Comments on: The battle(.net) for your real name

By: Itarded

Itarded — Sun, 09 May 2010 04:00:43 +0000

How about making an all new facebook page with a gimmick name, and then tie that into the battle.net account? At least it would give you some privacy if you have a main facebook account.

By: Battle.net and RealID « Love and War in Azeroth

Battle.net and RealID « Love and War in Azeroth — Fri, 07 May 2010 19:24:18 +0000

[...] Other folks who’ve been talking about this: Tarinae at A Healadin’s Tear Spinks at Spinksville [...]

By: Busket

Busket — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:27:49 +0000

I’m maybe…a little disappointed in some of this. Not up in arms or anything, but I guess I was hoping for something less comprehensive. I’m leaving WoW when SC2 comes out and I have always liked the idea of still being able to talk to my WoW playing friends. But if the only way to do that is to expose myself to this degree, I guess I’ll have to pass. I don’t even want to give my realID to people I know in real life, not if it means they can always tell exactly what I’m doing (albeit only when I’m playing a Blizzard game).

I was hoping more for a system where chat channels were all on the Battle.net servers and I could, say, join my WoW guild’s guild chat even while playing SC2 (or Diablo 3 eventually).

By: Stabs

Stabs — Fri, 07 May 2010 11:05:47 +0000

The trend is because people want to sell stuff and will buy our personal information to help them do that.

For example if they know if you’re single they can push those annoying “in your area” ads at you. If they know you play MMOs they can push Allods or Champions Online ads at you.

It’s like the new Like feature you see on some blogs. It’s there to help marketers figure out how to spam you.

By: Stabs

Stabs — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:58:27 +0000

Not really all that curious.

F2P certainly broke the ground for the sparkle pony.

By: spinks

spinks — Fri, 07 May 2010 10:07:43 +0000

It’s kind of interesting because this trend isn’t led by user demand. No one has been asking for this.

By: Tam

Tam — Fri, 07 May 2010 09:11:05 +0000

Ouch. Oh dear. I am staunchly against all this social networking crap but sometimes it catches up with me regardless. I don’t know why there is such interest (such perceived interest?) in everybody knowing what everybody else is doing all the time. *grumble* In 5 years time I’m clearly going to be living in a cave somewhere…

By: Rhii

Rhii — Fri, 07 May 2010 07:54:37 +0000

Yet another reason to delete my Facebook account. I have absolutely no objections to people knowing my real name (it’s Sara Spaulding), but I hate the idea of people who only marginally know me tracking my every move on the internet.

Is it tin hat? Some might think it’s pretty egotistical to think that people care what I’m up to every minute of the day… but Facebook has proved just that. Even my FATHER checks in five or six times a day to monitor the routine daily activities of people he hasn’t seen in forty years. So yeah, people are watching you.

I don’t care who’s playing Diablo or Starcraft. So I’ll skip RealID for WoW purposes. I don’t need real names to have real friends.

By: SlikRX/Balthazario

SlikRX/Balthazario — Fri, 07 May 2010 07:01:35 +0000

It had BETTER be optional. I would rather deal with the multitude of anonymous floor lickers than have to worry that I could be stalked by some irate nutcase.

When I log in to my bank, my investment sites and my employers website, of course I use my real ID, because the actions I take on those sites have real world implications.

WoW is a game. There are no real world implications, and any in-game interactions need to stay that way, unless I specifically work with someone to change that.

The really strange thing is that I’ve been SlikRX for a decade or so, and many of my RL friends thart I’ve met online refer to me as Slik, not my real name (Jeff)

Maybe I’m odd, but to me, my online persona is in some ways more “me” than the name my folks gave me. True, there is no inherent power/magic in knowing a person’s name, but ID theft and other RL douchebaggery often ensues when real identites intertwine online.

I don’t use my real name on Facebook for many of the reasons people WANT to. *shrug*

I certainly wouldn’t trust Blizzard/Activision to have proper safeguards in place…. names, creditcard info all attached to my real name and online identities? No thank you…

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 06 May 2010 23:53:03 +0000

Well, is Bristal your real name? It may well be that in a year or so, this will look very old fashioned, true. But internet handles have been part of online interaction since .. well … the beginning of the internet. If that’s changing, it’s a big change. and still won’t solve the problem of multiple people with the same name.