New Real ID Party Feature Now Live, Remains Free
The Real ID Party feature is now officially live and remains free, hurray!
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’re happy to announce that the testing period for World of Warcraft's new Real ID Party system is now complete, and the feature is now officially live! We received a lot of great feedback from the community throughout the course of our testing, and we appreciate everyone taking the time to share their thoughts and experiences with us.

For those who haven't yet had a chance to try it out, the Real ID Party system allows players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a 5-player normal or Heroic dungeon, regardless of what realm their friends are on. This new feature makes it easier than ever for real-life friends to play together, and it's available to all World of Warcraft players at no additional charge -- all you need to do is have Real ID enabled.

To learn more about Real ID, visit the Real ID web page and read the FAQ.

For more information about how the Real ID Party system works, check out the FAQ below, updated with a couple new questions that came up during the testing period.

Q: How do I invite Real ID friends to a Real ID Party?
A: Inviting a Real ID friend to a Real ID Party is simple. Just open up your friends list to see which Real ID friends are online. Click on the “Plus” button to send an invitation to a Real ID friend to join your group. You can continue to add Real ID friends to your party until the group is complete. If you cannot complete the group with Real ID friends, you are free to join the Dungeon Finder to fill in the missing roles.

Q: Does a player need to have Real ID enabled to accept a Real ID group invite?
A: Yes, a player must have Real ID enabled, and both players must be Real ID friends to accept or initiate Real ID party invitations.

Q: Can a party leader invite a mix of Real ID friends, character-level friends, guildmates, or random players to the same party?
A: A party leader can invite any combination of Real ID friends from any realm, guildmates from the same realm, or other characters from the same realm to the same party. If the party leader isn’t able to fill up the entire party, the Dungeon Finder can fill in the missing roles.

Q: Can I invite someone who is not a Real ID friend?
A: You can only invite members to a party if they are on your Real ID friends list or if they are on the same realm as you are.

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?
A: No, you can only invite your own Real ID friends the party.

Q. Are you considering expanding the system to work with raids, Battlegrounds, Arenas, or to allow cross-faction play?
A: We're always looking into ways to improve features like this to make it more convenient for real-life friends to play together. However, we don't have any further announcements to share at this time.

Q: Will any future aspects of the Real ID Party system be premium-based?
A: It's always possible that we'll add features and functionality that could have a premium component, but we don't have any specific details to share at this time.
This article was originally published in forum thread: New Real ID Party Feature Now Live, Remains Free started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 144 Comments
  1. FireBorne's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Crummy View Post
    Ye. Good game.
    A now, a slap on the wrist, a good hard slap on the wrist, to anyone who was bitching about having to pay for it. It was all for nothing you baddie bad scrubs....
    Maybe after Blizzard heard the outrage of introducing a premium feature into the game they decided against it, outrageous claim I know.
  1. Neganova's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Skullchukka View Post
    Some people will now complain about the system being free.
    The sad part is, it's true.
  1. lanceb's Avatar
    idd suppose there was quite alot of complaints that blizz wanna milk even more money from there players, if blizz keep loosing subs its a bad idea to add new features and put those in variuos packages and charge extra for it wich gona lead to even more drop outs, and with D3 on the horizon WoW most likely gona have even more canceld subs. but it is a nice change idd and most welcomed.
  1. Neganova's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Aeriscats View Post
    Really Grimbold21? What do you just want them to make up their own set of patch notes?
    That's what we were doing yesterday.
  1. FISKER_Q's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zaroxen View Post
    Blizzard aren't afraid of making controversial announcements, nor are they afraid to admit they were wrong. Both are indicators of a strong company.
    Or indications of a company looking for an opportunity where they can get away with it.
  1. mordale's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fraza View Post
    I guess the additional 300k subscription drop got them to think.
    no, blizz just does this type of shit all the time.
    same goes for always online for D3, they're going to announce at blizzcon that hardcore mode will be offlilne and add a new mode that you can copy "always online" char into but never vice versa.
    in other words they lied to you, "there is no cake left, here have some free cake".
    a lie your happy about, but a lie none the less.
  1. fangless's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fraza View Post
    I guess the additional 300k subscription drop got them to think.
    Willing to bet most of the 300k people that left had no idea that this feature was supposedly going to be a premium service.

    Most players don't read MMO-C, or the Wow blog. They just log in, and play.
  1. Dargaron's Avatar
    Hallelujah! Mad props to Blizzard on this decision!
  1. mmoc0d8e6c2903's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Rixis View Post
    aww, what are the whiners gonna whine about now?
    Really?

    I mean really?

    Like really?


    You are calling this uproar whining? Really?


    Well maybe they do it like you, whining about whiners.
  1. Fuzzbutt's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Zaroxen View Post
    Blizzard aren't afraid of making controversial announcements, nor are they afraid to admit they were wrong. Both are indicators of a strong company.
    I don't see where they admitted a mistake? They didn't. They just fixed their mistake. The thing is, Blizzard can't publicly address mistakes anymore. There are too many viable competitors and Blizzard isn't pushing its own productivity. Nickling and diming us on features that SHOULD be free won't help them keep subs up when they've already lost 1/12 of their subscriber base in less than 6 months.

    This isn't so much them admitting mistakes as much as them realizing they can't screw around anymore if they want to stop bleeding subs.
  1. Anakso's Avatar
    This just makes me lol so much at all those people who went "ZOMG BLIZ PREMIUM SERVICE *Cancel sub" well everyone else told them to at least wait....
  1. mmoc2ea754d8a4's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Neganova View Post
    Community - 2, actually. Or have we forgotten the "real names on the forums" scare.
    Community - 3


    There was this "the Exalted" issue also
  1. Mif's Avatar
    Blizzard shouldn't be applauded for making RealID Party free, they should be derided for ever wanting to charge for it.
  1. Gurbz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Fraza View Post
    Perhaps, you know, it was the bitching that got them to change it in the first place. Also see: Real ID on forums.
    Since Blizzard never said what about this feature would be would be premium based (all they said was aspects of it would be, which remains true if you read the announcement), we will never know if Blizz change their minds or if it was always going to be this way.

    And the RealID thing getting changed had nothing to do with the community complaining and a whole hell of a lot to do with the fact that it would have played really fast and loose with ton of privacy laws all over the world. Attorneys killed ReadID, not the community.
  1. Zarasthura's Avatar
    Free? I'm listening, Blizzard!
  1. Tigerpal's Avatar
    Useless without cross faction.
  1. Armath's Avatar
    Great news!

    If i invite a real id friend, and then pass leader to him. Will he be able to fill group with other real id friends of his?
  1. Thundertom's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Neganova View Post
    Community - 2, actually. Or have we forgotten the "real names on the forums" scare.
    Oe, yeah that was scary indeed.

    About this; well I suppose it's cool. I guess they made it free, because noone really uses the readID system? Maybe I just don't use the realID system ;-)
  1. Vasz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by fangless View Post
    Willing to bet most of the 300k people that left had no idea that this feature was supposedly going to be a premium service.

    Most players don't read MMO-C, or the Wow blog. They just log in, and play.
    Most of the "900,000" players who quit, quit because they were bored of the game. This feature is useless for me, and the premium service was not the reason I quit.

    My real life friends are split over two servers, one pvp horde, the other pve alliance. Even if I wanted to, I still couldn't play with them.
  1. cyzzie's Avatar
    the whiners obviously now just call it usesless cause all their friends are cross faction ... one wonders why and btw: how many people do have to start playing again now cause they cancelled their subscription at the announcement as a premium feature?

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