Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Official Forums

Originally Posted by Battlegrounds

You piss off the right person and wait for the knock on the door.

Can you please tell me which door said person is going to be knocking on? That's the point of this exercise. It really is fascinating and disturbing that people draw a connection between "i know your name" and "i know where you live and i have the means to come to your house and kill you because you disagreed with my gem choices in a computer game."

Really...

well that talent spec i had ready for cataclysm based on the alpha build is now completely worthless..

This is very hypocritical on Blizzards part, and just an excuse to make money off of selling our real names to companies. All these Blizzard fanboys are starting to get on my nerves.

Well, I put my own name into google and, quite easily, found my town and school name. I have a relatively uncommon name, so it would be quite easy to find my address, and if the guy who's epic I won just happens to live nearby...

Originally Posted by Astrocanis

I don't need you to "reinforce" my concerns. The fact that you are, in my opinion, quite stupidly challenging a group of people who are opposed to this invasion of privacy makes you merely someone who talks tough but doesn't walk that way. Because you know damned well most of us will not take that challenge. We don't WANT to hurt you. We'll leave that to someone who does.

Once again, I'm not challenging anyone. I'm providing an avenue for people to explore the risks and implications before it actually goes live.

Have you ever done anything important or controversial? And no, running over the neighbor's cat doesn't count. The fact that you glibly dismiss the rest of our concerns paints you into a rather silly looking corner. You and the rest of the cool kids. I think I speak for most of us when I say I hope your corner doesn't turn out to be crimson.

Ever been shot? Stabbed? Beaten? I have - and no amount of glib sarcasm is going to turn that clock backwards to keep me safe in your nice glib little world.

Please, there's no need to pretend to know what sort of world I live in. I'm not making blind assumptions about you, there's no point in doing it. Work with the actual information I've provided you with, and demonstrate to me why I'm now at risk because you have my name.

Want to impress us? Go to 4chan and post your information.

Yet another ridiculous statement... 4chan? Seriousl? But if it's supposed to prove a point, then by all means, you have my permission.

As I said, I may very well be at risk here. Who knows. It's been 2 days and I've yet to see any evidence of it. If anyone can demonstrate to me how my personal life could be in jeapordy, then sure, I'm totally with you.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I don't actually play WoW, I just like reading the news on this site to keep up with what's happening in the WarCraft universe. As a result, I won't be affected by this change. But I would really like to try and follow peoples' thought processes. Let's put together a possible scenario.


You do a raid with a bunch of people. One of them is a psychopathic killer or something. I dunno. An item drops. You both roll on it. You win it. He loses. He decides he wants revenge. So he goes to the Official Forums.

Now what? Does he search for your character name? Well, knowing this as a possible risk, you were intelligent enough not to post with it, right? So even though you've posted your real name on the official forums, it will be very difficult for this person to connect your character with your name.

(Note that this statement depends on the intelligence of the poster and whether or not they go around posting with their real name and CHOOSING to reveal their character name.)

The extent of effort the person would probably have to go to, would possibly be something along the lines of befriending you, joining your guild, and using whatever innocent methods he could to manipulate you into "harmlessly" identifying yourself. Again, this comes back to using your own personal common sense.

So I think we hit a wall with that scenario. Let's try another one.

A violent lunatic lives in my town. He has no job, survives on his disability pension, and doesn't really have anything better to do than scour the official forums every day, spending hours researching every single person who makes a post there. Eventually he manages to find a business owner who's ABN (or whatever the European/American equivalent is) points directly to his home address. So this violent lunatic goes to his house and decides to kill him.

Now using the above scenario, hey, it's totally possible. I'll admit that. But why would the introduction of this feature to World of Warcraft be the tipping point for such individuals? It's not like they can't already virtually stalk and research millions of people on the internet. To quote an earlier poster, I hardly doubt "the bad guys are sitting, rubbing their hands together in anticipation" because this is an avenue that has been available to them for well over a decade. And besides, if you really do insist on entertaining this delusion; I'm sure there's much better ways to abduct and murder someone off the side of the street instead of spending painful hours trying to research random people on the internet.

All I'm asking is that people follow these thought processes from start to finish. Because there's alot of misdrawn conclusions where "OMG NAME = THEY HAVE MY ADDRESS = SOMEONE IS GOING TO KILL ME."

Pedobear spends his free time googling your name kids, watch out when you start trolling away on the threads...

Today will forever be known as the Day Blizzard Failed and the community screamed out "no thnx"

To VeeVee, you are either lying about your real last name, or everyone in your family including you has decided to not let their name show in a phone book. There is no "Rebell" in any state in australia, only rebello, 3 of which show in Brisbane, so I'm guessing you are lying about your information.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

We're all in the same boat here, so why do some people feel more threatened than others?

No, we're not all in the same boat. Some of us have actually dealt with identity theft and stalking issues first hand. You obviously haven't, so you feel all high and mighty, invulnerable to such attacks, and have to flaunt it in our faces? How nice of you. Makes those that have dealt with such issues feel that much better.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

I'm merely providing an opportunity for people to reinforce their concerns. Be my guest!
I'm your RealID beta test.

We don't need you to test this theory. Again, some of us have seen this first hand. In addition, the Blizzard employee that had to remove his Facebook account, is now receiving Tweets asking for his support against RealID, and is probably now receiving phone calls at home as well, is enough proof.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

Can you please tell me which door said person is going to be knocking on? That's the point of this exercise. It really is fascinating and disturbing that people draw a connection between "i know your name" and "i know where you live and i have the means to come to your house and kill you because you disagreed with my gem choices in a computer game."

Really...

Investing time to post your address is pointless. I tell you to look both ways before crossing the street, and your response is, "show me a dangerous driver first," well, then crossing without looking is on you.

Originally Posted by tumble

To VeeVee, you are either lying about your real last name, or everyone in your family including you has decided to not let their name show in a phone book. There is no "Rebell" in any state in australia, only rebello, 3 of which show in Brisbane, so I'm guessing you are lying about your information.

You actually misread my name, several people have already looked me up and found my Facebook page. Read the post again. :P

---------- Post added 2010-07-08 at 01:48 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Battlegrounds

No, we're not all in the same boat. Some of us have actually dealt with identity theft and stalking issues first hand. You obviously haven't, so you feel all high and mighty, invulnerable to such attacks, and have to flaunt it in our faces? How nice of you. Makes those that have dealt with such issues feel that much better.

Again, can you please stop making assumptions about my life and work with the facts I've provided? How do you know I haven't? And when did I say I felt high and mighty or invulnerable? I specifically stated "I could be at risk by doing this." I'm taking the issue very seriously! If anything, I'm representing the people who have these legitimate concerns because I'm offering myself as an opportunity to reinforce your point. What exactly am I flaunting in your face? If the internet is the horrible place you claim it is, then me doing this will merely work in your favour.

We don't need you to test this theory. Again, some of us have seen this first hand. In addition, the Blizzard employee that had to remove his Facebook account, is now receiving Tweets asking for his support against RealID, and is probably now receiving phone calls at home as well, is enough proof.

How do you know he removed his Facebook account? You can make them 100% invisible, you know. Notice you used the word "probably" followed by "recieving phone calls at his home" and then finished with the word "proof." You're taking a random assumption and claiming it as evidence. That's as ludicrous as saying "there's probably someone in his house stabbing him in the face right now." You've got MORE information about me than people had about that CM, so what's stopping you from phoning me right now? Please, I insist!

Investing time to post your address is pointless.

No it's not, it actually reinforces your point completely. So please, at least tell me what street I live on. My suburb is listed on my Facebook page, along with my mobile phone number, employer and e-mail address. How hard could it be?

Originally Posted by VeeVee

I have no idea who Levi is, and unfortunately the information you provided is over a decade old. I'm still failing to see why RealID is harming me? All you're proving is that you can search my name. Now what happens?

Now Levi gonna smack you ;-)
Though you should remember him, as you confirmed the data be old, but correct. Should have been before your move, if I get it right. This took me just 3 minutes, and I am not going to dig now much more, because it is late and pointless anyway. If you are not concerned that is anyway fine. Personal Informations are personal for a reason, it is up to you what you post or do not post about yourself.

Oh, and btw Derek is not a good artist, and act like a retarded basement kid in his rts community. And this gonna affect you, as you play sc2 and wc3, both with the same realID in the near future. vvolf.


Bad Pic btw dude: http://www.myspace.com/veeveeveevee


But the way, you still don´t understand, that even if your adress would be really safe right now, this could change. If thats the only thing, which would concern you. And more important, other people have less options to hide this information, as they have to use their real name and adress on the imprint of their website.

---------- Post added 2010-07-08 at 02:30 AM ----------

Originally Posted by VeeVee

No it's not, it actually reinforces your point completely. So please, at least tell me what street I live on. My suburb is listed on my Facebook page, along with my mobile phone number, employer and e-mail address. How hard could it be?

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Se...4309#!/dreball
Yeah, it reinforces our point, but it does not counter it, if your adress is not found easy, which makes it pointless to invest time into it. Though its amusing.

Originally Posted by Bugmenot

Now Levi gonna smack you ;-)
Though you should remember him, as you confirmed the data be old, but correct. Should have been before your move, if I get it right.

I honestly don't remember the name Levi. :P
But yeah, alot of what people have dug up is well over a decade old! Such as the wonderful sketch you pulled from my DA page from 5th grade. :P

Oh, and btw Derek is not a good artist, and act like a retarded basement kid in his rts community. And this gonna affect you, as you play sc2 and wc3, both with the same realID in the near future. vvolf.

Retarded basement kid? Come on now, that's hardly true.
Everything you've listed so far is nothing more than I've handed over though. You found me on WCR and sadly I haven't used that screen name for over 6 years as well. Regardless, I think you're missing the point of this exercise. I didn't provide the info so that people could learn more about my online persona - that's pointless. This information is readily available at the hands of any novice Googler, considering I managed all of the Australian RTS/e-Sports WCG/ACON events for 4 years in a row. Not that it's exactly incriminating or useful information. To clarify, the reason I provided this information was to help construct a better understanding of the risks and implications of your name appearing on the internet.

But the way, you still don´t understand, that even if your adress would be really safe right now, this could change. If thats the only thing, which would concern you. And more important, other people have less options to hide this information, as they have to use their real name and adress on the imprint of their website.

I do understand, but once again I'd like to remind people that releasing your real name to the Blizzard Gaming community is entirely your choice, just as it was mine.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

I honestly don't remember the name Levi. :P
But yeah, alot of what people have dug up is well over a decade old! Such as the wonderful sketch you pulled from my DA page from 5th grade. :P


Retarded basement kid? Come on now, that's hardly true.

It is the impression you leave on wcr, sorry about that, just being honest here.

QUOTE=VeeVee;8273003]
Everything you've listed so far is nothing more than I've handed over though. You found me on WCR and sadly I haven't used that screen name for over 6 years as well. Regardless, I think you're missing the point of this exercise. I didn't provide the info so that people could learn more about my online persona - that's pointless. This information is readily available at the hands of any novice Googler, considering I managed all of the Australian RTS/e-Sports WCG/ACON events for 4 years in a row. Not that it's exactly incriminating or useful information. To clarify, the reason I provided this information was to help construct a better understanding of the risks and implications of your name appearing on the internet.
I do understand, but once again I'd like to remind people that releasing your real name to the Blizzard Gaming community is entirely your choice, just as it was mine.[/QUOTE]

And you did not get the point either, your online persona, that gaming guy is linked to your real name. Not everyone got the choice not to release for example his adress into the net. So the ability to connect the online persona with your clear name than leads to more informations. As well not every boss will be fine with it. And not every customer will be fine with it.

Well for someone who lives in Canada such as myself the privacy laws are pretty straight forward. A company can not give out personal information about you without your verbal or written permission. Im not giving my name out to people everyday therefore I say this is my private information. When I search my name on google I don't get anything relevant about myself. I would really like to keep it this way. I like to post on the Blizz forums, with this change us canadians may not be able too.

I am not a lawyer, so not sure how it will all play out, but I do know facebook had to change the way they operate to be able to keep things going in Canada.

Those are my two cents, lets hope Blizzard is listening to the out cry in the community!

This is absolute clown shoes. I imagine the forum moderators will not be posting under their first and last names.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

Again, can you please stop making assumptions about my life and work with the facts I've provided?

I am working with the facts. Fact, victims of identity theft and stalking are more careful with their information. Fact, you are not careful with your information. Hence, my theory.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

How do you know I haven't?

The facts support my theory, and there's nothing to suggest otherwise.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

And when did I say I felt high and mighty or invulnerable?

When you contradicted normal behavior for these situations, the statement was implied.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

I specifically stated "I could be at risk by doing this." I'm taking the issue very seriously! If anything, I'm representing the people who have these legitimate concerns because I'm offering myself as an opportunity to reinforce your point.

You didn't say you "were" at risk, rather you "could" be at risk. There's a difference. We have no clue of your actual risk factor, only you know for sure. So, offering yourself as an opportunity means little, if nothing.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

What exactly am I flaunting in your face?

The fact you're contradicting normal behavior.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

How do you know he removed his Facebook account? You can make them 100% invisible, you know.

Tomato, tomahto. Either way, he changed the page because the information was posted in the WoW forums.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

Notice you used the word "probably" followed by "recieving phone calls at his home" and then finished with the word "proof." You're taking a random assumption and claiming it as evidence. That's as ludicrous as saying "there's probably someone in his house stabbing him in the face right now."

And I noticed you tried to disprove the Facebook fact, ignored the Twitter fact and focused on the phone probability. Focusing on the phone probably was somehow going to diminish the facts? Think I was going to slip up and forget I mentioned other certainties? Facebook plus twitter is proof he's being effected by this. Which are good indicators he's receiving phone calls as well, but since I don't know that as fact, and I'm not going to pretend I do, I will correctly say probably. Feel free to ignore the phone, but you can't dispute what's happened to Facebook and what's happening on Twitter.

Originally Posted by VeeVee

You've got MORE information about me than people had about that CM, so what's stopping you from phoning me right now? Please, I insist!

No it's not, it actually reinforces your point completely. So please, at least tell me what street I live on. My suburb is listed on my Facebook page, along with my mobile phone number, employer and e-mail address. How hard could it be?

There's no need to waste my time with your information. This is happening to a Blizzard employee. Hopefully this particular employee disapproves of what is happening and will voice his concern to the powers that be.

In addition, you present a certain level of eagerness to have this done, and I have to question why? This can be done, it's been proven. So, what makes your case so unique? I suspect you're here to boost your ego, or satisfy some curiosity you have. Neither of which I care about indulging. But, feel free to keep taunting as though that will change anything, because I do enjoy the conversation.

Anyone knows what the record in posted comments is? Maybe this is the topic to break it?

On topic: Well this change is sad more than anything. It's sad that I won't be able to use my subscription of wow completely (the forums uptime is paid via subs) And to add to the general opinion, well I won't post, or maybe, if I change my name to something gibberish but I need to forge some documents...

This is highly moronic ! While I perfectly agree that this will tone down some forum trolls, I also see the failed reasonning behind this :

- we fail at moderating forums
- we don't want to upset our kiddish and uneducated 14yo (note: and sadly most likely 25yo too) customers by banning them from the game when they act like jerks on forums
- we will make it so that we discourage them from posting on those forums.


I am sorry mister blizzard, your being paid big money (at least your amazing profits those last years make it sound like it) to handle this game. Start banning people for "level 1 trolling" and "insults" for 2 days from the game, you will soon see that it's easier than you thought to get people to post meaningful comments (or simply STFU, which is what you expect with this measure).


I see no benefits for players, your just saving yourself the trouble of doing the dirty job. And you do that the worst way.


Found facebook group BTW : "Blizzard : remove real names from WoW forums" not many people yet :/ sadly

You would have to be living under a rock not to be aware of the recent announcement of, and associated backlash over, the requirement that you will have to reveal your first and last name to post on the forums. The purpose of this post is not to rehash the many numerous and well articulated reasons why that is a not a good thing. The purpose of this post is to explain why I, and many others have cancelled their accounts. and expose Blizzard for what they truly are, a greedy and unethical game developer that wallows in hypocrisy.

One of the aspects of this change that offends me the most is that it continues a pattern, by Blizzard, of providing justifications, for this and other policy changes, that are at the least misleading and in many cases are outright lies. If Blizzard were actually truly concerned about trolling on the forums they would have been much more diligent in their moderation of the forums to begin with. Actually enforcing the forum rules, consistently, would have gone a long way toward eradicating the issue.

This is the second time that Blizzard has evoked trolling or spam as a rationale for changes. The prior occasion was when they removed the LFG chat channel when the Dungeon Finder was introduced. They claimed then, that they disabled this functionality because the channel had become a wasteland of spam when the real reason was they were afraid that the channel’s continued existence would undermine the adoption, by the player base, of the LFD tool.

The claim that the LFG chat channel was a wasteland of spam was dubious at best and not really supported by hard data. While your experience may have been different I can attest, as someone who was constantly logged into the channel on my various alts, that on Shattered Hand there was very little spamming or trolling of LFG chat.

The proof, that their concern for our welfare, was disingenuous, if not an outright fabrication was the fact that by removing the LFG chat channel we were required to spend that much more time in cities, as we tried to form raids, subjected to the constant stream of the most vile and offensive spam and trolling, in the game, otherwise known as trade chat.

In lying to us, in this way, the first chink in their ethical armor was exposed. When you don’t have the decency to be honest and forthright then the bonds of trust between gamer and developer start to break.

More importantly, Blizzard was demonstrating a fundamental arrogance and disrespect toward the intelligence of their customers. We were apparently not worthy of honesty and not intelligent enough to know when we were being sold a bill of goods. And even if we “figured” it out we were such unprincipled, whiny malcontents that we would continue to support Blizzard regardless of how poorly they treated us and how often they ignored our concerns.

Sadly, we have encouraged Blizzard’s arrogance by “forgiving” them for numerous slights and continuing to support them. The slights, whether it be the loss of LFG chat or the disenchanting changes or any of other numerous issues, were all shrugged off by the majority as ultimately not game breaking enough to cancel our subscriptions. And those that raised valid concerns were often mocked not just by the “fanboys” but by Blizzard representatives themselves who encouraged the “tin-foil hat” put down.

What Blizzard failed to understand, as they gorged their corporate ego on our capitulations, was that these slights have a negative and exponential cumulative effect. This failure to appreciate this human dynamic may be why a Blizzard representative anticipated no negative reaction to the proposed forum change. When you drink your own kool-aid for too long and believe your own propaganda you not only lose touch with your customers but with reality itself.

The lack of corporate integrity was demonstrated again in regards to the untimely release of Ruby Sanctum. Blizzard didn’t have the guts and weren’t man enough to admit a mistake and tried to pass this off as an intended result. Perhaps, more importantly, they no longer even felt the need to apologize for what was an obvious screw-up. This, more than anything, tells you what they actually think of their customers and how little respect they have for us all.

Even more telling, in this regard, was the fact that to everyone’s surprise, the day after the uproar over the Ruby Sanctum they lifted the Cataclysm Alpha NDA. This development was truly Machiavellian and demonstrated, yet again, their complete disdain for their customers. They were in effect saying, not only do we not have to apologize and admit our mistakes but, if we throw you a bone you will forget all about it and lap up whatever we dish out to you because you are so dependant on us for providing your life with meaning. They repeated this exact same process the day after the Real-ID announcement by suddenly releasing the the class talent tree and mastery updates. That was not a coincidence.

The Real-ID forum changes further demonstrate Blizzard’s hypocrisy. In every post about this new feature we were led to believe that Real-ID was meant to be an in-house social gaming tool that would allow you to more easily connect with real friends. There was never any mention of an “association” with Facebook or requirements to divulge your real name to complete strangers. This despite the fact that Blizzard has admitted they have been planning this for awhile.

So they knew all along, when they were duping you to buy into Real-ID and Battle-net, that they were moving in this direction. They were misleading and / or outright lying to us the whole time. They also obviously have other “plans” in mind for this social gaming experiment that they are not being upfront about for the time being. This is why they have ignored both the current and prior plethora of valid criticisms of both Battle-net and Real-ID.

The ultimate irony and hypocrisy of this issue is that Blizzard has already back-tracked on its promise that Blues would post using their real names citing security concerns. It’s okay to subject your customers to security threats and invasions of privacy, while telling them that there is nothing to worry about, but the same rules won’t be applied to your own staff. In other words we are the cannon fodder sent on the suicide mission while the generals relax in their protected bunkers out of harm’s way.

In conclusion, even if these changes didn’t affect me (and they do) and even if I didn’t think the security concerns people had were valid (which I do) I could still no longer defend or support support Blizzard. I have reluctantly voted with my wallet despite being a WoW player for four plus years, and looking forward to Cataclysm, and have cancelled my account. I will never buy another Blizzard product. Blizzard, just because you lack ethics, principles and integrity doesn’t mean we all do.

Money is the only thing that Blizzard understands now so please cancel your account, if you consider these changes detrimental and have also concluded that Blizzard is untrustworthy and not worthy of your financial support.

well,... quess no more posting on blizz forums