RealID: Worst Case Scenario

*continues munching on popcorn*
Truly, Bliz is bringing the ‘Cataclysm’ to their games…I say launch the thing already and let the pieces fall where they may.  It’ll either break Activision and Bliz, or bring forth the revolution that the internet needs in order to bring it to the next level…where anonymity is referred to as ‘noobing it’.

Interesting way to complain about the realId system.  Think the point is well made though,  as appauling as it might be.

Ah, truly a grand old MMORPG meltdown, isn’t it?
 
I saw it coming that people would stalk specifically to express outrage over Blizzard’s RealID transition, but that’s still something completely different from a transition to RealID enabling stalkers who have motivations other than to be pissy.
 

It’s a point that needs to be made.  Right now, if someone piques your interest on the forums, for whatever reason, the most you can do is try to find them in game and harass them.  Once they implement this change, that person can find you in real life and harass you, and anyone associated with you.  I’m not nearly as private as I used to be, but I’m not willing to post on a WoW board with my real name.  My big fear is that they’ll implement this retroactively, or worse, in game.  I have 3 WoW accounts, and I canceled them all because of this.  It’s stupidity at its worst.

Yeah, what’s the issue here Scott? These people have chosen to make all of this data available. This guy is just aggregating it to demonstrate a point; the information itself is freely available to anybody.
 
Are you worried that this somehow enables stalkers who don’t know how to use google? Honestly, a guy who is too lazy or stupid to punch somebody’s name into google himself probably lacks the skill and dedication to be a proper stalker anyway.

The guy is making a perfectly valid point.
I still think everyone is overreacting to this though, sensible people don’t use their real names on the internet, as I understand it, you won’t be forced to reveal your real name unless you post on their new forums.  So the obvious solution is, don’t post on their new forums.
The Mythic billing thing was much more deserving of outrage imho.

Another thought: Maybe this is some ingenious plot to make people aware of just how much of their information is ‘public’, and how they should either a)Take better care of it or b)Get with their lawmakers about changing what’s revealed and what is not.

True Names are to be used with caution
Somewhere, possibly back in the 80s, Vernor Vinge says: “I told you so.”

I’d rather nobody ever got hurt over this, but realistically speaking: those in power will never give up their power or change their “wicked” ways until something happens to them and theirs. You can see this throughout history with the rise and fall of European monarchies. Things start out peachy, then over time get worse and worse until you have some extremely ambitious guy like Mr. Kotick is in charge, telling the starving peasants to eat cake. Or in this case, just not play any games from the biggest game company ever or post on their forums if you don’t want to give up all your rights!
My true fear is not that some wackjob will harasse that poor millionaires working at Blizzard/Acctivision, but that this company IS big enough to get away with this clear violation of our rights. They have essentially reached 19th century Oil Barron status and think they can do no wrong. This simply can not end well for either party.
“Are you worried that this somehow enables stalkers who don’t know how to use google?”
It does. It’s just like people who are extremely depressed and want to kill themselves, but are so depressed  they don’t have the motivation to do so. However, once they start taking their medication and start feeling “better”, they now have the motivation to go through with their self destructive plans. Lots of people are angry over this, and rightfully so, but few of them have the motivation to act on this. Now they do, all the leg work is done for them. And those sickos who like to harass/murder/rape/whatever now have an additional motivation: People might cheer for them and treat them as heros if they go after these specific people.
I don’t want to sound melodramatic but these are dangerous times. Both sides of this particular argument have so much to potentially lose, and both sides do have the money, time and power to enforce their will. While that blog does make an excellent point, it opens doors that are very hard to close.

Sure its creepy but you gotta realize, and I speak from personal experience. There are ALOT of people that already RL stalk folks through WOW. As a officer of a guild with a long standing “No jerk” policy you get ALOT of people pissed off. ALOT ALOT…  like so many you wouldnt believe. App denied for calling people fag, App denied for trash talking in trade chat. Kicked from guild for trash talking / flying off the handle.
So ya.. the GM and several officers get regular stalker hang up calls and nasty voice mails.. and have for years. So their only option is to fully remove themselves from this real id business as much as possible. Which means that the community active end game guild figure heads will no longer be participating in the community. For fear of even MORE RL harrassment.
Fun times ahead!

WordPress tag fail.

Hank: It bums me out that someone decided to be a shithead over this.

It bums me out that Blizzard is too careless, too clueless, too ambivalent or straight up evil to not foresee this exact issue and do everything in their power to make sure it was in no way, shape or form possible.

Aufero: I don’t know about Lum, but I’m tempted to file an abuse report on it just because it reveals names, ages, hobbies and contact info for children. Yes, that’s easily available public information – it’s still irresponsible to list it all where some idiot who has barely enough brains to make a threatening phone call can use it. It makes the problem with the RealID program and real names on the internet plain, though.

The proposed implementation of RealID is irresponsible. Watching someone tally up the “online life” of an average person should scare the living shit out of every single one of us. But hey, by all means let’s wait for the first casualty before we care. I’m sure that will make the victims family feel much better. How many minors play WoW? How many have well-intentioned parents who vetted the game for content and regulate the amount of time allowed in-game have any idea that very, very soon their name (or their child’s name) will be attached to the forums and whatever else Blizzard wants after that’s done?

For the hundredth time: How is this even legal?

“That’s dirty playing, even if done to make a point.”
Perhaps, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that will be happening to the players once this new system goes live.  How is it okay for this to happen to the players but not the employees of the company?  Why the double-standard?

“…to back off from their plans to abuse their own playerbase’s personal information for profit.”

More ironic would be if the blogger started charging a finders fee to viewers for information found freely on the internet.

It’s not fair to their family and friends but, those people “just doing their job” should had thought about that before they put everyone elses’s family and friends at risk in the same way. I think that’s one of the points that the blogger is trying to make. It’s not just “your” name that is being made public here. With just someone’s name you put a lot of  other unrelated people at risk who weren’t to begin with.

JohnG228:
Part of me understands this reaction, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is just plain wrong.  I could care less about Greg Camessa or Bobby K.  They have both brought this on themselves by the things they have done.  But the family members and the other employees have done nothing but their jobs.  This is really wrong.

you know, I do feel bad for the blizzard employees who are having their privacy stripped away, but the blog in and of itself has done nothing illegal. We both agree that it’s a shitty thing to do, and we can hash out the morality of it later, but when it comes down to it this is a small-scale version of what can easily happen to people who don’t know any better and don’t know how to protect themselves from it.

In this case I would personally have gone after the activision directors and top staff, rather then the rank-and-file employees, but as far as proving his point it does do an admirable job.

This blog entry appears to be an unexpected “Friends and Family” Alpha test of what Blizzard plans to do with RealID.  I think it’s great that Activision/Blizzard gets to experience first hand what a portion of their customer base will inevitably go through once they implement RealID.
How could they possibly object to being subjected to such an outcome?  I guess they didn’t factor this into their risk/reward calculations.

Regarding the disclosure of information about children it should be noted that many of Blizzard’s customers also have children and it’s not just going to be players who are at risk should Mr Gamer Rage decide to come visit but their families too.
Many of us purchased WoW and expansions year ago when none of this was reasonably foreseeable. Introducing it this late to a game people have been enjoying for years is just not acceptable.
This makes WoW unplayable for many of us. I can’t be chilling online, telling some random dork to die in a fire if I have to worry about their mum phoning my manager in the morning or worse.
The very fact that this site is both offensive and creepy shows how it is not ok to expose players’ names which would allow the rest of these details to be collected. The high emotions people experience in game coupled with the power of the internet to harass is an absolutely lethal cocktail.

This is chilling, and also an example of just what to expect when this goes live. I can’t believe how naive Activision is on this matter, they only see the $$ I guess. I can just see the executives sitting down figuring in dollar amounts how they would still come out ahead even if they lost a few wrongful death lawsuits..putting a dollar amount on what a human life is worth and weighing it against their potential profits…it’s nauseating.

Yeah, that site is horrible. But…that information is already available. People are plain freaking out here…thinking they are anonymous at this point. They aren’t. You aren’t. We aren’t. This going to make it easier to track down someone for sure, but for any determined stalker, that was already pretty easy.

You haven’t been anonymous up to this point, this is just Blizzard making you aware.

I can just imagine: anonymous blogs that compile public personal information for your realm’s “well-known” loot ninjas! And Auction House undercutters! Won’t that be fun?

For those who are thinking this is all Activision’s doing… keep in mind that this is hardly the first time Blizzard has been caught trying to futz with their users’ personal information. There was a class action lawsuit back in 1998 filed against Blizzard because of their games gathering personal user information and sending it back to Blizzard, and another suit fairly recently about the Warden storing information it shouldn’t have been privy to. Blizzard’s been messing with personal information for years.

What’s really hilarious is getting a ban warning from posting that link on a site who is arguing that the problem is all in our heads because it’s “optional”.
Magic 8 ball says bad things to come because the typical WoW player will ostrich themselves the same way.

Privacy is, and always has been, an illusion.
 
Privacy is different from secrecy.  Privacy is when we agree not to look.
 
This is why the consolidation of otherwise available information strikes us as an invasion of privacy.  This is why we like to put a “face” on some of our activities, even if such a facade could be pierced by a determined attacker.  The benefit is that those of us that don’t want to be determined attackers don’t accidentally pierce the facade.
 
If I’m playing cards with someone, we could play with all the hands open on the table and just agree not to look.  But this is troublesome and annoying, so the convention is to hold them so they can’t be seen.  When someone fails to hold them properly, good form is to tell them to hide their cards better, not to peek and try to gain advantage.
 
Blizzards actions are to demand everyone show their cards.  Since the game being played is one in which the players specifically want to *escape* the real world, this means we are all obligated to shield our eyes and pretend not to see the John Smiths and so forth.  This is possible, but is annoying.  It is like looking through resumes – I consciously try to skip over the name so as to minimize any prejudices I might bring to the table.  I don’t want my first bit of info to be the name – I want it to be their experience.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the number of people who are freaking out over a misinterpretation of Real ID, but it does need to be repeated: If you don’t post on the official forums, and don’t give your battle.net email address to anyone, no one will know your real name.
What % of the player base do we think fall into both categories?