4 ms·

Posting in the forums is not completely optional. I mean sure, you can go your entire game-playing life without doing so, but if you ever get a hankering for po

Posting in the forums is not completely optional. I mean sure, you can go your entire game-playing life without doing so, but if you ever get a hankering for posting bug reports or wanting more help than GMs can provide in-game, the tech support and bug report forums are now unavailable to you should you wish to never post with your real name. Also, if I ever stop playing WoW because of the Real ID changes (so far, they're optional, works for me), it's because I hate getting harassed for being female (and my real name is very definitely feminine). Not because I fear what I say in forums or in-game will have a negative impact on my life otherwise. I just don't play a game to be annoyed like that. I normally don't care about my name being plastered everywhere, as I'm fully aware of how not anonymous the Internet is, but let's just say I don't exactly want Blizzard to go and tell the whole world my real name if I want to post cause those idiot 15 year olds in that retarded guild on my realm would probably go far enough to post IRL details of people they don't like for whatever reason in trade chat and more. I also don't see why that has to be the case, especially when they plan on introducing a big load of new features to help CMs moderate the forums. There's a difference between keeping that information thinly shielded behind a pseudonym from in-game vs. screaming the name on your billing address for the world to hear. But.....yeah, I ultimately have a choice. I have the choice to stop playing the game. Works for me.

csallen 16y ago
Yes, WoW is full of immature people who may use your real name to harass you (so is middle school). Getting harassed sucks. Maybe you're fearful enough of that possibility that you'll never post on the forums again. And maybe the forums are so important to you that you'll quit WoW without them. Those are perfectly legitimate ways to act, and I'm not arguing otherwise. As you said, it's your choice. What I am saying is that it's not an invasion of your privacy for Blizzard's forums to be based on RealID; they are not "bad guys" for doing so. In addition, many people feel it's next to impossible to have reasonable discussions in the forums as they are right now, where otherwise-reasonable people create anonymous accounts for the sole purposes of trolling and spamming.
- silencio 16y ago
  I'm not unaware of that. Neither was I debating that this was an invasion of my privacy, because Blizzard can do whatever the flying fuck they want with their own game and their own servers, and it requires ME to do something for it to become any kind of privacy breach, but at the same time it limits what I can do with what I'm paying with. (Now, if this was a retroactive change, we then have a problem....) Therefore, my choice is to stop playing the game if they force Real ID on people, where originally they claimed they would only use this for friends to keep in touch with each other. It's not a privacy thing, it's just a proposed change that doesn't fix the problem and screws over other people, and I don't really care to participate in this game if Blizzard continues down this path. For what it is worth, this is not the only change/addition to the game that would prompt me to quit playing. Claiming that this will cut down on trolling is fallacious. The other features that Blizzard intends on introducing to the forums (voting and threading, etc.) and that they could implement (no posting rights outside of tech support for toons under level 10, for example) will do far more to cut down on this kind of behavior than forcing people to use Real ID. Because it's entirely possible to create accounts with fake details or someone else's details, and it doesn't even take someone to post on the forums to see details about people that can enable them to troll elsewhere and in real life (see: Blizzard employee Bashiok on 4chan today after he posted his real name). This just reduces the overall usefulness of the official forums.
  - csallen 16y ago
    Mmmm, I don't buy it. When I played (I quit years ago), it was nearly impossible to conduct any kind of civil conversation on my realm's forums. It was an endlessly frustrating shit show, and the bigger guilds went so far as to ban their members from posting. A level cap wouldn't have dissuaded ANY of the prominent trolls. What Blizzard's forums need is an overwhelming change in tone and atmosphere, not minor improvements on the fringes. >> Because it's entirely possible to create accounts with fake details or someone else's details, and it doesn't even take someone to post on the forums to see details about people that can enable them to troll elsewhere and in real life Don't understand, I may be misreading this. Can you clarify?

csallen 16y ago

Yes, WoW is full of immature people who may use your real name to harass you (so is middle school). Getting harassed sucks. Maybe you're fearful enough of that possibility that you'll never post on the forums again. And maybe the forums are so important to you that you'll quit WoW without them. Those are perfectly legitimate ways to act, and I'm not arguing otherwise. As you said, it's your choice. What I am saying is that it's not an invasion of your privacy for Blizzard's forums to be based on RealID; they are not "bad guys" for doing so. In addition, many people feel it's next to impossible to have reasonable discussions in the forums as they are right now, where otherwise-reasonable people create anonymous accounts for the sole purposes of trolling and spamming.

silencio 16y ago
I'm not unaware of that. Neither was I debating that this was an invasion of my privacy, because Blizzard can do whatever the flying fuck they want with their own game and their own servers, and it requires ME to do something for it to become any kind of privacy breach, but at the same time it limits what I can do with what I'm paying with. (Now, if this was a retroactive change, we then have a problem....) Therefore, my choice is to stop playing the game if they force Real ID on people, where originally they claimed they would only use this for friends to keep in touch with each other. It's not a privacy thing, it's just a proposed change that doesn't fix the problem and screws over other people, and I don't really care to participate in this game if Blizzard continues down this path. For what it is worth, this is not the only change/addition to the game that would prompt me to quit playing. Claiming that this will cut down on trolling is fallacious. The other features that Blizzard intends on introducing to the forums (voting and threading, etc.) and that they could implement (no posting rights outside of tech support for toons under level 10, for example) will do far more to cut down on this kind of behavior than forcing people to use Real ID. Because it's entirely possible to create accounts with fake details or someone else's details, and it doesn't even take someone to post on the forums to see details about people that can enable them to troll elsewhere and in real life (see: Blizzard employee Bashiok on 4chan today after he posted his real name). This just reduces the overall usefulness of the official forums.
- csallen 16y ago
  Mmmm, I don't buy it. When I played (I quit years ago), it was nearly impossible to conduct any kind of civil conversation on my realm's forums. It was an endlessly frustrating shit show, and the bigger guilds went so far as to ban their members from posting. A level cap wouldn't have dissuaded ANY of the prominent trolls. What Blizzard's forums need is an overwhelming change in tone and atmosphere, not minor improvements on the fringes. >> Because it's entirely possible to create accounts with fake details or someone else's details, and it doesn't even take someone to post on the forums to see details about people that can enable them to troll elsewhere and in real life Don't understand, I may be misreading this. Can you clarify?