Dear Blizzard

[nslay]

Nothing like giving away your name, address, birthday, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, persistent to-the-minute status updates, friends' addresses, tagged photographs, e-mails, instant messages, bulletin board messages, search queries, and various add-on apps and toolbars that siphon more information from unsuspecting users - all under the veil of innocent applications such as keeping contact with friends, searching the Internet, reading e-mail, etc ... You realize this is how Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc... keep shop open right?

All the information I put on Facebook I realize is 100% public domain. That's why I don't put anything I wouldn't want employers to know up! I don't care if they know about my favorite TV shows, for instance. Or my hobbies.

What about all the information you provide without even a thought?  Potential employers, girlfriends, and various other opportunities are one aspect.  Let's take Google Ads for example.  I wager that almost every major website uses Google Ads.  Do users realize that Google can track traffic based on cookies/IP because almost every major website exposes users to Google Ads?  Not at all! 

Some years ago, AOL released a month's worth of search queries to the public for research purposes.  Several security firms and news agencies were able to demonstrate that the identity of users could be revealed through IP and/or search queries (i.e. Searching for your name, address, social security etc...). 

Now, recall that Google was recently hacked by China.  The world's largest database of users, their names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, calendars, profiles, contacts, search queries, favorite vacation spots, favorite restaurants, friends' addresses, tagged photos, website databases, etc... were potentially accessible by the Chinese.  I mean, the consequences aren't obvious, if any.  Although, what about the Chinese who are staying abroad and viewing uncensored material that would normally be censored in China?  What happens to them?

I've been saying all along, "Hey, Google has all this information about everyone ... what happens if they get hacked?"

Google is insidious.  They produce some of the coolest toys: Google Earth, Google App Engine, Google Chrome, Google Maps,  Google Mail ... just to name a few.  All of them are free!  All of them are also plagued by privacy concerns (Just read criticism sections on wikipedia).  How do you think they fund these projects?

At least you have a choice to provide information to Facebook and similar networks.  With Google, you may not even know you're providing information.  Just merely viewing a website can provide Google more of your website history.  I don't like them, and I especially don't like that they were hacked by the Chinese.

Sorry to go off on this tangent. 

If game play is affected too, that would be really disappointing.  The forum is one thing ... I might not even buy SC2 now.

[Newby]

Sorry to go off on this tangent. 

If game play is affected too, that would be really disappointing.  The forum is one thing ... I might not even buy SC2 now.

From what I gathered from a friend who plays the beta quite a bit, it was heavily integrated with Facebook. I don't want my SC2 friends interacting with my Facebook friends, for one. Second, if I can't separate the two, I won't be buying it. What a damn shame.

And I realize Google Ads can track you. I simply say as long as they're tracking everyone then life is OK. I'm just a statistic. You're just a statistic. If I really don't want someone knowing something, I'll cover my tracks so that as far as I can tell, no one will ever know something. A case of all or nothing, so to speak.

But I'm not your average computer user.

[Newby]

Just curious. Glancing over this...

A World of Warcraft friend is any player you add to your friends list by World of Warcraft character name; this works just like adding friends works in World of Warcraft now. You will be able to add StarCraft II character names to your StarCraft II friends list in a similar fashion. If you add a character name to your friends list and are not Real ID friends with the player, you will not see the player’s real name in the game, nor will they see yours. Character-level friends such as these are specific to each game (i.e. World of Warcraft character friends cannot see each other in StarCraft II or communicate cross-game) and can see online and offline status information only, not Rich Presence details or Broadcast messages.

... so the old manner of adding friends still exists. This is a totally new option that you don't have to use. And if you don't use the forums, then essentially you can never be affected by this Real ID?

[Hdx]

Interesting, I've had limited experiance with SC2 so meh.
BUT! the still makes it sound like 'if you want to enjoy any of the new benifits of the games, you MUST sacrifice your personal info.'
I'd like the option of cross-game communication, with Account names instead of Real names.
But then again, I'm not a particularly secretive person, so I have no problem giving out my info.

[Newby]

But then again, I'm not a particularly secretive person, so I have no problem giving out my info.

Where does it stop? It's a slippery slope. "Well, you did divulge your real name... save stalkers the time of giving out your phone number and post your phone number in public in addition to your e-mail address. It'll allow for more communication between forum goers!"

What good do they have with your phone number on the forums? Same question could be asked: what good do they have with your real name on the forums?

[Hdx]

And thats the main question. WHY do they need your REAL name?
The concept of having a single ID to lump all your friends accounts in different games together is cool.
But why does it have to be your REAL name?
Blizzard has yet to give a good reason.

Many other companies do this, GuildWars for example, you add a friend and if they are on another account it lists them as such:
CharYouKnowThemAs (PersonTheyAreOnRightNow)
Simple, easy, no privacy concerns.

Its something I really hated about wow when I played, you had to add every chr on a friends account to your friends list. And there was no way to group them together (I had 4 Real friends I played with, and 19 chrs on my list..). Blizzard 'fixed' this but in there own retarded fashion.

[Furious]

I've only added two people I don't know IRL to my RealID, simply because I enjoy chatting with them and I've got 11 80s across 4-5 servers.  On the other hand, there are people that I wouldn't mind adding if they changed it so first name + last initial, I don't have a particularly common name so.

[Hitmen]

Where does it stop? It's a slippery slope.

This is the problem. First they added a cool way to keep in touch with real life friends across multiple realms/games, with a few baffling decisions (real names only, see the real names of your friends' friends!). People bitched, but nobody thought it was a big deal because if you didn't use the new features you were not giving up anything you had before. Now they are taking away the ability to post on the forums for anyone not interested in sharing their real name. While it is not a HUGE loss to me personally, the forums are still useful from time to time. Bug reporting, customer service, guild recruitment, organizing pug raids -- things that I will no longer be able or willing to do when this happens. Currently the only thing on the internet that shows up if you google my full name is some middle aged guy from South Africa, and that's that way I want it to stay. The thing that worries me most is the Blizzard poster that was talking about their long-term vision for RealID and said "we want to make sure we're creating a great social-gaming service that people will want to use." I imagine it's only going downhill from here.

[rabbit]

1) They they removed adding people by name.identifier because nobody was using the real id friends, and they needed testing.  They said it wasn't permanent.
2) You don't HAVE to post on their forums (and I could never stand to...their forums suck), but being forced to use your "real" (*cough*) name.
3) When people connect with Facebook, SC2 grabs their friends list and compares the email addresses, so even if you don't use Facebook connect, you can still be pegged as a specific person.

[warz]

Honestly, I'm not going to say I dislike any of this until I see it in action. Personally, I think all of this integration stuff *could* be really bad ass if executed properly. I'm already loving the RealID features added into WoW and SC2 Beta. I had a chance to see it in full effect last night with the SC2 Beta open again. It's really great - I've got friends from work, out of work, online, etc, all on my RealID friends list and it has surprisingly been really fun.

So yea, the First Last name issue and stuff is really a non-factor for me because I simply do not care. I don't go on the forums and troll people or tell people they're bad, usually. That's just a waste of my time anyways. I'm excited to see all of these changes - I can picture the end result: something like Steam. And, I see that Steam-like end result being really really bad ass.

[Blaze]

The problem I have with RealID, is that it would work exactly the same way if they used another ID other than your name.  There's no advantage to using a persons real name, a single nickname would achieve the same results without sharing private information.

[Newby]

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/07/09/1740240/Blizzard-Backs-Down-On-Real-Names-For-Forums?art_pos=1

So it's optional everywhere. Life goes on as expected.

[Hdx]

200 pages within 24 hours with 98% saying 'FUCK YOU' gets the point across I guess.
Seriously this whole thing could be avoided by them simply saying you can set an Alias for yourself. More commonly known as an Account Name.

[Hitmen]

Like what blaze and hdx said, the ONLY thing they have to do for me to love all this shit instead of absolutely hate it and never ever using it is to let you use an alias, like steam or ANY OTHER SYSTEM LIKE THIS EVER.

[Newby]

Like what blaze and hdx said, the ONLY thing they have to do for me to love all this shit instead of absolutely hate it and never ever using it is to let you use an alias, like steam or ANY OTHER SYSTEM LIKE THIS EVER.

Blizzard just wanted to take it farther. But yeah, as long as it remains optional and nobody uses it, like ever, then there's no chance it'll ever become mandatory or maybe even remain in use.

I point the finger at Activision.