World of Warcraft forums are "where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild", says Blizzard, the publisher of the mega-online game. And it thinks it knows how to get everyone to behave more nicely.
With the next iteration of its Battle.net forum, the company is to publish users' real names in full on official …
Rem Rieder comes so close to understanding the reason online comments tend towards being, "packed with profanity and vicious personal attacks," but ultimately misses the opportunity.
He mentions that some sites require you to register before commenting in the hopes that might give one time to cool-off. Does he seriously think the 60 seconds or so to register before commenting is in any way comparable to the amount of time it takes to write a proper letter?
The problem is less the anonymity factor (which surely does contribute) but more the instantaneous nature of posting online.
Times surely change and unfortunately the nature of security today means we can't just share our names. Perhaps they should consider attacking the larger factor - force a user to come back 30 minutes after submitting a post to review and confirm before publishing it.
This would result in people using a fan forum instead, hopefully the anonymity issue will cause that too but I can see it being a lot less of an issue for most people than the hassle of what you suggest.
I thought the 'hassle' of my suggestion was the whole purpose - to discourage thoughtless, sophomoric and pointless posts; to encourage people to only post when they're willing to go through the hassle in the first place.
You know - before the internet. When if someone wanted to respond to an article or a timely topic (in an actual newspaper!), he had to take the time to write a letter, put a stamp on the envelope and post it. While I'm sure there were plenty of pointless letters to editors even then, they couldn't compare to the number of pointless posts on forums.
The point being, I think the immediate nature of posting online is more of a contributing factor to pointless posts than is anonymity. And if 'they' feel they have to do something to discourage those posts, I'd much rather see them hit the immediacy factor than remove anonymity and contribute to identify theft.
If you've actually read the WoW forums, I don't know how you can say it's more so the instantaneous nature of speaking online. WoW, both on the forums and in-game is full of better-than-thou idiots who actively try to be elitist jackoffs. Now that I think about it, the "instantaneous nature" of posting online is rather not, but it gives the poster ample opportunity to refine their post without spewing verbal diarrhea.
I have two or three on-line identities, but they are kept apart and in a particular forum I'll always use the same one. Some date back over fifteen years and so in some ways are better known than if I did post with my full name. There are too many nutters out there to necessarily trust my full details to the wilder parts of the net although they're available for those who look hard enough
...they could, you know, MODERATE! It's not like they don't get enough money in to pay a moderating team and add better alert buttons, with more stringent bans in place.
I'm pretty sure there is a level of moderation in the forums (bad language, etc). However, that doesn't change the underlying attitude of posters - and the break between real and virtual identity that people have celebrated above is one of the major causes of that attitude.
As a player of WoW, I sometimes end up dealing with random people that forget the other players are actually real people rather than just computer simulations. Real names being visible MAY help with that, but *shrug* I don't think it will make that much of a difference.
Of course this post discussing moderation may be moderated... Hello Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr/Lord/Emperor moderator, your majesty.
A) How shameful these WOW players feel their "hobby" is
B) that loads of desperate saddo geeks chasing "I'm a girl really" players are going to have a nasty shock
For sure though, I'll probably be interested to see if any colleagues or future employees names show up against a quick google search of blizzard's servers :)
Yes you can moderate, you can not post on the forums, you can protect your name in WoW from everyone (except from the RealID bug currently but they'll fix that).
You'll NEVER get the same thing in EVE, which lets players rip each other off, have moles in corps and scamming people is all within game rules.
WoW will become the safe 'family' MMORPG where the forums are clean and the game is filled with good clean 'American' values. EVE will continue to be a more mature, more player 'dangerous' MMORPG.
Personally I hope that players do leave WoW in their droves: I have the feeling it may have had it's day.
"Personally I hope that players do leave WoW in their droves: I have the feeling it may have had it's day." Sounds like a bit of EVE fanbois-ism, have you seen the subscriber figures for this game, last time I looked it was at about 11m and that didn't include the China servers. Blizzard makes millions a month of this game and they are now rolling out new content through expansions on an 18month basis, if anything they have the MMORPG formula sewn-up from a mass market perspective.
Facebook has had similiar problems but people keep subscribing and Facebook keeps tweaking, this is all a storm in a tea cup (mostly by a bunch of teenagers no doubt that think they have a right to slag people off from behind a fake persona).
The way you characterise it makes Eve sound brilliant. Clearly it's a different game to the one that I had a 30 day free trial for. That was a pile of baw wank. It was like the Crimson Permanent Assurance in space- like a mix between click to move RTS and a spreadsheet.
It also had the most charmlessly hamfisted gui imaginable, which looked ok on my laptop with its puny 1280xsomething display, but on the 2560xwhatever desktop monitor, it didn't scale the gui up, and it became eyebleedingly horrid and hard to use.
Jumbled, cryptic, boring and extremely unpleasant to look at. You know, you're right, that is quite a lot like adult life. How depressing.
Stopped playing WoW after a few months or so of it coming out. Had stopped even reading the forums way before that, it was such a mess.
Eventually created a facebook account under a pseudonym just to see what the fuss was about and to have a nosy around without anyone pestering me.
I keep my online footprint to a minimum and actually just googled myself for a laugh seems there are 25 "me's" on linkedin none of which are me. It probably wouldn't take someone with enough dedicated time to hook some information about me more fool them though to be honest.
"The mind boggles at the security implications from social engineering passwords, email addresses and account names or even safety if people have ex partners or stalkers etc."
Presumably ex partners would already know your real name? Or possibly not as this is WoW players we are talking about.
Recovering WoW player here, and this makes me bloody glad I got out.
First up, I used to roll with a fairly grown-up crowd, teachers, doctors, thrillingly some local government peeps. I can't see teachers wanting angry kids griefing them while they're unwinding, they get enough of that in the day. Hell, someone who won The Hat Of Many Angry Ocelots or whatever on DKP doesn't want some non-blinking basement dweller turning up at their surgery and harassing their paitients.
Me, I've had a couple of Interwebs stalkers already, and like to keep my real name to myself unless I actually feel comfortable with someone.
Finally, do you really want to know that mighty main tank Arghdestroyer of the guild GODKILLARZ is really "Brian Smedly"? Won't it reduce your enjoyment just a tad?
Fuck that, to be honest, Blizzard shot themselves in the wossnames this time. Yes, I understand that they attract a lot of tards (see "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory, http://tinyurl.com/2oo328), that's why I stopped playing. Multiplayer is only fun if other players aren't facepalm-inducingly stupid.
However, by opting to do this rather than just leash the tards a little better, I suspect they might just start a decline in their massive numbers. Sure, it's cheaper to out everyone than employ more and better moderation, but little Bobby Kotick won't be happy when you start bleeding players.
Anon, because I can be here. Long may it continue.
I have a philosophical problem with forcing people to use "real names"
Someone whose "real name" is John Smith has nothing to lose, but someone whose "real name" is Thadaeus Odling-Smee loses their privacy whenever their name is attached to something.
What do we mean by "real name", anyway? There are people who have one name on their passport but use a different name in practice. Even their close friends might not know the name on their passport.
Perhaps we should fight back against the state by calling all children Sam Smith from now on. Of course we can use other names at home and with friends, but if the police or any other authority wants our names, in that case we're all called Sam Smith and have the papers to prove it.
I have a very unusual surname. Putting my own name in quotes into Google returns a fair few hits and they are all my name used in context somewhere, there are no "imposters". Fortunately for me, nothing of any use is revealed in any of these and since I noticed this I've made something of a point of making it stay that way.
Likewise I once knew a girl with a very unusual first name. Putting her full name in quotes into Google produces only results that are "her" too. Ten minutes later I had where she lived, phone number, married name, husband's name etc. etc. etc. The internet is a very powerful thing if you have tight enough search criteria and people with unusual names look suspiciously like low-hanging fruit these days.
>>"Someone whose "real name" is John Smith has nothing to lose, but someone whose "real name" is Thadaeus Odling-Smee loses their privacy whenever their name is attached to something."
Indeed. Even if this is my real name, I'm probably fairly safe.
Whereas with a mate of mine, just googling his *first* name comes up with the first 5 hits being him.
Fair enough, he does use the internet a fair bit, but he doesn't go out of the way to publicise himself.
... I found that out the hard way after we started requiring real names on our website. Most jackasses don't care if you know who they are or not, as anyone who has ever worked in retail is probably fully aware of.
The only thing that keeps people from degenerating into deranged, howling savages when they don't get their way is their desire to be respected and accepted. If they don't care about your community or you, they'll say whatever the hell they want, real name or not.
When we lifted the change a couple of years back and re-examined our motives, we realized that there was no correlation between the quality of users who were anonymous and those who were not. Some of our best contributors used obviously made-up names, and some of worst nightmares were John Duff* from Maryland.
I remember when the reg were f---ing around with their posting system and my real name is now attached to a message I'd have prefered it wasn't attached to. It was in the old cartoon pronz topics. But such is life.
If the change is applied to all old messages I can imagine there being discussions in general topics about contentious issues people wouldn't want tracked back to their RW identity.
I'm sure I could go back through my 42 pages of comments and find it, then remove it, when it happend there was no facility to remove posts. The post however was relevent to the discussion at the time and I feel it still stands and so wont remove it, it still doesn't remove the fact that the error occured (and an apology was made at the time so I don't particularly mind), it does however highlight the issue of attaching users real names to posts without the users concent.
Now try to be a bit less childish and not post my name in your responces.
Jee I'd never have known about audit trails and logs, except that I deal with such things on a regular basis. I doubt very much subtlty was involved. But nice try at justification for an irresponsible act.
This has nothing to do with audit logs or logging but instead with forcing people to provide real names to the internet on a forum with a vast community. With the wide array of risks that carries with it.
however if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously as a respected repository of knowledge, then I would argue being able to know who has written an article about something as fairly critical. Actually being able to verify that the author has expertise in the subject (not just the time to defend their article) or has no conflicts of interest etc is incredibly important to help you to judge if the information being presented is credible. www.worldbookonline.com is an example of what I mean, each entry has the contributors name and their qualifications. It may be no better written or be no more accurate than the WP version but at least you have some reassurance that the writer knows what they are talking about.
What is the the problem here? A forum that will put your real name on all your posts? So are you all saying you all actually sign up for things like that using your real names?
I don't and anyone with any common sense wouldn't. It's only a forum, they can't check and confirm you are providing your "real name". All you do is provide a christian name and surname. Anything you can think of. I know that thinking may be taxing for the average WoW player. But if they try it may even get them thinking that they could be doing something worthwhile with their lives.
Moderators find out and ban me for not being "honest"? Will my life end because I can't post in an on-line forum?
I signed up here using my real name of Monty Pole of course. That's Mr Pole to you.
Not that I play WoW (tried it for a couple of months, got bored) - but, WoW is totally online and paid for with your credit card (in most cases) - it's not inconceivable that you could tie the game registration to forum membership and therefore the credit card and real name - so it _could_ be verified.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing, just that it's not impossible - or even infeasible.
Certain security aspects mean you do kinda want your account under your real name. If you're 110% sure your account won't be stolen, then fine, go for a fake name....
Never had any account security issues here, though.
Changing your name on account, iirc, means you need to contact Blizz support, and provide some identity/reason for name change. Seem to remember looking into it when my name changed and didn't bother.
(Card payment name is different from account holder name, so parents can pay for child's accounts, or, in some cases, a significant other/friend can also pay for your account too :P)
1) Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft/the Battle.NET account system requires the registration of a name and address. However, there is absolutely no reason to use your real name or address! Blizzard do not authenticate in any way shape or form against this name - not even if you use a credit card for payment.
2) WoW allows the use of pre-paid game cards. These are anonymous cards available from any game shop or can even be bought online, e.g. from Amazon.co.uk. They are actually a very efficient method of payment and are often significantly cheaper than paying directly by credit card!
3) Even if Blizzard were now to go to ridiculous lengths with their new system and ban game cards, there are easily available pre-paid/virtual credit cards from Visa and others which once you register with real details allow the creation of any names on the virtual account and card.
In addition, people seem to ignore four vital aspects to this new policy:
a) at least Facebook and other sites which use private information are not easily publically indexable or offer options to prevent such access without preventing access to the sites services,
b) once information is out on the open Internet, it is persistent. This is kind of the whole point of the Internet,
c) privacy is not just for the moment, it is for life. If you give up your right to privacy at any point in this day and age, you have given it up for the future. This may have serious repercussions down the line for any given individual,
d) if a company has this much contempt for privacy and is prepared to experiment directly with people's lives on a grand scale, there is no reason why they should stop here. Those talking about this being restricted only to forum postings are a little naive. This has already been demonstrated by the existing easy exploits to obtain Real IDs by perfect strangers. Due care and attention goes out of the window when personal information is of so little value.
In short, this appalling policy which makes Facebook look like a privacy advocate in comparison, can be easily bypassed by all members of the gaming community if they so wished, and demonstrates a clear disregard for the concept of privacy.
Blizzard now want you to not only risk your precious time but also your even more precious real life information for this allegedly addictive game. At the end of the day, its just that: a game. No matter how blurry this distinction may seem to some of the WoW community, including Blizzard Entertainment, it is never worth risking your life for a game!
Comments from under a tinfoil hat. But it's MY tinfoil hat, and it's my choice to wear it...
The furore overnight about real-ID is not as much about the posting on forums - yes, you can simply choose not to post from this point. Not to participate in a major feature of a MULTI-player online game, by keeping to yourself because of the very real and valid concern that you dont want little Johnny raid-leader the 10 year old with the social nounce of a shotgun to be able to use it to track you down and phone your house at 3am in the morning every morning for telling him to "grow up and stop spamming you stupid little child"
But the major concern about this recent implementation is that this is just the first step. That real-ID will be compulsory to play the game at all, that the preserves of the sane gamer will be laid bare for all to see. (Bank alts, a server where they play with some real-life mates away from the raid guild, an RP toon for chilling out, a "pure" PVP toon for Sunday nights being a murdering bastard that you don't want to drag your main guilds name into.... *ahem*...)
Not to mention a game which promotes itself not just as an "mmog" , but an "mmoRPg" has just removed in fell swoop all sense of Role-Playing. Because somehow "John Smith" the orc warrior just doesnt have the same ring to it as "Bloodaxe" or "Gutsmasha". And you know what? Escapism is precisely why I play games, if I wanted to be stuck with Bob the accountant for company, I can do that for the 9-5. When I load up World of Warcrack or any of its sibling genre, I want to be entertained, I want to participate, but just as much as that I want to do it on my terms, from the peace and quiet of my armchair.
According to this logic films should no longer have character names, only the actors real name associated with the part - and you should exchange your name, phone number and email address with the bloke you sit next to in the cinema. After all, you chose to participate in a multi-user movie theatre experience instead of renting out a DvD, and you're both sharing an entertainment experience so it must be alright...
And then we're back to the privacy issue of handling real-life information. "But you give ur name on facebookk lololol" the kids all cry. Well actually, no, I don't. I give my name to people I know, I get an option every single time someone wants to add me to say "nope". Anyone outside my circle only sees what I allow them to when they search for my name. Anyone inside my circle sees a bit more, but again the content and its distribution is under my control.
Real-ID automatically passes on all of your information to your contacts and their contacts in turn in some horrendous virutal daisy-chain of haemorraghing privacy. Real-ID does not let you select information to withhold, it's all or nothing. And the "all" is getting that bit closer.
Long-time USENET users can probably concur (well, I can at least) that (pseudo)anonymity is more useful as a way to protect you from some crank showing up at your door for some good in-person harassment (it has happened) than that it helps prevent cranks, trolls, stalkers, and so on remain "undetectable". A serious crank will give themselves away every time by their often quite distinctive habits and mannerisms, even in the patterns of pseudonyms they choose.
Going all "but I have nothing to hide" is entirely the wrong approach, and a stupid lie besides. Worse, it implies that people who don't lie to themselves about whether they need (not want, need) privacy are somehow suspect or even criminal.
This blizzard policy ought to be just as obviously objectionable on its face as requiring all partakers to a kinky latex party to have their IDs scanned (and stored for some indeterminate time by some indeterminate party). But then, the plod (who else?) seem to think that's a swell idea as well.
Well there's quite a few million wow players world wide but considering even other geeks take the mick not everyone would be happy to know who they really are.
Anonymity protects the normal people from the trolls, both in and out of game and if the response on the US forums is a sign then all the normal people will just leave the forums leaving it to the trolls who don't care, closing it down basically.
Maybe that's the plan.
Anyway, after just one day the complaint post is over 1000 pages long with over 18,000 replies, an order of magnitude bigger than anything ever seen on their site.
Flicking through the posts last night the reasons for keeping it anonymous were legion and I’m surprised we’d have to discuss it here of all places.
WoW is like Counter-Strike, it attracts the idiots leaving more mature and sensible players to play alternative games in peace. Of course there are also mature players in WoW and CS, but you get my point.
Currently on a break, was thinking of coming back when Cata is released, but I really don't agree with this "realID" stuff. Why should I reveal my name just to speak to other people? Steam allows me to speak to other gamers, should I wish to, and does not make similar demands.
I like to converse with people on the internet, but this doesn't say I want them to know my name, and theoretically derive my precise location.
I don't necessarily have a problem with me playing WoW, but some others do make silly assumptions about who you are if you play WoW. I do have a (at least close to) unique name, which would make googling for me easy, if I ever used it online.
I think my account may still be under my maiden name, not that my old surname really provides anonymity, barring to people who only know my married name.
Main problem with the WoW forums is that the moderation can be really, really bad. Some stuff gets locked for no reason, other threads spread rampant about the place, and forum bans are unpredictable.
If they had a policy of posting WHY a thread is locked, just after locking it, it would help massively. Some innocuous posts just get closed, because they're dupes, then another 5 dupes pop up, thanks to people not understanding why the thread was locked in the first place.
Ah well, most of the "decent" WoW crowd migrated to other forum(s) anyway. Though a lot of the decent players I knew have quit already for various reasons.
Yes, I'm currently considering cancelling my accounts too, which is quite a severe reaction for someone who's had an account since launch,.
I probably won't be playing Cata, SC2 and Diablo 3 either now, which is a bloody shame because I was really looking forward to both them and the discussions they'd produce on the forums.
has this kind of policy. They actually employ a Community Manager who - guess what - manages the community. Their forums are the best I've seen because the Community manager (and from time to time) the Devs will step in and tell people not to be dicks. And people respect them for it.
Which means that they probably have enough moderators for the forums, something that the Blizzard forums definitely don't have. I'm all for one char name for an account, or a RealID handle which you posted under and stronger moderation. Which would achieve the stated aims of this manoeuvre without the attendant upset to the community.
The latest post from Blizz on the EU thread ( http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816838128&sid=1&pageNo=203#4053 ) basically says that they know it's going to upset a lot of people and they don't care.
I'm losing any faith I had left in them to be honest.
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World of Warcraft forums are "where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild", says Blizzard, the publisher of the mega-online game. And it thinks it knows how to get everyone to behave more nicely. With the next iteration of its Battle.net forum, the company is to publish users' real names in full on official …
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AJR article
Rem Rieder comes so close to understanding the reason online comments tend towards being, "packed with profanity and vicious personal attacks," but ultimately misses the opportunity.
He mentions that some sites require you to register before commenting in the hopes that might give one time to cool-off. Does he seriously think the 60 seconds or so to register before commenting is in any way comparable to the amount of time it takes to write a proper letter?
The problem is less the anonymity factor (which surely does contribute) but more the instantaneous nature of posting online.
Times surely change and unfortunately the nature of security today means we can't just share our names. Perhaps they should consider attacking the larger factor - force a user to come back 30 minutes after submitting a post to review and confirm before publishing it.
nah
This would result in people using a fan forum instead, hopefully the anonymity issue will cause that too but I can see it being a lot less of an issue for most people than the hassle of what you suggest.
Huh...
I thought the 'hassle' of my suggestion was the whole purpose - to discourage thoughtless, sophomoric and pointless posts; to encourage people to only post when they're willing to go through the hassle in the first place.
You know - before the internet. When if someone wanted to respond to an article or a timely topic (in an actual newspaper!), he had to take the time to write a letter, put a stamp on the envelope and post it. While I'm sure there were plenty of pointless letters to editors even then, they couldn't compare to the number of pointless posts on forums.
The point being, I think the immediate nature of posting online is more of a contributing factor to pointless posts than is anonymity. And if 'they' feel they have to do something to discourage those posts, I'd much rather see them hit the immediacy factor than remove anonymity and contribute to identify theft.
Here's your effin title
If you've actually read the WoW forums, I don't know how you can say it's more so the instantaneous nature of speaking online. WoW, both on the forums and in-game is full of better-than-thou idiots who actively try to be elitist jackoffs. Now that I think about it, the "instantaneous nature" of posting online is rather not, but it gives the poster ample opportunity to refine their post without spewing verbal diarrhea.
Consistent ID
I have two or three on-line identities, but they are kept apart and in a particular forum I'll always use the same one. Some date back over fifteen years and so in some ways are better known than if I did post with my full name. There are too many nutters out there to necessarily trust my full details to the wilder parts of the net although they're available for those who look hard enough
I am not a number, etc.
There is another way...
...they could, you know, MODERATE! It's not like they don't get enough money in to pay a moderating team and add better alert buttons, with more stringent bans in place.
Moderation is not black and white
I'm pretty sure there is a level of moderation in the forums (bad language, etc). However, that doesn't change the underlying attitude of posters - and the break between real and virtual identity that people have celebrated above is one of the major causes of that attitude.
As a player of WoW, I sometimes end up dealing with random people that forget the other players are actually real people rather than just computer simulations. Real names being visible MAY help with that, but *shrug* I don't think it will make that much of a difference.
Of course this post discussing moderation may be moderated... Hello Mr/Ms/Mrs/Dr/Lord/Emperor moderator, your majesty.
This only goes to show
Either
A) How shameful these WOW players feel their "hobby" is
B) that loads of desperate saddo geeks chasing "I'm a girl really" players are going to have a nasty shock
For sure though, I'll probably be interested to see if any colleagues or future employees names show up against a quick google search of blizzard's servers :)
Piss taking will then ensue...
I'm an investment banker....
are my board of directors going to judge me for playing a female tauren thief who cant get past level 7?
Feel sorry for
Got to feel sorry for there teenage E-peens, Grish the Destroyer will now be know by his real name Bob Beaker.
And yes my surname name is 19 just like Joe.
Sir
Joe-19? Do you mean Joe-90 ? :D
Steve says:
Just don't use the forums.
Not that big of a deal.
And the MMORPG rifts expand...
Yes you can moderate, you can not post on the forums, you can protect your name in WoW from everyone (except from the RealID bug currently but they'll fix that).
You'll NEVER get the same thing in EVE, which lets players rip each other off, have moles in corps and scamming people is all within game rules.
WoW will become the safe 'family' MMORPG where the forums are clean and the game is filled with good clean 'American' values. EVE will continue to be a more mature, more player 'dangerous' MMORPG.
Personally I hope that players do leave WoW in their droves: I have the feeling it may have had it's day.
Seriously...
"Personally I hope that players do leave WoW in their droves: I have the feeling it may have had it's day." Sounds like a bit of EVE fanbois-ism, have you seen the subscriber figures for this game, last time I looked it was at about 11m and that didn't include the China servers. Blizzard makes millions a month of this game and they are now rolling out new content through expansions on an 18month basis, if anything they have the MMORPG formula sewn-up from a mass market perspective.
Facebook has had similiar problems but people keep subscribing and Facebook keeps tweaking, this is all a storm in a tea cup (mostly by a bunch of teenagers no doubt that think they have a right to slag people off from behind a fake persona).
P.S. and yes my name is Rob
re: "And the MMORPG rifts expand..."
Jim,
The way you characterise it makes Eve sound brilliant. Clearly it's a different game to the one that I had a 30 day free trial for. That was a pile of baw wank. It was like the Crimson Permanent Assurance in space- like a mix between click to move RTS and a spreadsheet.
It also had the most charmlessly hamfisted gui imaginable, which looked ok on my laptop with its puny 1280xsomething display, but on the 2560xwhatever desktop monitor, it didn't scale the gui up, and it became eyebleedingly horrid and hard to use.
Jumbled, cryptic, boring and extremely unpleasant to look at. You know, you're right, that is quite a lot like adult life. How depressing.
Oh !
Stopped playing WoW after a few months or so of it coming out. Had stopped even reading the forums way before that, it was such a mess.
Eventually created a facebook account under a pseudonym just to see what the fuss was about and to have a nosy around without anyone pestering me.
I keep my online footprint to a minimum and actually just googled myself for a laugh seems there are 25 "me's" on linkedin none of which are me. It probably wouldn't take someone with enough dedicated time to hook some information about me more fool them though to be honest.
Name and icon because they are always after me!!
Anonymous Partners?
"The mind boggles at the security implications from social engineering passwords, email addresses and account names or even safety if people have ex partners or stalkers etc."
Presumably ex partners would already know your real name? Or possibly not as this is WoW players we are talking about.
Argh
Recovering WoW player here, and this makes me bloody glad I got out.
First up, I used to roll with a fairly grown-up crowd, teachers, doctors, thrillingly some local government peeps. I can't see teachers wanting angry kids griefing them while they're unwinding, they get enough of that in the day. Hell, someone who won The Hat Of Many Angry Ocelots or whatever on DKP doesn't want some non-blinking basement dweller turning up at their surgery and harassing their paitients.
Me, I've had a couple of Interwebs stalkers already, and like to keep my real name to myself unless I actually feel comfortable with someone.
Finally, do you really want to know that mighty main tank Arghdestroyer of the guild GODKILLARZ is really "Brian Smedly"? Won't it reduce your enjoyment just a tad?
Fuck that, to be honest, Blizzard shot themselves in the wossnames this time. Yes, I understand that they attract a lot of tards (see "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory, http://tinyurl.com/2oo328), that's why I stopped playing. Multiplayer is only fun if other players aren't facepalm-inducingly stupid.
However, by opting to do this rather than just leash the tards a little better, I suspect they might just start a decline in their massive numbers. Sure, it's cheaper to out everyone than employ more and better moderation, but little Bobby Kotick won't be happy when you start bleeding players.
Anon, because I can be here. Long may it continue.
I have a philosophical problem with forcing people to use "real names"
Someone whose "real name" is John Smith has nothing to lose, but someone whose "real name" is Thadaeus Odling-Smee loses their privacy whenever their name is attached to something.
What do we mean by "real name", anyway? There are people who have one name on their passport but use a different name in practice. Even their close friends might not know the name on their passport.
Perhaps we should fight back against the state by calling all children Sam Smith from now on. Of course we can use other names at home and with friends, but if the police or any other authority wants our names, in that case we're all called Sam Smith and have the papers to prove it.
Names.
I have a very unusual surname. Putting my own name in quotes into Google returns a fair few hits and they are all my name used in context somewhere, there are no "imposters". Fortunately for me, nothing of any use is revealed in any of these and since I noticed this I've made something of a point of making it stay that way.
Likewise I once knew a girl with a very unusual first name. Putting her full name in quotes into Google produces only results that are "her" too. Ten minutes later I had where she lived, phone number, married name, husband's name etc. etc. etc. The internet is a very powerful thing if you have tight enough search criteria and people with unusual names look suspiciously like low-hanging fruit these days.
Same here. I also have an unusual forename.
Some judicious data hygiene means that searching for my name in Google returns no results whatsoever.
@AC
>>"Someone whose "real name" is John Smith has nothing to lose, but someone whose "real name" is Thadaeus Odling-Smee loses their privacy whenever their name is attached to something."
Indeed. Even if this is my real name, I'm probably fairly safe.
Whereas with a mate of mine, just googling his *first* name comes up with the first 5 hits being him.
Fair enough, he does use the internet a fair bit, but he doesn't go out of the way to publicise himself.
Anonymity has nothing to do with trolls
This post is too long!
... I found that out the hard way after we started requiring real names on our website. Most jackasses don't care if you know who they are or not, as anyone who has ever worked in retail is probably fully aware of.
The only thing that keeps people from degenerating into deranged, howling savages when they don't get their way is their desire to be respected and accepted. If they don't care about your community or you, they'll say whatever the hell they want, real name or not.
When we lifted the change a couple of years back and re-examined our motives, we realized that there was no correlation between the quality of users who were anonymous and those who were not. Some of our best contributors used obviously made-up names, and some of worst nightmares were John Duff* from Maryland.
*name ironically changed to protect identity
I remember
I remember when the reg were f---ing around with their posting system and my real name is now attached to a message I'd have prefered it wasn't attached to. It was in the old cartoon pronz topics. But such is life.
If the change is applied to all old messages I can imagine there being discussions in general topics about contentious issues people wouldn't want tracked back to their RW identity.
Re: I remember
Well Matt - you can withdraw - i.e. delete that post, if you want.
I'm sure
I'm sure I could go back through my 42 pages of comments and find it, then remove it, when it happend there was no facility to remove posts. The post however was relevent to the discussion at the time and I feel it still stands and so wont remove it, it still doesn't remove the fact that the error occured (and an apology was made at the time so I don't particularly mind), it does however highlight the issue of attaching users real names to posts without the users concent.
Now try to be a bit less childish and not post my name in your responces.
Interesting
I think you may be missing the subtle point that the reg hack is alluding to there, where your anonymity is an illusion.
One of the best things about the internets is the audit trails and loggings.
Of course I could be wrong and it could be petty vindictive behaviour as you suggest.
1984 because while big brother may not be watching you, your activities are probably being logged somewhere.
jee
Jee I'd never have known about audit trails and logs, except that I deal with such things on a regular basis. I doubt very much subtlty was involved. But nice try at justification for an irresponsible act.
This has nothing to do with audit logs or logging but instead with forcing people to provide real names to the internet on a forum with a vast community. With the wide array of risks that carries with it.
eh
People are forced to participate in the forum if they want to play warcraft?
What will happen is a few user created forums will start up and eventually these will whittle down to the core of the users who wish to stay anonymous
Yeah it'll probably won't be as good as before, but thats life in general.
Apologies
Careless, rather than childish - a slip of the button on my part, which had escaped my attention until now.
My apologies
hmmmm
as someone with a very unique name im against this type of thing. if i type my name in all i find is me. scary stuff lol.
not that i play WOW, but if any of the fps games or ps3 games i play decided to put out my real name i wuold quit. cant be worth the hassle.
Vive le difference
Good arguments for anonymity. Now, who was suggesting that Wikipedian editors should be using their real names?
you have a point
however if Wikipedia wants to be taken seriously as a respected repository of knowledge, then I would argue being able to know who has written an article about something as fairly critical. Actually being able to verify that the author has expertise in the subject (not just the time to defend their article) or has no conflicts of interest etc is incredibly important to help you to judge if the information being presented is credible. www.worldbookonline.com is an example of what I mean, each entry has the contributors name and their qualifications. It may be no better written or be no more accurate than the WP version but at least you have some reassurance that the writer knows what they are talking about.
"Real" Names
What is the the problem here? A forum that will put your real name on all your posts? So are you all saying you all actually sign up for things like that using your real names?
I don't and anyone with any common sense wouldn't. It's only a forum, they can't check and confirm you are providing your "real name". All you do is provide a christian name and surname. Anything you can think of. I know that thinking may be taxing for the average WoW player. But if they try it may even get them thinking that they could be doing something worthwhile with their lives.
Moderators find out and ban me for not being "honest"? Will my life end because I can't post in an on-line forum?
I signed up here using my real name of Monty Pole of course. That's Mr Pole to you.
Paris 'cause that's her real name
Are you _sure_ about that?
Not that I play WoW (tried it for a couple of months, got bored) - but, WoW is totally online and paid for with your credit card (in most cases) - it's not inconceivable that you could tie the game registration to forum membership and therefore the credit card and real name - so it _could_ be verified.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing, just that it's not impossible - or even infeasible.
WoW forum
The WoW forum uses your game account.
Certain security aspects mean you do kinda want your account under your real name. If you're 110% sure your account won't be stolen, then fine, go for a fake name....
Never had any account security issues here, though.
Changing your name on account, iirc, means you need to contact Blizz support, and provide some identity/reason for name change. Seem to remember looking into it when my name changed and didn't bother.
(Card payment name is different from account holder name, so parents can pay for child's accounts, or, in some cases, a significant other/friend can also pay for your account too :P)
Terrible policy and *easily* bypassed
1) Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft/the Battle.NET account system requires the registration of a name and address. However, there is absolutely no reason to use your real name or address! Blizzard do not authenticate in any way shape or form against this name - not even if you use a credit card for payment.
2) WoW allows the use of pre-paid game cards. These are anonymous cards available from any game shop or can even be bought online, e.g. from Amazon.co.uk. They are actually a very efficient method of payment and are often significantly cheaper than paying directly by credit card!
3) Even if Blizzard were now to go to ridiculous lengths with their new system and ban game cards, there are easily available pre-paid/virtual credit cards from Visa and others which once you register with real details allow the creation of any names on the virtual account and card.
In addition, people seem to ignore four vital aspects to this new policy:
a) at least Facebook and other sites which use private information are not easily publically indexable or offer options to prevent such access without preventing access to the sites services,
b) once information is out on the open Internet, it is persistent. This is kind of the whole point of the Internet,
c) privacy is not just for the moment, it is for life. If you give up your right to privacy at any point in this day and age, you have given it up for the future. This may have serious repercussions down the line for any given individual,
d) if a company has this much contempt for privacy and is prepared to experiment directly with people's lives on a grand scale, there is no reason why they should stop here. Those talking about this being restricted only to forum postings are a little naive. This has already been demonstrated by the existing easy exploits to obtain Real IDs by perfect strangers. Due care and attention goes out of the window when personal information is of so little value.
In short, this appalling policy which makes Facebook look like a privacy advocate in comparison, can be easily bypassed by all members of the gaming community if they so wished, and demonstrates a clear disregard for the concept of privacy.
Blizzard now want you to not only risk your precious time but also your even more precious real life information for this allegedly addictive game. At the end of the day, its just that: a game. No matter how blurry this distinction may seem to some of the WoW community, including Blizzard Entertainment, it is never worth risking your life for a game!
Comments from under a tinfoil hat. But it's MY tinfoil hat, and it's my choice to wear it...
The furore overnight about real-ID is not as much about the posting on forums - yes, you can simply choose not to post from this point. Not to participate in a major feature of a MULTI-player online game, by keeping to yourself because of the very real and valid concern that you dont want little Johnny raid-leader the 10 year old with the social nounce of a shotgun to be able to use it to track you down and phone your house at 3am in the morning every morning for telling him to "grow up and stop spamming you stupid little child"
But the major concern about this recent implementation is that this is just the first step. That real-ID will be compulsory to play the game at all, that the preserves of the sane gamer will be laid bare for all to see. (Bank alts, a server where they play with some real-life mates away from the raid guild, an RP toon for chilling out, a "pure" PVP toon for Sunday nights being a murdering bastard that you don't want to drag your main guilds name into.... *ahem*...)
Not to mention a game which promotes itself not just as an "mmog" , but an "mmoRPg" has just removed in fell swoop all sense of Role-Playing. Because somehow "John Smith" the orc warrior just doesnt have the same ring to it as "Bloodaxe" or "Gutsmasha". And you know what? Escapism is precisely why I play games, if I wanted to be stuck with Bob the accountant for company, I can do that for the 9-5. When I load up World of Warcrack or any of its sibling genre, I want to be entertained, I want to participate, but just as much as that I want to do it on my terms, from the peace and quiet of my armchair.
According to this logic films should no longer have character names, only the actors real name associated with the part - and you should exchange your name, phone number and email address with the bloke you sit next to in the cinema. After all, you chose to participate in a multi-user movie theatre experience instead of renting out a DvD, and you're both sharing an entertainment experience so it must be alright...
And then we're back to the privacy issue of handling real-life information. "But you give ur name on facebookk lololol" the kids all cry. Well actually, no, I don't. I give my name to people I know, I get an option every single time someone wants to add me to say "nope". Anyone outside my circle only sees what I allow them to when they search for my name. Anyone inside my circle sees a bit more, but again the content and its distribution is under my control.
Real-ID automatically passes on all of your information to your contacts and their contacts in turn in some horrendous virutal daisy-chain of haemorraghing privacy. Real-ID does not let you select information to withhold, it's all or nothing. And the "all" is getting that bit closer.
blizzard doesn't get it, again.
Long-time USENET users can probably concur (well, I can at least) that (pseudo)anonymity is more useful as a way to protect you from some crank showing up at your door for some good in-person harassment (it has happened) than that it helps prevent cranks, trolls, stalkers, and so on remain "undetectable". A serious crank will give themselves away every time by their often quite distinctive habits and mannerisms, even in the patterns of pseudonyms they choose.
Going all "but I have nothing to hide" is entirely the wrong approach, and a stupid lie besides. Worse, it implies that people who don't lie to themselves about whether they need (not want, need) privacy are somehow suspect or even criminal.
This blizzard policy ought to be just as obviously objectionable on its face as requiring all partakers to a kinky latex party to have their IDs scanned (and stored for some indeterminate time by some indeterminate party). But then, the plod (who else?) seem to think that's a swell idea as well.
And who says my name is not Anonymous Coward?
And who says my name is not Anonymous Coward?
:D
Theres an easy way to get around it ....
It's snowballing rather quickly...
Well there's quite a few million wow players world wide but considering even other geeks take the mick not everyone would be happy to know who they really are.
Anonymity protects the normal people from the trolls, both in and out of game and if the response on the US forums is a sign then all the normal people will just leave the forums leaving it to the trolls who don't care, closing it down basically.
Maybe that's the plan.
Anyway, after just one day the complaint post is over 1000 pages long with over 18,000 replies, an order of magnitude bigger than anything ever seen on their site.
Flicking through the posts last night the reasons for keeping it anonymous were legion and I’m surprised we’d have to discuss it here of all places.
How do they know what your real name is?
Do you have to produce your passport to register for the forum?
I'm posting here as "Kubla Cant", and I'm signed up as "First Last". To be perfectly honest, neither of these is my real name.
Chris
(Oops!)
Not rocket science
Does your credit card say "Mr. Kubla Cant" on it? Can you sign up for WoW without a credit card?
Yes, yes you can sign up sans credit card
http://www.gamestop.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=40922
If you go to an actual store, you can even pay for that anonymous time card in cash.
Noooo
WoW is like Counter-Strike, it attracts the idiots leaving more mature and sensible players to play alternative games in peace. Of course there are also mature players in WoW and CS, but you get my point.
To be fair...
The ALLIANCE attracts the idiots, leaving more mature and sensible players to play Horde =)
I was/am a WoW player
Currently on a break, was thinking of coming back when Cata is released, but I really don't agree with this "realID" stuff. Why should I reveal my name just to speak to other people? Steam allows me to speak to other gamers, should I wish to, and does not make similar demands.
I like to converse with people on the internet, but this doesn't say I want them to know my name, and theoretically derive my precise location.
I don't necessarily have a problem with me playing WoW, but some others do make silly assumptions about who you are if you play WoW. I do have a (at least close to) unique name, which would make googling for me easy, if I ever used it online.
I think my account may still be under my maiden name, not that my old surname really provides anonymity, barring to people who only know my married name.
Main problem with the WoW forums is that the moderation can be really, really bad. Some stuff gets locked for no reason, other threads spread rampant about the place, and forum bans are unpredictable.
If they had a policy of posting WHY a thread is locked, just after locking it, it would help massively. Some innocuous posts just get closed, because they're dupes, then another 5 dupes pop up, thanks to people not understanding why the thread was locked in the first place.
Ah well, most of the "decent" WoW crowd migrated to other forum(s) anyway. Though a lot of the decent players I knew have quit already for various reasons.
(...and a "hi" to thecowking :D)
Hello!
Yes, I'm currently considering cancelling my accounts too, which is quite a severe reaction for someone who's had an account since launch,.
I probably won't be playing Cata, SC2 and Diablo 3 either now, which is a bloody shame because I was really looking forward to both them and the discussions they'd produce on the forums.
Oh well, such is life.
Thecowking
City of Heroes
has this kind of policy. They actually employ a Community Manager who - guess what - manages the community. Their forums are the best I've seen because the Community manager (and from time to time) the Devs will step in and tell people not to be dicks. And people respect them for it.
CoH is a much much smaller community
I mean orders of magnitude smaller.
Which means that they probably have enough moderators for the forums, something that the Blizzard forums definitely don't have. I'm all for one char name for an account, or a RealID handle which you posted under and stronger moderation. Which would achieve the stated aims of this manoeuvre without the attendant upset to the community.
The latest post from Blizz on the EU thread ( http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816838128&sid=1&pageNo=203#4053 ) basically says that they know it's going to upset a lot of people and they don't care.
I'm losing any faith I had left in them to be honest.
Thecowking
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