A Hunter's Story

See! Occasionally Bliz does listen to us! Guess that’s what happens when their player base of a few Million players “march” on their HQ… lol. Told you there was no reason to worry yet!

Why am I not that worried about RealID on the Forums? First, because it’s not implemented yet, which means it still has great potential for change. For example, Bliz realized how stupid it was for them to post the real names of their own employees, so they retracted that part of it. I mean, the forums are a huge group of computer-savvy people, and it’s open to the public. Plus it’s already prime target area for hackers. So why wouldn’t you expect them to, just for fun, find the real life poster and start sending them stalker videos, pictures of their houses, and everything else that says “if we want to mess with you, we can. especially now we know your name!”

So if Bliz realized that they needed to protect the identity of their staff, then there’s still time for them to realize that they should also respect (and protect) the privacy of their customers.

But here’s the second reason. I don’t have to post in the forums. In fact, I rarely do. And if Bliz went and made it retroactive…? I’d delete my old posts. I don’t have to post, so I don’t have to worry about my name appearing on there.

So why would I delete my posts and refrain from posting anything new? Because in the WoW world, I go there as Xanther (or my various character names associated with this identity). I don’t go there with my real name out in front. There are just too many things that could go wrong / be a pain, by directly, publicly associating my WoW identity with my RL one on the web. No, it’s not because I go around doing things I wouldn’t want other people to know about me (like flaming or trolling forums, creating a bad name for myself, or any number of things). I try to be more of the “do unto others…” type of person. But it’s just because I choose to keep the two separate. When someone searches for my real name, I want the things that come up to come up (well, not everything, but at least it’s all associated with me in RL). I don’t want WoW to be on the top of the list.

I mean, I’d be fine if I had to post under the same name every time, and was able to use a screen name (aka Xanther). Or if you had to get the character you’re posting under to a certain level (so people don’t just create level 1′s and troll the forums), or any number of other things. But I don’t think it should automatically, and without option, be associated to your real name. Regardless, it’s my choice to post or not under that real name, and I choose not to. So there’s still a choice. Of course, it’s all subject to change anyway. Who knows, maybe this will mean Bliz finally goes away from using our email addresses as usernames and will let us get back to using a username to login… For security reasons alone they should make that step! But anyway. It’s still subject to change. And if we really don’t like it? We can just stop giving them our money. Either way, at this point… I have no Real(ID) Worries.