Real ID - world of facebook, game over

note: i've just deleted my facebook account.

Vypra wrote:

note: i've just deleted my facebook account.

that explains why it said you wrote to me, but nothing was there.. Why exactly did you delete it?

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=466721

I choose who i share my info with,

Not Blizz/ Activision.

Not Facebook.

http://seewhatyoudidthere.com/2010/07/07/realid-changes-the-very-real-ease-of-stalking-in-the-internet-age/

See, two people became friends already, all because of realid, it works


On a serious note, Activision/Blizzard is doing so much crappy stuff that I am a tad scared to rejoin WoW temporarilly to play the Cataclysm stuff on a high quality server (as opposed to my current private rp server ). Who knows what my account will later be used for? I saw some stuff about advertising in one of the links posted around.

Some interesting links thanks guys. This one is about about mr derp kotick, man in charge of activision and his philosophy on making games (was linked in manovan's link):

http://www.geeks.co.uk/7282-activision%E2%80%99s-bobby-kotick-hates-developers-innovation-cheap-games-you

Makes senses why we see the spectral faggot unicorn mount, expect more of this it's all they are interested in.

even the bbc have an article on this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/10543100.stm

Are there any credibility to this comment?

Quote :

ALERT!!! - Your name has already been exposed as of the last patch, in game!!! If you have not turned on parental controls to prevent REAL ID, that information is loaded up into your client at startup, and people can hover over you, get your REAL ID through an API call ALREADY EXPOSED, and see your real name NOW! This is happening NOW people!! Shocked? Try it out.

Firstly, copy and paste the below into a chat session. This illustrates exactly how easy it is to retrieve your Real ID by a wow addon without your knowledge or consent:

/run for i=1,100 do if BNIsSelf(i)then BNSendWhisper(i,"RealID whisper from yourself..");break end end

You can create a macro to expose this information for anyone that you're focused on! Unless they have parental controls turned on, you can get their real name NOW!!!! This is now!!!! This means that you are already exposed, and you weren't even warned!!!! So this doesn't even just fall under forum postings, you're already exposing your real name out there without possibly even knowing about it!!! And you can bet that every hacker, troller, you name it, has this information, and is trying to use it NOW!!!

You have been warned!

I am canceling all Activision / Blizzard accounts as of today, and I will never purchase another game produced by them again. I loved Blizzards quality of games since the very first WarCraft. But I refuse to allow them to possibly expose my information any further, nor will I help fund any of their future endeavors in this direction, that Kotick has so clearly laid out, and begun with our consent. I would not be surprised to see a class action lawsuit come out of this. If I had the money, you bet I'd already have it started!!!!

Seem a bit scary.

Yeah I heard there was an exploit sounding like that, don't know the details. Not sure if it has been patched already, but many of the threads seem to be mentioning that something like that was going on when it first went live.


edit:
Here you go Manovan:
http://www.whataboutpp.com/users/vhell/upload/gearscore32.jpg

Check the character detail on the bottom right, and the friends list.

So confirmed latest gearscore lets you see this. Looks like the only way to stop it is by disabling real ID in parental controls.

Yo, this is the story all about how
My Real ID made some %#!@ go down
I'd like to take a moment
Just listen to me
And I'll tell you all about how Blizzard took my privacy

In West Elwynn Forest, born and raised
Adventuring is how I spent most of my days
Questing, grouping, crafting my gear
Grinding Ashen Verdict up to Revered
When a guy named Bobby Kotick
Who was up to no good
Did something that not a single person understood
He showed up on the forums, told us we'd use our real names
And said "Now everyone who googles you will know you play our game."

I whistled for a blue and when he came near
He said they'd been planning Real ID for a year
I said I didn't think getting tracked down would be funny
But he said "NAW FORGET IT, YO HOLMES IT'S MORE MONEY"

I went to account management and canceled my pay
And I yelled to Bobby Kotick, "Yo holmes, smell ya later,"
I looked back at Azeroth, devoid of security
And thought 'Goodbye, WoW
I think I'll keep my obscurity.

Does the real ID thing on the forums also apply to previously made posts? or just posts from that day and onward? I hardly ever post to the blizzard forums, tbh, but still I have quite a few posts there already..
Also, in game, the real Id feature is a bit odd in itself. I do have a few real ID names on my list, but those are people I either play with for years, or know irl.. But still, it feels a bit odd.. Tho I myself haven´t had any negative experience with it yet, what I´ve seen here makes me feel kinda uneasy, seeing as my surname is unique for my family..
it´s probably time to give wow a rest :p

Daidrax wrote:

Does the real ID thing on the forums also apply to previously made posts? or just posts from that day and onward? I hardly ever post to the blizzard forums, tbh, but still I have quite a few posts there already..

No, they've said this will not be applied to old posts but i think that's more because they will be setting up new forums (and as such all those old rp stories/ guides etc will be lost)

Quote :

Also, in game, the real Id feature is a bit odd in itself. I do have a few real ID names on my list, but those are people I either play with for years, or know irl.. But still, it feels a bit odd.. Tho I myself haven´t had any negative experience with it yet, what I´ve seen here makes me feel kinda uneasy, seeing as my surname is unique for my family..
it´s probably time to give wow a rest :p

Yes, the people in -your- realId list may be people you know and trust, but what about -their- freinds? They can also see your name

If you still want to play but don't want to take the risk that realID represents, you can turn it off as i did.

How exactly do you see the name of your friends' friends?

(And we'll both be easy to find then, Daid Currently six people in the world with my last name.)

Vypra wrote:

note: i've just deleted my facebook account.

Can you delete your Facebook account? One of my friends tried it and failed.

apparently not. you can only deactivate it. it's still right there with all your info on should you decide to come back

I've settled for removing a lot of stuff from my visible info

If nothing else, I vote that Mr Vex should set up an online newspaper, where he can be a foul-mouthed northerner and turn his expellations into £millions due to the huge following he'll generate.

I suggest a title such as "Cockshitfuckmeister" or "Wankoff Wankers" or some such friendly terms

You can fully delete your Facebook account, its just several clicks into the help function. Just Google it.

lol they pulled it:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13816839821&sid=1

I'm not sure they'll drop it completely. They will hang on to it for a while.

heh thanks for the link leaf, some nice bit of trolling on the part of whoever did that then I guess.
However, it doesn't sound too far fetched really does it? We know stupid things like this have been done by companies before and exploited by people.

Not sure what this reversal of the name change means to me though. Not planning to reactivate my accounts. I did a fair bit of reading through this whole facebook integration and activision philosophy and I can't say it bodes well for the game. It's clear that the integration deal is for them to target the facebook audience - and thats gonna mean the game is gonna get more and more dumbed down.

I haven't seen the cata beta but although I keep hearing it looks great, not sure if this isn't just seeing something new - that will wear of quite quickly.
I could see the zones being all redesigned for easy questing in mind, with not much else to commend them. Whats the point if you can just join a queue and beam into the latest instances?
And more portals. I don't know why they don't just scrap the travel requirements and let you beam anywhere - it would save time for people right?

And with activision targeting the ultra casual audience and focusing on content/features that are strictly revenue focused I confidently predict you will see:
- paid class change feature
- buy gold from blizzard
- buy level capped character from blizzard
- buy even more mounts from blizzard
- buy gear from blizzard

RP is just about the worst activity from a casual players point of view. It takes effort and organisation, has no material reward ingame, and doesn't give you any achievements to post on your shiny integrated facebook. To blizzard, it is a weird minority community, has no clear potential for easy financial explotation, and lets face it has enough internal drama and strife going on that most sane people would not want to get invovled in it anyway.

So this leaves the RP community further than ever from blizzard activisions target demographic for the game the ever before. You will not get support, there will never be an RP patch (lol but we knew that right?), and the new game demographic will be less and less interested in taking part.

I don't know about you but that doesn't really sound like something I want to invest my time and effort in.

This whole read name fiasco shows just how arrogant activision is, and where they want to go. The only reason I can think this was stopped was because people DID actually cancel accounts and pre-orders over it, enough to make a dent and scare them. Kudos to the people with the balls to put their money where their mouth is and vote the only way these guys understand - with their wallet.

Anyway, this post was brough to you without the use of naughty swearwords, per the request of mr Oppalol. I have to admit I found this whole real name stuff completely outrageous, and a genuinely distgusting way for a company to behave. And yeah. I was mad as hell.

Vexacus wrote:

Anyway, this post was brough to you without the use of naughty swearwords, per the request of mr Oppalol.

I miss George Carlin.

I'm in ireland, with no means to follow this entire drama and such, though I know the outlines, and it is bad. Has it been stopped, though?

In short, can someone make me a summary/tldr version? please?

Yup, by the power of many canceled SC2 pre-orders and wow accounts, Blizz was forced into a massive u-turn.


Unfortunately, their statement only said

Quote :

As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

read into that what you will

and the in-game real id function is still active unless you turn it off via parental controls