Blizzard just LOL'd at privacy

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NoQuarter

Golden Member
Jan 1, 2001
1,006
0
76
This article sums up activision and their slow destruction of Blizzard for short term profits pretty well:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

When will corporations start to think about long term profits instead of bringing in CEO's that only focus on short term?

Actually I feel he has a great plan for long term profit by culling prospect franchises and focusing on piecemealing out proven franchises through DLC and turning Battle.Net into a social networking/gaming marketplace, like a Facebook - XBL hybrid where you can buy maps and items you see other people using for SC2/Diablo III/CoD/WoW.

He's twisted, and very anti-gamer, but great vision for profitability. It's his profit-driven approach that makes him so unappealing to us as gamers though, when games can approach a form of art as much as movies, music and books can be.


Problem with a Facebook - XBL hybrid is many people want to keep their social network and their gamer network separate, those aren't necessarily two communities you want interconnected. FB works because it's real people you know, XBL works because you're behind a GamerTag.
 
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Geofram

Member
Jan 20, 2010
120
0
76
I tend to agree with ModelWorks here. I feel that a lot of this is people over-reacting to a very basic part of all social interaction with other people - the knowledge of what your name is.

Almost no one is afraid to introduce themselves to another person, or be introduced by someone they know. The whole point of having a name is because of the need for it in social interactions. If you never talked to or interacted with other people, you'd have no need for one.

For better or worse, the internet has introduced people into a way to have real social interactions with others without the need to show who you are, generally resulting in people doing really mean and stupid things and then hiding behind their anonymity. The WoW forums, where virtually anyone who has been there knows is a cess-pool of attitudes, insults, and flaming, are trying to shake off that very problem by forcing people to fess up to their behaviors in a public manner, and as someone who has read and posted there - I'm all in favor of anything to clean it up.

Am I afraid of people knowing who I am? Nope. I surf WoW sites at work. My co-workers know I play, and many of them play too. I am not afraid to show people my name, even though it's fairly uncommon. I don't plan on being a jerk to people on the forums or in games, therefore not giving anyone a reason to WANT to try to find out who I really am.

I have been assaulted online previously. Someone has monitored my chats, emails, websites visited, and sent the results to others in an attempt to hurt me. And you know what? It wasn't an anonymous stranger online. It was my ex-girlfriend. I am still not sure how she got access to all of the stuff she did. But even so, I am not afraid of changes like this.

I don't believe it will result in some free-for-all of stealing identities, stalking, and harassment. I think people who claim it will are being a bit paranoid. It's your name. It's not your Social Security number, home address, phone number, and associated picture. Most people who read your post will not care who you really are. I could, very honestly, write a program that randomly assigns common first and last names together, and correctly guess the name of many people who play WoW. And I would know exactly as much as this RealID is going to tell people, except for the content of a post they might make.

If you don't want to show your name, that's fine. Don't post. You can still play the game. Just don't use the official Battle.net forums. Stick to fan sites and you'll still get everything you need, including support most of the time.
 

skace

Lifer
Jan 23, 2001
14,488
7
81
I just realized this doesn't apply to me because when I lent my WoW account to my guild, I somehow ended up banned from the forums. To this day I don't know what occurred under my account and don't really care all that much, was just kind of a surprise when I tried to log into the forums one day.

Oh and awesome post JS.
 

Jschmuck2

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2005
5,623
3
81
I just realized this doesn't apply to me because when I lent my WoW account to my guild, I somehow ended up banned from the forums. To this day I don't know what occurred under my account and don't really care all that much, was just kind of a surprise when I tried to log into the forums one day.

Oh and awesome post JS.

Thank you Maybe I'll throw up a few more of those over here. Please stop by and check out the site when you get a minute.

Also I learned a valuable lesson today: Do *not* try to plug your own site in someone else's Digg post. They do not take kindly to that over there.
 

AyashiKaibutsu

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2004
9,306
4
81
Actually I feel he has a great plan for long term profit by culling prospect franchises and focusing on piecemealing out proven franchises through DLC and turning Battle.Net into a social networking/gaming marketplace, like a Facebook - XBL hybrid where you can buy maps and items you see other people using for SC2/Diablo III/CoD/WoW.

You can say it's a great plan, but I have a feeling there's a very high probability of it blowing up in their face. I'm sure EAs strategies seemed like a great plan as they implemented it. They've had to somewhat back off of it now, but I'm sure they'll continue to feel the burn of what they did with gutting their developers and producing crap for years. Not saying their great now, but there treatment of companies like bioware is worlds different from how they were before even though there's some EA stink even on games like DA:O.
 

CKent

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
9,020
0
0
I just realized this doesn't apply to me because when I lent my WoW account to my guild, I somehow ended up banned from the forums. To this day I don't know what occurred under my account and don't really care all that much, was just kind of a surprise when I tried to log into the forums one day.

Oh and awesome post JS.

The mods there are nazis. I got a 1-week "final warning ban" (on a brand new account, only action taken against it ever) for asking if RealID was something the ACLU would be interested in. That's all, I didn't add "you jerks!" or anything to the post. It was polite and to the point.

I got my other account, which I'm selling (geared 80 mage), forum banned today by posting a bunch of profanity and racist jokes. As soon as this one's off temp ban, I'll get it permabanned as well.

New b.net acct. is under George Washington, Rodeo Dr., Bev. Hills, 90210 :biggrin: Man, fuck Blizzard, wow. Just wow.

Edit: Holy shit, it's over 9000!
 

Qbah

Diamond Member
Oct 18, 2005
3,754
10
81
Cancelled my SC2 pre-order. I won't be getting it or D3, unless this change won't go live. I will sooner stop playing games than be forced by a private company to reveal my personal details. Plenty of other games to play anyway. I don't care if more people will do the same (not get their games), but I am strongly against such things. We should have the possibility to decide for ourselves, especially in entertainment.
 

LumbergTech

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2005
3,622
1
0
This really doesn't bother me. In fact I wish the internet would become much less anonymous.

I dunno, I see both sides of it.

I find it disturbing that someone may be able to find your home address because of your forum name.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to find the home address of e-thugs who think they can disrespect anyone they want.
 

CKent

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
9,020
0
0
I dunno, I see both sides of it.

I find it disturbing that someone may be able to find your home address because of your forum name.

On the other hand, it would be nice to be able to find the home address of e-thugs who think they can disrespect anyone they want.

You're suggesting that physical violence against trolls would be a good thing? The Jay & Silent Bob scene was great... but it was just a scene in a film...

My biggest beef with this is it singles out people with unique names. If I'm Joe Smith, I wouldn't give a flying crap about it. But my name is extremely unique, only one in the world.
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
so really you guys think that this will affect sales?

Not initially but if any company keeps their bullshit going long enough it does affect sales, look at EA now, they dont churn out endless shit like they used to, they churn out smaller amounts of shit with the occasional diamond in the rough (like dead space) which overall is an improvement.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,312
1,749
136
He wrote the thesis for his masters in psychology. Some of the topics he discussed showed how people do not realize what they are revealing unless they are conciously focusing on not revealing information.

You compile all the information they do provide. Talk to some online forensics workers. They track down people all the time with nothing more than a single posting on a forum to start with. I have even reported and had prosecuted 3 malware creators who decided to distribute their work anonymously. There was nothing to go on but a server paid for with a debit card that can be purchased at a gas station. Their code didn't have any personal information either. But I managed to find them on 3 separate occasions.

Probably using IP Addreses. I never doubted that you can find someone using IP Addresses, ISP and help of police / legal system. But I highly doubt you would find me without using my IP address. Maybe if you spend 100k $ but even then I have doubts.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
From https://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1 :

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. 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.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment
 

BoberFett

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
37,562
9
81
Huh. What he's saying is that Modelworks is wrong and everyone who complained was right.
 

AyashiKaibutsu

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2004
9,306
4
81
I am pretty sure he is just saying "while the liked the idea, we like your money more."

I was reading what was suposed insider info that pretty much everyone in Blizzard from GMs to core developers hated the idea, but it was getting pushed hardcore from the activision side of things.
 

Maximilian

Lifer
Feb 8, 2004
12,604
15
81
Omg blizzard fight the power!! I dont want some bastard turning up at my door because i backstabbed and trashed him in a 2v2
 

Anubis

No Lifer
Aug 31, 2001
78,712
427
126
tbqhwy.com
In other words, we now resume with your regularly scheduled trolling...

possibly but they want to curb it and it can be done easily with heavy handed moderation (think EJ) and the ability to see all chars on someone account regardless of which toon they post on

they are gonna put in post ratings and some other things. enough people hate the trolls that if the voting system works those posts wont stay up long enough to matter
 

kalrith

Diamond Member
Aug 22, 2005
6,628
7
81
possibly but they want to curb it and it can be done easily with heavy handed moderation (think EJ) and the ability to see all chars on someone account regardless of which toon they post on

they are gonna put in post ratings and some other things. enough people hate the trolls that if the voting system works those posts wont stay up long enough to matter

That's exactly what they should've done in the first place if the real intent was to reduce trolling.
 

nageov3t

Lifer
Feb 18, 2004
42,808
83
91
possibly but they want to curb it and it can be done easily with heavy handed moderation (think EJ) and the ability to see all chars on someone account regardless of which toon they post on

they are gonna put in post ratings and some other things. enough people hate the trolls that if the voting system works those posts wont stay up long enough to matter
indeed.

the problem, imo, is not the inherent anonymity of the internet, but rather, the ability to seamlessly troll on a level 1 alt and then ask constructive questions on your main 10 seconds later.

even if all characters weren't visible, a single unified username for posting on any of the bnet forums would probably reduce it a lot.
 
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