GridStream Productions

For those of you not following this, you really should. Blizzard has just made what I consider to be a cataclysmically bad decision:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/threa ... 1&pageNo=1

Wow. And I don't mean the game. I mean the steel balls on that there brass dragon-monkey. I won't even post under the same name as my login username, and they're asking people to publicly post under their own real names? I can predict two immediate effects of this: 1) significantly reduced whining about every little slight, real or imagined, and 2) significantly increased population of players named "Hugh Jorgen." I might have been tempted to try Starcraft II, but now I know I won't be going anywhere near their forums. Thanks for the warning.

Holy mother of all mistakes. I almost decided to go back to WoW, but, with Blizzard being the kind of company that they are, if they decide the real id on the forums is a good idea, eventually it will go into the game...

I see Blizzard actually posted this new thing officially, and I'm still having a hard time believing it.

Pirate servers ftw?

Funcom for the epic win. Cmon back, wowers!

*huggles AO*

makes me not want to get sc2 after the over a decade wait for it.

Biggest thing with it is, they aren't asking their users to do it, theres no option in it at all, its forced, and will transfer into game as well, on friendslists and the like you'll be able to see users real names and the like. On the plus side will cut down how easy it is for guys to pretend to be girls, which is so freakin common over there.
But still, its a huge mistake on Blizzards part, won't cripple the game at all, but if they lose enough folks Im sure they will second guess their decision.

This makes me ever more happy that i gave up on WoW a long time ago, and don't even have it on my hard drive anymore.

The official forums are that bad for wow they had to try something. As for in game sharing its only with people you add as realid friends so not really a problem for in game.

Shigy wrote:The official forums are that bad for wow they had to try something. As for in game sharing its only with people you add as realid friends so not really a problem for in game.

But correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't this mean that anyone you add as your realid friend can see anyone else that you have as a realid friend?

So, while this might not be an issue for you, surely there are some people that might take issue with this. For example, I have you as my realid friend and you have someone that I absolutely hate as your friend. Maybe I've had some bad dealings with this person in the past. Well I can't ask you to remove them as your friend but I might not necessarily need them knowing so much about me. Especially when you consider that from my understanding once you become RealID friends in game you can see not just your real name but the names of every single one of your characters across dimensions and across games.

For me that's where it starts becoming icky. Imagine if we had that in AO. What would happen to the annonymity of ARKs? Surely they wouldn't be able to use RealID and expect any level of privacy. However, they also wouldn't be able to post on the forums...ever. Same would you guys as DJ's. You'd have no level of privacy because all of your play characters would be known.

All they know about you if they don't actually have you added but just have friend of yours is your real name. So unless they already know who you are IRL its still not a problem. There is a problem if you post on the official forums with it attached to your main character. But you can just do what people do now (realid hasn't actually been implemented on the forums yet) and just make any posts under a level 1 alt so people don't attach your real name to your character if thats a worry. Its not a perfect system but really doesn't hold any worries for me as I wouldn't touch the official forums with a 10ft pole atm anyway.

ValliKat wrote:For me that's where it starts becoming icky. Imagine if we had that in AO. What would happen to the annonymity of ARKs? Surely they wouldn't be able to use RealID and expect any level of privacy. However, they also wouldn't be able to post on the forums...ever. Same would you guys as DJ's. You'd have no level of privacy because all of your play characters would be known.

As for if they did this for AO forums (which I see no reason for them to do) They would make some sort of workaround for arks because they don't want there play characters associated with there ARK characters so they would need to do something so there wasn't that link anyway. As for us DJs I think with a small amount of googling and facebooking you could figure out who all of us are anyway.

Shigy wrote:As for us DJs I think with a small amount of googling and facebooking you could figure out who all of us are anyway.

Your real names for those that use Facebook, sure. Every single one of your play characters? I'm less than convinced.

Well thats a seperate matter entirely valli you only get that if you actually add someone to your realid in game. Not from being a friend of someone who has you on there list.

Also of some intresting blizzard has pulled the forum RealId bit.

http://www.wowhead.com/blog=162784

Yeah I saw that earlier.

It's a shame really. I don't know what I'm going to do without that thread to entertain me now.

Just the number of replies amused me.. it was up to around 2500... pages! last I saw

It gets even better

The ESRB Accidentally Exposes E-Mail Addresses Of Concerned Blizzard Fans that sent in to complain about the issue

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/706223/ESRB-Accidentally-

praclarsuh wrote:It gets even better

The ESRB Accidentally Exposes E-Mail Addresses Of Concerned Blizzard Fans that sent in to complain about the issue

Fixed Link:

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/70622 ... -Fans.html

ah sorry didn't see the link cut off