Some thoughts:
- I’ve always said employees should be using their real names to provide transparency and accountability. If you can’t handle being the public face of a company and all that implies, get another job. It’s that easy. It is not always that FUN, mind you.
- My customers are not public citizens. Making them public citizens against their will is crappy. I can think of half a dozen reasons why someone should be allowed to be anonymous, and I’m not going to list them because any one of them is good enough. Want people to stop acting like asshats on the boards? Suspend in game accounts for out of game behavior. Hire more mods. Close the board. Whatever. This is just chickenshit.
- This will not kill WoW. Remember, the percentage of WoW customers who read [WoW's] forums is in the single digits. The number of people who post is even smaller. If this does anything major to their sub numbers, I’ll be very surprised.
- I am working for a number of companies right now and three of them were advised by their legal departments to… not do what Blizzard is doing. One does not allow me to use my real name despite my case for doing so. Another allowed me to use my real name after giving them something in writing that stated I absolved them of responsibility in the event of harassment or worse. And a third company doesn’t let ANYONE use any handle, in game or out, that Googles up as a real name lest the real owner of that name get harassed. As I said on Scott’s blog, Blizzard clearly doesn’t think they are liable. These three other MMO companies clearly think they could be. We won’t know the legal truth until Blizzard gets sued for wrongful death.
- Yes, I said death, and no, I’m not overreacting. Someone is going to get stalked through this tool because some whackadoodle fell in love with an avatar. Maybe the victim did a little roleplay and the stalker took it too seriously. Maybe the victim hurt the stalker’s widdle feewings during a message board discussion. Who knows. Marriages break up (and reform) every day thanks to MMO drama leaking out into the real world. Blizzard should know this better than anyone. Good lord, you can’t go a week without an international advice column posting some complaint about a spouse or a kid that is too involved in WoW. That’s not Blizzard’s fault.
But “Here’s the real name of the person who sexxored you and then changed her mind/called you an idiot in front of all your friends/won’t talk to you because you’re creepy” will lead to something disastrous. Unfortunately, the person to whom the disaster occurs will be one of the people who is sitting here today scoffing at the “scare-mongerers” and “alarmists.” Because the scare-mongerers and the alarmists won’t be posting.
[...] Sanya Weathers, community management expert: We won’t know the legal truth until Blizzard gets sued for wrongful death. [...]
Part of me is convinced that this is partially a move to cut down on the board traffic to the point where they can let go a bunch of their paid moderators/staff.
I’m thinking some bean counter won’t let them rethink this because they’re seeing a way to cut costs by cutting the usage of the boards by a huge percent.
Am I totally off-base here? Am I just too focused on the way that Blizzard is being changed by Activision and the Bobby K mentality?
[...] to add a post by Sanya Weathers. The woman knows what she’s talking about. Shame nobody in the mundungous-salary range ever chooses to listen to experienced community people, [...]
Blizzard has a partnership with Facebook to share data between RealID and FB. What with ‘social games’ the big new buzzword and being seen as ‘the future of gaming’, this decision is clearly being done in an attempt to get a piece of that pie, and nothing else.
What I think Blizzard has forgotten is that people play MMORPGs to escape from reality, not to tie their real life into the game. I would think that MMORPG players would be the LEAST open to this kind of removal of pseudonymity out of all the gaming demographics, for exactly that reason.
[...] Ease of Stalking In The Internet Age.
One of the most insightful posts about this topic I’ve seen, Sanya.
Randy Farmer also weighed in on this topic: http://habitatchronicles.com/2010/07/realid-and-wow-forums-classic-identity-design-mistake/
Looks like Blizzard’s taking a beating. But, as I’ve said otherwise, I agree with Pai above: I’ll bet that this is part of their plan to increase profits by integrating with social networks and getting a whole lot of sweet, sweet datamining to sell.
I think I said in the other thread that it would constitute an act of God if no one was murdered through the remainder of WoW’s lifetime. In truth, with WoW’s subscriber numbers and the number of antagonists in that game, it’s not even in the realm of miracle. It’s a mathematical certainty. The only question is how frequently it will happen.
The only point I disagree with you is your opinion that it won’t effect your average WoW player (and therefore nor will it effect subscriptions). Blizzard could care less about their noisome forums. They’re doing this – all of it – to normalize RealID among their player base. Regardless of what moneymaking scheme they’re actually envisioning, I think they’re going to succeed. By Christmas, most guilds and PUGs will require or encourage RealID disclosure, despite the nonsense about “only your most trusted and intimate friends.”
People go along to get along, even if they find the new fad to be distasteful, just like Ventrilo and Gamerscore. The difference, of course, is that voice chat and gear ridicule doesn’t end in vandalism or assault.
Heck, I use my real name in random blog comments like this one. I don’t see what the big deal is. People should chill out.
It really seems to me like most of the people flipping out about this are upset that they can’t be anonymous assholes anymore.
And yes, violent crimes happen. However, they happen most often with people you already know in real life. I’m sure eventually (since WoW will never die) someone will kill someone else over something that happened in WoW (hasn’t this happened already?) and it will be a big news story, but the odds of anything happening will be on par with astronomical events.
If you’re really and truly that concerned about your personal safety, you’ll never drive on a US highway ever again.
Hey Sanya, it was a while back, but remember at the DAOC Vegas round table we were joking about boards would be friendlier if people were required to install webcams to record posts?
Man, that was way funnier back when the biggest worry was just me having to wear pants while posting. Thanks a lot, Blizzard.
William Furr — I see that there are 113 William Furr’s in the US according to census data (http://howmanyofme.com) For my name, both maiden and married surnames, there is 1. Me. Frankly, I’m old enough to know with surety that the internet is forever (until recently I could find Usenet postings I made in 1985! when googling my name). I also know that potential employers can and will search my name, and use what they find against me. Since I don’t work in the game industry I see no reason why I would want my gaming persona to be associated with my meatspace. I don’t have any particular reason to be concerned about stalking (though being a female player in an MMO does mean I’ve been harassed) but I see no reason to make it easy either.
Thank you for this. I don’t know how many females, gay and transgender people will just quit WoW because of this… But the backlash that I have seen from several forums and blogs tell me that it will be big. Big for small values of Blizzard money of course.
Big for the above mentioned persons.
Basically it just makes the WoW world a bit more male. A bit more asshole. And a bit smaller.
But it doesn’t hurt their bottom line at all. In fact, all told, they probably can cash in on it big time.
It makes me sad to think that something like this can be done with essentially no repercussions, but that’s what money is about. Now I’m worried about the MMOs that I still play. How long until everyone jumps on this creaking, slimy bandwagon?
[...] Sanya Weathers is more concerned about the possibilities for stalking, and the legal ramifications. My customers are not public citizens. Making them public citizens against their will is crappy. I can think of half a dozen reasons why someone should be allowed to be anonymous, and I’m not going to list them because any one of them is good enough. Want people to stop acting like asshats on the boards? Suspend in game accounts for out of game behavior. Hire more mods. Close the board. Whatever. This is just chickenshit. [...]
I had read about the RealID thing but I did not know that real names would be used on forum posts. Thank you Sanya for posting about it.
I completely agree with those that do not want their boss, potential employers, etc . . to be able to google them and learn about their off time play. Even if a person were a great employee, if the employer was of the opinion that online play was stupid, the employer learning of someone’s online play could ruin promotion prospects or worse, could get someone let go.
How about someone googleing you and being able to pull up in the search all of your postings, all of your queries, all of your responses to others, etc. . . . and for those that google you (boss, potential employers, etc . . ) to be able to view the date/time of any of your posts.
This change seems to be a horrible thing.
Not long ago WoW began using players email addresses as account names. Should anyone google me and learn of my playing WoW, that same person would also know my account name (because I am sure that somewhere my email address shows up associated with my name). Yes they would still need to know my password but when Blizzard made the change to use email addresses as account names it bothered me and made me angry.
I often post and assist others on the WoW forums but now with my real name being posted I will no longer use the forums. Should I ever need to post on the tech forum for tech assistance, I will cancel the account before posting something that would allow google searches to follow all of my postings on the WoW forums. Perhaps it is silly of me but that is just the way it is.
[...] http://bullcopra.blogspot.com/2010/07/might-as-well.html http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/2010/07/07/real-names/ http://www.journeyswithjaye.com/?p=1731 [...]
[...] could go wrong? Someone will die, that’s what. Someone is going to get stalked through this tool because some whackadoodle fell in love with an [...]
I thought with a fairly common name that I was pretty well cloaked on the internet, and if all you do is search my name that is true. But when my name and one of the character names I have used in most online games and for several gaming related sites are combined in the search I suddenly move to the top of the results page. It’s funny how public my character name has become; even knowing the town I use for my billing address won’t get me to show up on the first 5 pages of any search. Anyway, should I ever return to WoW I’m not going to be posting in their forums or doing anything else that requires real id.
I’d call this a copout, but I don’t think it is. Moderating forums is hard, but it’s not that hard. I doubt that this really has anything to do with actually hoping to clean up their forums. It’s a nice enough explanation, and probably some folks at Blizzard have convinced themselves that it’s enough reason to go with this RealID plan. But as hitnrun mentioned, this is most likely part of some larger moneymaking scheme that will become clearer later. I’m sure that this has more to do with that scheme than any fanciful hope that their forums will suddenly become shiny clean and full of brilliance.
I just shrug. People are pissed. But people get pissed a lot, for good reasons and stupid selfish ones. No matter how angry folks get, very few will quit playing WoW over this. Blizzard won’t be able to distinguish any difference in their subscriber base. Some will stop posting, sure. I certainly wouldn’t post on forums that required my real name, though maybe that’s because I gave up my anonymity a dog’s life ago. Anyone that hangs around the gaming universe that wants to find me can easily do so. All I ask is that they make sure it’s me when they come knocking for revenge for something I did to their character of class. Leave the one other person in the states with my name alone, poor guy.
I’m against it from my own little moral perspective, just to make that clear. In the world where I make all the decisions this doesn’t happen. If my world needs cleaner forums, I hire more moderators and teach them that banning in-game accounts owned by ass-hats is an effective way to make them buy new accounts so they can complain about their bannings, thus giving me more money to hire more moderators.
I’ve seen things like this a few dozen times. As a single event it will amount to nothing. Blizzard has a mountain of credibility and positive karma to draw from. I just hope for their sake they recognize that mountains can turn in to molehills if you shovel at them long and hard enough.
Thank you for the kind words, Brian
Alan – remember the first time someone thought that they’d made a discovery akin to the finding of oil in the North Atlantic when they found your Real! Name! and posted it on Whineplay? Even thought it wasn’t a secret?
That was actually one of the big reasons I just said screw it and posted my real name. I was pre-empting the drama, not making a statement. I don’t think people realize my stance on this evolved over time (they should, FFS, it’s not like my original handle was unknown), but using my real name from the start did so many good things for me and my community that I was an instant convert. And now I’m old and I have enough hindsight to articulate why it worked.
DragonPup (and I know your real name and where you live MUHAHAHHHAH… sorry): OMG, yes. That conversation was hilarious. I wasn’t the one who brought up pants – I was more worried that people would see me in my glasses, something I haven’t allowed photos of since 1989. It took a bleeping team lead to remember that half of you didn’t wear pants
Just a small point..
The forum will show your real name, yes. However, it was stated, that selecting a character to associate with your name will be optional.
So unless someone is sexxoring up wackadoodles and then posts on the forum optionally selecting that same character that did it, it’s not guaranteed that the offended wackadoodle will know who that person’s real name was.
Until they start showing my real name under my characters name in the SC2 lobby, or automatically show my real name to people who friended me WITHOUT requesting it by RealID (Which you do by email.. So they’d have to know my e-mail), and I don’t post on the forums, or worse associate my name with a character, I personally wont’ have any issues. Though I can see where many who are not as careful might.
.. That’s just such a fun word..
Wackadoodle!
WackaDOOOOOoodle?
…wackadoodle.
Wackadoodle — the next big Designer Dog hybrid! xD
I’ve cancelled my subscription. I’m very unhappy about it, I want to keep playing. I hope they’ll change their mind on this. It isn’t just the general forums – I never post there anyway, I never even read it. But where will they go next? And even now, there are a number of technical problems where you HAVE to post to the technical forums to get help – and that will require real names, too. So it’s not as optional as they’re making it out to be.
@Blackblade: In abstract conversations (like this one), you’re right. You still have to worry about the not insignificant number of people who would harass or stalk someone for arguing on the Internet, but the conversations don’t have to be personal.
But WoW forums aren’t just the General and gameplay boards. They also include the hundreds of server-specific boards where legitimate grievances are aired and events are planned. Nearly all conversation on these boards is personal; they have to be to have any meaning. It’s going to be impossible to report a ninja, or plan a party, or complain about a griefer, or offer an opinion on a guild or discuss PvP, at least safe and comfortably.
And again, Blizzard didn’t devise Real ID to clean up their forums. They could care less about their forums. They’re trying to start a social network, and that means getting most of their userbase to sign up. They obviously think this will happen voluntarily (most of the people swearing blood oaths never to use it will start making exceptions when guilds and PUGs require it), and I think they’re right, but if people aren’t signing up it would be naive to think they won’t encourage a little harder, e.g. Armory.
Heck, they’ve already changed their plans for the breadth of the service from a whole week ago.
@hitnrun
I concur with your statement that the intent is to focus on social networking, and not altruistically attempting to clean up their forums.
However, I’d debate the fact that any interaction on their terms is completely unnecessary. I’ve met guilds outside of forums (Meeting them IN GAME is really the best), and they tend to have their own. I don’t need armory. I don’t need their forums, and I certainly don’t need any shape or form of Facebook.
My experience has been exactly what I wanted out of Blizzard’s products (Aside from some aspects of the community, speaking strictly from an in-game perspective, to say nothing of game forums anywhere), I’ve met interesting people, made friends, and stayed in contact with those I chose to. All this without Blizzard, Facebook, or anything else that would expose more privacy than I chose to expose.
While I do see the point that I am probably in the minority, and those who will do things without understanding the implications of their actions is not a concern to be taken lightly, for me and those like me, this is no big deal.
NOW, if they make it so that people can get my real name WITHOUT posting on forums, WITHOUT my consent through a friend quest specifically stating my name will be shown… Then I will take issue.
[...] one to speak without qualifiers, but this surely merits it. The threat posed to women is very real. I myself was stalked in WoW, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been because it [...]
Blackblade – so you don’t post your character name on the forums. Somebody who’s got a beef with you, or is just confused, says that you’re the guy who plays Cobagg, that orc shaman everybody hates, and boom, welcome to endless harassment. Or maybe Cobagg’s player mentions his real name in-game, and it’s the same as or pretty similar to yours, and boom, suddenly some jerkbag on an unofficial forum is linking to your Blizzard real-name-tagged post and inviting everybody to call you at your work number.
It’s a very foolish idea to pretend that only people who are stupid or make an ‘error in judgment’ will ever have to deal with this crap.
[...] Real Names I am working for a number of companies right now and three of them were advised by their legal departments to… not do what Blizzard is doing. One does not allow me to use my real name despite my case for doing so. Another allowed me to use my real name after giving them something in writing that stated I absolved them of responsibility in the event of harassment or worse. And a third company doesn’t let ANYONE use any handle, in game or out, that Googles up as a real name lest the real owner of that name get harassed. As I said on Scott’s blog, Blizzard clearly doesn’t think they are liable. These three other MMO companies clearly think they could be. We won’t know the legal truth until Blizzard gets sued for wrongful death. [...]
People will WANT to post their character names on the forums to back up their claims of authority, because who cares what you have to say about paladin balance in PvP if you can’t prove that you play a character of that class.
[...] Le témoignage d’un community manager sur etingbees.brokentoys.org Exemple d’un joueur retrouvé sur son lieu de travail sur seewhatyoudidthere.com [...]
@khazeh
I’m not saying it’s complete immunity to not post on the forums, or give out your Real ID (I don’t.. the only one that has it is my wife and that’s just because I wanted to see how it works). I’m not saying confusion about who is who isn’t going to happen either. I’m not even saying this is a good idea.
However, if I don’t post on the forums and no one knows my name because I don’t give it out, or worse, associate any characters with my name on the forums, it’s not going to be EXCEEDINGLY easy to find out who I am and harass me. I’m under no foolish pretense that “It’ll never happen to me”.
I am, however, asserting that if you are careful, and if you want to be certain your identity is as obscure as possible, it’s possible to reduce the risk to levels of anonymity approximating what currently exists.. As possible as it is anywhere else on the internet. Hell, I just did a Google search for my name, and I found a Facebook and Twitter account for people that have my exact same name, and they were even different from other. And I don’t even use Twitter or Facebook.
Jerks will be jerks, and they will always find a way to harass someone if they want to. This whole thing might make it easier for some, but if someone REALLY wanted to get at someone before, it wasn’t impossible then either.
I do hope they reverse their decision. But them going through with it as it’s currently described isn’t going to stop me from playing games I enjoy. If change their policy, and make it even easier to find out who I am without any information being volunteered by me with my approval, then yes, I’d stop.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case as it stands.
I was just looking at the Battle.net RealID FAQ:
“Real ID friends will be able to see all of each other’s characters across games; there will not be an option to hide specific characters from Real ID friends or to appear offline to them when you’re logged in.”
I don’t know about you guys but I have some characters that I play (in other non-WoW games…don’t play WoW) on other servers to get away from my guild (that I lead) every now and then. I also like to be “offline” sometimes to just chill out by myself. Looks like Blizzard wants you to be online and grouped at all time on all games on all servers. I was really hoping to get in to SC2 but I think that’s a big fat “pass” now. I’ll stick to LOTRO and my xbox (where I can be “offline” anytime I want to be).
All of your other comments, Sanya, are all valid and good reasons too. Unless *I* choose to share, for instance, my Facebook info, I don’t want my gaming world and real world playing, or hating, together. This is just a stupid idea. Too bad Blizzard is too big to give a shit whether players like it or not.
[...] names. Kotaku had a decent post about it and the issues it includes… as did the writer of the Eating Bees blog, who is also a must read for anyone who games on [...]
Your avatar and real name don’t have to be “linked” for someone to get pissed at you because you shut them down in a discussion thread about some inconsequential piece of game balance or got more bites on your guild recruitment thread than they did.
The gearscore addon is currently bugged, and can be exploited to see another players’ RealID in game. Also, I give it all of 6 months before they move this to fully endorsed in-game usage cloaked in the same “behavior” arguments they’re using now, claiming it will cut down on ninja looting, etc.
Here’s the problem with this whole “take away the anonymity and the bad behavior will stop” argument. It isn’t going to stop because people are just naturally compelled to act nicer when their name is out there, it will happen when they start reading news stories like the kid who stalked for 6 months to get real-life revenge for an in-game stabbing in CounterStrike!
I said pretty much the same thing on the Blizzard forums, Sanya: That I gave it 6 months before a family was suing Blizzard for 100 million for the wrongful death of their minor daughter. (That thread was deleted 15 minutes later).
Blizzard has backed off now. But the wording of their announcement sounds like they just want to pre-lube the customer base before reinserting the policy, after we unclamp our legs a bit.
Well, at least for the next 6 months no one will discover I AM or AM NOT Robin Williams.
Which brings up another reason it was a bad idea… Imagine if Verne Troyer had to post under his real name instead of TinyGnutCase…
[...] Sanya warns us all. [...]
[...] take heed of all the recent feedback from female/minority players about the real id scandal and while you are trying to be nice to the GMs, try not to seem like a [...]
Weclome back.
When I kept geting SQL errors trying to get to your page I wondered if you were putting new paint on the walls.
Looks nice
[...] and community. For a in-the-trenches view from a professional community manager, you can see Sanya Weather’s take on what the problems were. These good people posted so I didn’t have [...]
[...] Le témoignage d’un community manager sur etingbees.brokentoys.org Exemple d’un joueur retrouvé sur son lieu de travail sur seewhatyoudidthere.com Share and Enjoy: [...]