real name?

The WoW forums are no different.


They're also on the right track with attempting to tie all of your blizzard games to one Battle.net account. I can see it now... some kid cheats in Diablo 3, and gets locked out of his Battle.net account with his Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and WoW cdkeys.
 
do you really think harassment and trolling would stop only cause people show their "real" name in a forum ?

I doubt it. The way I see it though it does only punish those people that are honest. Like trying to do something against trolls or falling victim to them as sudenly now people dont only have a option to attack you in a forum but get eventualy access to other informations.
 
I'm with Crni, the "Real ID" system would not have turned out for the better.

Say some guy got pissed off that some guy was camping him in WoW (and being a dickhead in general) - he looks up his name on WoW armory and finds him through the forums or whatever, there he has access to seeing the guy's full name, 1 click google search and maybe even a facebook page. Finds personal details, friends of his and such, and it's not hard to make a fake facebook account just to harass people (and his friends, in-turn).

It would just lead to retarded fiascos because of in-game competitiveness, as far as I see it.
 
It's just like always: People on the internet are assholes and idiots. :>
 
exactly. And I have the feeling that the idea behind such a "real ID" in a forum is only either cause the moderators dont do their job correctly (no clue) or its purely a marketing reason behind it.

As already mentioned I have read somewhere that in the future Blizz might want to get a conection beteween its Bnett and some sociial networks. I would not be surprised if they want to use that as well for marketing reasons and analyzing the behaviour of people and thus send them presice comercials. Or suggestions what to "buy" next. Similar to how Amazon is doing it with your browser and such.
 
people say "whats in a name" when really the answer is quite a lot.

if you are smart with an online alias, they cannot tie your wow alias to your facebook.

when they can, they can find out where you live.

and you know that one of those guys who wants to beat someone up IRL or such will actually take it too far and eventually someone will get killed.

its not a matter of how hard is it to find someone on facebook or such, its how EASY it is.

and the easier it becomes, the higher the actual danger to the participants.
 
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