Malf on 9/7/2010 at 10:52
Yeah, I saw those two points raised in the RPS comments and was struck by how well the pieces fit. While Google can afford to strong-arm South Korea, Blizzard really can't.
And you just know that Kotick wants some of that tasty Farmville pie, a pie that's even bigger than WoW.
DDL on 9/7/2010 at 10:56
Right Click on Thorgar Wulfsbane
>> Invite Thorgar Wulfsbane to party
>> Request Trade
>> Add Thorgar Wulfsbane to friends list
>> Add Scott Jeffries (Thorgar Wulfsbane) to facebook friends list
>> Visit Scott Jeffries' (Thorgar Wulfsbane) Myspace homepage
>> Feed Scott Jeffries' (Thorgar Wulfsbane) Farmville Chickens
>> Tweet "Playin WoW with Scott Jeffries lol"
Nameless Voice on 9/7/2010 at 13:37
I was considering posting about this when Blizzard first announced it, but I was too lazy to write it up.
Koki's quote about Blizzard being disgusted by it is very interesting.
Basically, they're trying to force anyone who plays Blizzard games to join their weird new social networking site. When Blizzard announced the Matchmaking service back on the 1st of April, I thought it was very funny at the time - now I'm beginning to fear that they were being serious.
I can imagine it's only a matter of time before they decide to force their "RealID" on everyone playing on Battle.net, regardless of friend status.
I still don't quite see what's to stop someone from simply entering in that their real first name is Nameless and their second real name is Voice - exactly what I did when I opened a Battle.net account, and plan to continue doing if/when I get Starcraft 2.
The only thing I see forcing everyone to go on a real-name basis on the forums is going to achieve is to get rid of 90% of the meaningful posters, while leaving the trolls and the idiots who don't care what people think of them. I certainly wouldn't post there.
The whole "RealID" thing is idiotic, anyway. If you trust a friend well enough to tell them about yourself, you should do it yourself, rather than being forced to through an impersonal system. Simply letting any user apply an alias of their choice to any of their friends would achieve the same purpose much better, without invading anyone's privacy. Personally, despite knowing the real names of people I play games with, I'd rather keep them listed as their nicknames when gaming, even if I might refer to them by their real names e.g. in emails.
Blizzard seem to be making a huge mess of the Battle.net naming system anyway - they want user accounts to consist of the user's name plus a random identifier, because they somehow think letting everyone and their uncle have the exact same username is a good idea, rather than just forcing everyone to have a unique username. That's probably another part of the reason for this stupidity.
They're clearly trying to copy the likes of Steam in some ways, yet Steam works just fine with a system of unique, user-chosen usernames and customisable display name (though it doesn't have aliases).
The other thing is - the original Starcraft had what I think was a rather ingenious form of copy-protection. Sure, it had some simple CD checks that could be easily avoided (and were removed in later patches), but the real motivation for people to buy it was so that they could get their unique CD Key that would let them play on Battle.net. By turning Battle.net into some kind of idiotic social networking site that people don't want to have to use, they're actually reducing the "value" of a legal version, making piracy a more attractive prospect. Sure, the game's LAN support is idiotically restricted so that a player needs a connection Battle.net to host the game, but I'm sure that will be defeated within hours of the game going live.
Give me the simple Warcraft 3-style Battle.net which only allowed you to quickly find games over a social networking framework anyway. I want to play games, not make friends.
june gloom on 9/7/2010 at 17:25
Damn it. I was hoping they'd be suicidal enough to follow through.
Nameless Voice on 9/7/2010 at 17:30
Well, they're still keeping the idiotic "need to share your real name to become friends / be capable of communicating with players in different games" RealID setup.
Sulphur on 9/7/2010 at 18:28
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Blizzard changing their forum policy doesn't really change your ability to do that though does it? Although I'm sure a lot of people over on their forums don't really see it that way.
In any case, you can be held accountable for anonymous posting online just as easily as if you use your real name, so what's the point? Obviously it depends quite a bit on the laws of the country you live in, but if you were to go around making death threats or inciting violence or whatever it wouldn't take more than a few hours to get more personal details than your real name.
The point is somewhat moot now that Blizzard has caved, but aside from that: of course you could still use a fake name. But the point is that this tack is entirely unnecessary: why make people do it if they're still going to find workarounds to it?
Apart from alienating some of their customers, where do they get off deciding that having a random discussion on the internet with people requires you to know their names? Isn't that a decision that
the people themselves should have? You can of course say, 'if you don't want to, don't post on the forum', but that's just evading the point. If I meet you in person, I don't have to tell you my real name if I don't want to.
Quote:
Also, on a personal note, people who use nom-de-plumes just come off to me as not really having anything to say of substance. There are exceptions (the Anonymous Scientology protests have a tangible reason for requiring anonymity) but really what's so frightening in this world about associating your real name with the bundle of thoughts and opinions you carry around in your skull?
I'm pretty free with my opinions in real life, and I'm not afraid to have them attached to my name online or off. Where I disagree with Blizzard is the notion that people must give out their true identities to not be jerks: that's patently not true. I know plenty of jerks in real life; I know their names, where they are on facebook, and how to get to their houses if I ever needed to. That doesn't stop them from being jerks.
It may be true that most of the trolls would have stopped posting if we knew their real names, but that wouldn't stop all of them. So what, exactly, were Blizzard intending to do anyway? Cut the forums down to size to make them more manageable?
Avalon on 9/7/2010 at 18:52
Most likely, RealID's real name thing and the forum shenanigans are all just a small part of their recent deal with Facebook. Facebook is the second most visited site on the internet today, second only to Google, and this is just the logical next step in the partnership they announced earlier this year.
The recall is probably a "too little, too late" kind of scenario though. A lot of the subscriptions they lost over this will likely not return. This year's report was the first since the 2004 release that WoW did not report an increase in subscribers; the game is beginning to stagnate, and for a lot of people "on the fence," this was probably the straw that broke the camel's back.
Avalon on 13/7/2010 at 22:36
Ahaha, as a slightly related sidenote, in the uproar of the whole real name thing - thousands of people mailed the ESRB about Blizzard breaking the privacy policy.
So, because the ESRB could not respond to each of them individually, they mass-mailed everyone with a response. A response that accidentally showed everyone in the mailing the names and addresses of all of the recipients. Pretty hilarious slip up, given that the whole issue was about privacy.
