No more anonymous forum trolls?

Miscellaneous babblings from the Wildfire Riders and friends!

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Beltar
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Beltar » Thu Jul 08, 2010 8:15 am

Tarq wrote:You can hang out with Uthas!

I don't think this is going live. The backlash is astounding.


http://news.softpedia.com/news/Blizzard ... 6720.shtml

Oh, it's going live all right.

After a rather hostile reaction from the community of players, the studio revealed that it would be continuing to talk to players about the system but that it would nonetheless go ahead with its implementation.


EDIT: In five and a half years in this community I have never seen a show of unanimity like this. NOBODY enthusiastically supports this. There are a few people in the main forum thread (closing in on 2000 pages btw) who are saying things like "qq it's no big deal," but nobody except Bobby Kotick and his henchcritters are out there going "WOOHOO SOCIAL GAMING!11!!" about it. The WoW blogosphere is basically 100% against it. If that thread is to be believed, there have been hundreds, into the thousands, of account cancellations and there will be thousands more if they push further with this (mine included). No class nerf, no story retcon, no sparklepony, nothing has roused the masses like this before. And I fear it may all be for nothing.

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Aelflaed
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Aelflaed » Thu Jul 08, 2010 8:40 am

Gryphonheart wrote:I'm with Aely on this. I get the impression that the forums are going Real ID regardless of how unpopular it may be. Despite the backlash, Blizzard has enough forumgoers that if even 3/4ths of them cease using the forums, the forums will still be active and lively enough for Blizzard to be able to at least save face by saying "see, it works!". The forums that are going to be biggest hit are the slowest (but most valuable) forums, like realm forums and Guild Relations, which are mostly ignored by Blizzard anyway.

At the end of the day, I do think the change will succeed at the stated goals—the forums will probably become a nicer place to read threads, but only because the decreased posting will mean faster moderation times. The trade-off is that it will absolutely suck to post there.


It will also be the end of the Roleplay forum. RP has a totally extended level of stigma on top of playing MMOs (we've all been there, we've seen the trolls, we've BEEN trolled. hell, I've had people tell me as much in comments on my blog). You don't just play video games, you /ROLEPLAY/. You write /FAN FIC/. And I see very few people willing to open themselves up to public knowledge with that. And not just "adults" either - I can't imagine what it would be like to be 16 and have the kids at your high school find the fanfic story you wrote about a video game character.

From a USA Today Article in May:

"Our goal and vision in this partnership is to really to cross-populate the social networks and to easily find and add your friends from Facebook onto the new Battle.net service as the first step and extending it to other features in the future."

So just how far is this going?
Last edited by Aelflaed on Thu Jul 08, 2010 10:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Elestera
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Elestera » Thu Jul 08, 2010 10:02 am

“It's important to note that both enabling Real ID in game and posting on the official Blizzard forums are completely optional. Players can continue to read the forums anonymously regardless of whether they choose to post in them, and their gameplay experiences will not change if they choose not to use the Real ID communication features in game.”


This is what pisses me off the most about it. There is absolutely no reason just anyone should be able to see my personal information tied into posts like that without my permission. Sure, I have a Facebook to keep in touch with people, but I lock everything down to 'friends only' for a damned good reason.

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Yva
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Yva » Thu Jul 08, 2010 10:21 am

I've been stewing about this for a few days now, and really beyond responding on WTT:RP I haven't blabbed about it overly much beyond a comment here and there, but I may end up canceling over this myself. I'm definitely closing my 2nd account down. I don't want to give money to a company who's pretty much towing the line with their horrible idea despite concerns of actual safety and privacy for their players. I'm pretty sure the revenue they'll lose from their player base cancellations will be replaced by advertising with Facebook revenue, or at least some kind of supplemental Facebook revenue, so I don't actually believe they care, which is shit.

The fact is, I'm' pretty sure I am capable of living without WoW now, though I couldn't have said the same a year ago or sooner. I kinda don't want to because of the people here - I've been fortunate to meet some really great folks in you lot - but the game itself is five year old mechanics done in slightly more interesting ways to reap digital benefits. That part? That part I can leave behind. Improved graphics in Cata and all, I can live without the actual game itself. You guys? Not necessarily, but I'd still have IRC for RP. I'd still have forums for posting, and I'm never going to stop writing.

We'll see. At this point I'm hoping to get the money together so I can move Indarra and Vincenza onto the main account and just call it a day on the second one. Time will tell what happens beyond that.
So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

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Aelflaed
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Aelflaed » Thu Jul 08, 2010 10:54 am

If you're not currently using RealID - I HIGHLY recommend that you enable Parental Controls and actually DISABLE the thing. It took me about 10 minutes yesterday to do, mostly waiting on the email. ( Website here )

Currently there is a vulnerability with RealID that allows some addons to be able to get your name, since even if you're not using it, it's enabled on your account. I don't know what addons those are, but I'm not sure I want to take the chance, especially with certain sites having issues in the past. Most reputable addon makers won't do this (they get revenue from addons, so they can't afford to be tarred and feathered), but smaller ones may end up compromised, and as such, compromising your account.

Keep in mind that, when you call in for customer service at Blizzard, they ask for four things: your b.net email, your first name, your last name, and your secret question. This potentially will give someone else two those four pieces of information. And it's not hard to guess another, given how many people have first.last@host.com type email addresses.
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Kost
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Kost » Thu Jul 08, 2010 12:24 pm

I'm against it, wholly, I don't care if people can see my name (It's not that hard to find it if you already know I do art, wow, Deviantart -> Myspace link -> Facebook -> Hello, MAS-F, and her horrible old stuff) hardly post on the forums as it is, and this is certainly going to make sure that I won't be doing it anytime soon.

But I just see very bad things leading from it, considering I just had to support some friends to break off communications from a very imbalanced person in game, who proceeded to leave very disturbing and inappropriate messages on their voice mails. Now sure some would say, that's what they deserve, but it's one of the extremes that could have turned out badly, especially if instead of them, it had been a kid getting these phone calls. There's just too many open ended situations where putting that information out there is just begging for trouble, and I kinda like my faceless masses of the internets.

Still sucks, and the genius that thought up this entire idea deserves to be struck upside the head with his own keyboard. Just one more push for me saying 'feckitall, I'm running to SW:TOR' and the bounty hunter class with open arms.
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

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Denne
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Denne » Thu Jul 08, 2010 1:13 pm

I'm really glad I got to run Wrath at the top of the game with TRI. It's been awesome, but yeah, I can't stick around once this goes live. No one should have to put up with this kind of dickery from any company. Imagaine if a bank did this.

As Evie pointed out to me, it looks like I can stop anticipating Diablo 3 as well. Wonderful.

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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Bricu » Thu Jul 08, 2010 1:23 pm

I just canceled my preorder of the collectors edition of StarCraft 2.

I'm not leaving WoW. Not until all my people are.
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Yva
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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Yva » Thu Jul 08, 2010 1:25 pm

You know that had occurred to me the other day. I wonder how revealing this NOW is going to effect sales of Starcraft.
So if you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

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Re: No more anonymous forum trolls?

Postby Itanya_blade » Thu Jul 08, 2010 1:27 pm

I cancelled my pre-order of Starcraft 2 as well.


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