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Live
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10.2.7
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10.2.6
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The first patch I've missed... it's weird.
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Post by
Eccentrica
You would probably be best served to sever ties completely. I am not implying that posts are unwelcome, but WoW is so addicting, that if you don't want to play, you should probably eschew everything related to it.
Browsing related forums and sites after quitting WoW is akin to quitting smoking and browsing cigar shops. Nothing good is going to come of it.
I realize you didn't ask for opinions, but mine is gently offered anyway.
I'd like to respectfully disagree. I quit WoW a few months back, still browse MMO-Champion and Wowhead daily, and I'm just fine. WoW isn't particularly addicting, so don't try to justify the need to play it.
I don't NEED to play WoW. It's perfectly normal to play 47 hours per week. Isn't it? ( :) )
Post by
93865
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
abulurd
Okay, thought experiment.
Imagine that Blizzard came out with Real ID, and said that, as a matter of corporate policy, they'd decided that it would be available only to people with Anglo-saxon names. So, if your name sounds Arabic or Chinese or Mexican, you simply aren't allowed to use Real ID.
You'd see the problem there, right? You can understand thinking that it's wrong to exclude a minority from a service? You can imagine why a white person might refuse to eat at a restaurant with a sign saying "No Colored People", even though they're allowed to eat in that restaurant if they want to, right?
The mandate to use real names, while it's not an absolute ban, creates a very strong bias in the service, in that it is disproportionately likely that certain people can't use it. It does so for no good reason. Making the service unfriendly to those users is not making it better for other people. It's not a fundamental technical problem (like trying to make a video game work for the blind, which would be pretty hard to do). It's just that they don't care about those users because, as you note, they're a minority.
I am not okay with supporting people who feel comfortable dismissing the concerns of minorities.
strawman
Post by
Firallon
Something to consider for for those calling seebs on ragequitting.
The users of Blizzard Entertainment's products are the ones that ultimately supply their paychecks.
The quality of a product is determined by the consumers, not the manufacturer.
If a manufacturer fails to provide a quality product, it is the consumer's duty to offer feedback
If the manufacturer still fails to provide a quality product, it is the consumer's duty to the manufacturer to stop paying for their services.
Essentially, Blizzard is there to work for the players, not the other way around. Also, if they implement something undesirable it is important to #$%^& and moan till they fix it.
Post by
seebs
strawman
Uh, no. Analogy. And admittedly, argument by analogy is a weak form, but...
My objection is simply that I feel that Blizzard's decision to force people to use legal names prevents a large number of people, including some of my close friends, from having access to a feature which other people get access to, and does so for no legitimate reason.
I object to that kind of thing as a matter of principle. I am not okay with companies applying policies which deny transgendered people access to benefits or services that other people can use without penalty, or even just which structure those services so as to create discomfort,
especially when there is no benefit to any other user from doing so
.
If there were some way in which being able to pick the name the game displays for you wrecked the feature, I'd be more sympathetic, but as is, it's making the feature unusable to some people without improving it in any way whatsoever, and Blizzard has committed to that despite clear and consistent feedback from their customer base that virtually no one prefers it this way.
Yes, people who can't deal with it are a minority. But if you think we're a minority, what do you call the even
smaller
number of people who would be unhappy if the system allowed them or their friends to pick nicknames?
Answer: You call them Facebook.
Post by
341118
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
1515
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Ahmi
But one of those friends I knew through WoW is a guy legally named Jessica. And if he can't use the Real ID system to keep in touch with his friends without being called "Jessica" all the time, then that system is sucking pretty badly for a very good friend of mine.
He obviously can... He can for example tell his friends: "hey guys, could you call me by nickname rather than my real name please?". If they don't agree to fulfill such a simple request, then I don't think they are friends...
Or maybe you misunderstand something? If Michael Somename writes:
/w Jessica Someothername sup somenick!
Then the person who he whispered to sees:
Michael Somename whispers: sup somenick!
Also, if you use it just for your WoW friends, they can look at which alt you are playing now, and whisper directly to the alt...
This system sucks for a lot of people with problems like that. Not because they're necessarily hiding that name from people, but just because they
don't like using it
. But Blizzard has made it 100% clear: No excuses, no exceptions, you use your legal name and we won't let you change it.
If they
don't like using it
then they don't have to do so... It's optional... Just like buying TRH, mini pets and whatever else.
Also:
OMG SOME PEOPLE WANT TO HAVE THEIR CHARACTERS NAMED BY THEIR REAL NAMES INSTEAD OF SOME STUPID NICKNAMES AND THEY CANT DO SO SO THEY ARE DISCRIMINATED AND IM NOT GOING TO PLAY THIS STUPID GAME ANYMORE!11!111111! AND ALSO SOME PEOPLE CANT AFFORD TRH AND PETS FROM THE PET STORE SO THATS DISCRIMINATION TOO!
Post by
2259
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
444854
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Varaconn
Sorry but, you keep saying that your friends
can't
use it because you show your real name.
First, technically you don't have to put your real name, really. You would have a lot of trouble getting your account fixed in certain situations, but you could use a nickname as your WoW RealID name.
Second, why
can't
your friends use the feature, because of their names? Who cares if they have names of different ethnic origins? Do their
friends
with RealID belittle them because of their names? Do they not trust their
friends
knowing their real names? Why are they friends with these people?
Post by
abulurd
strawman
They pretend that the Straw Man is the real argument, not the ridiculous caricature they created with deliberate ignorance and made-up facts.
Okay, thought experiment.
Imagine that Blizzard came out with Real ID, and said that, as a matter of corporate policy, they'd decided that it would be available only to people with Anglo-saxon names. So, if your name sounds Arabic or Chinese or Mexican, you simply aren't allowed to use Real ID.
You'd see the problem there, right? You can understand thinking that it's wrong to exclude a minority from a service? You can imagine why a white person might refuse to eat at a restaurant with a sign saying "No Colored People", even though they're allowed to eat in that restaurant if they want to, right?
The mandate to use real names, while it's not an absolute ban, creates a very strong bias in the service, in that it is disproportionately likely that certain people can't use it. It does so for no good reason. Making the service unfriendly to those users is not making it better for other people. It's not a fundamental technical problem (like trying to make a video game work for the blind, which would be pretty hard to do). It's just that they don't care about those users because, as you note, they're a minority.
I am not okay with supporting people who feel comfortable dismissing the concerns of minorities.
strawman
Also
People just totally take net-anonymity too far.
Post by
93865
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ElhonnaDS
I absolutely agree that the Real ID thing would be much more useful if it offered a degree of anonymity. Blizzard designed it for Real Life friends, but most of us have the facebook, msn, cell numbers, etc. of anyone who actually knows us. Blizzard is operating under the idea of "if you only use it with people u know, what is the problem if you use your real name?'. The rest of us are thinking "why would I have to use it for someone who i have 10 other ways to get in contact with?" The mose useful function of the Real ID system would be to talk to "online" friends who you like to chat with while playing, might be missing a raid while on SCII, or might have alts on another server but who you don't feel you know well enough to give your cell number or facebook to. If I need to get ahold of my brother, my boyfriend or my real life friends while they are playing wow, or SCII, or anything else, I call or text them. But my guild's off-tank...that's someone I could use a way to get in touch with when he's on a Starcraft kick.
I'm not using Real ID- no need, really, since most of my friends are in vent no matter what they're playing. My gaming experience right now is no different than it was before they implemented it, other than occasionally having to decline friend requests by simply saying "I'm boycotting- I don't like the way it was set up". Usually, no one even bats an eye.
Post by
Lorkin
It doesn't matter why, they simply don't. People have a right to privacy, and players can't really know who the people they meet in this game really are in real life, or what their potentially troubling intentions might be.
You have all this with the regular friend's list. If you are worried about their intentions,
DO NOT
invite them to your Real ID. It can't get any simpler than this.
Post by
seebs
you would still be playing if there was no real i.d.
but, there is real i.d. but it's not implemented in the way you desire so you stop playing.
yes, this is what you said.
Yes, it is.
If a new feature is added in a way that excludes some people from benefitting from it for no good reason, that kind of thing makes me unhappy. There's also the minor matter of Blizzard openly lying about Real ID on many occasions. I don't trust them as much as I used to. WoW no longer feels like a fun escape from daily life.
Post by
seebs
Sorry but, you keep saying that your friends
can't
use it because you show your real name.
Yes.
First, technically you don't have to put your real name, really. You would have a lot of trouble getting your account fixed in certain situations, but you could use a nickname as your WoW RealID name.
Simply untrue. You cannot change the name on your account, according to Customer Support. Unless you have a legal name change.
Second, why
can't
your friends use the feature, because of their names?
I've explained this before, but since apparently people don't read anymore, I'll explain it again.
One of my friends is transgendered. His legal name is "Jessica". He finds that name
upsetting
. It's a reminder that his body is, so far as his brain can tell, inexplicably deformed. It is
very upsetting
to be called "Jessica". It's unpleasant. It's a big fat reminder of exactly the kind of thing he was playing WoW to get away from.
Now, it's certainly his legal name. It's on his credit cards. When he signed up for a WoW account four or five years ago, he thought nothing of using the legal name on the account,
because Blizzard promised that name would never be used for any other purpose
.
But no one calls him that. No one would dream of calling him Jessica, except maybe his mom (and she's sort of grandfathered in, pardon the term). I sure wouldn't, even though it was the name he went by when we met about twenty years ago.
We are close friends. We've been friends a long time. We are also both altoholics; I have more than twenty characters that were active
on one server
(yes, I had three accounts). For us to use the in-game friends system to keep in touch while playing would be basically a nightmare, to say nothing of it not working since we both have characters on both factions. We would
love
to use a feature that let us friend each other once, instead of about a hundred times (on each faction, about five characters times ten characters), and didn't chew up a big chunk of that fairly limited friends list.
But if we use that feature, EVERY TIME WE INTERACT, we get the name "Jessica" thrown at us, because Real ID pushes the legal name. That's unfun. It's uncomfortable. It's upsetting. It's something that would make interacting unfun.
And there's no good reason for it.
So Blizzard's answer to this situation -- which is not unique, dozens of other people have
this
issue that they reported in the feedback thread, and thousands and thousands have other issues that similarly make them not want to use real names
even with their close friends
-- is to ignore it. To never, even once, acknowledge or respond to a single post on this topic. Heck, if a thread is about a specific case like this, they won't even post in it.
So here we are, with a feature we very much want, and Blizzard has chosen to make it impossible for us to benefit from it -- because using it
in this broken state
would be more annoying than not having it.
The stuff about ethnicity, etcetera, matters more in the case of people who, say, want to use Real ID with their guildies or whatever. A whole lot of people have gotten screwed when they found out that someone they thought they knew pretty well had a dark side they didn't know about. One kid's guildmaster decided to broadcast the kid's sister's name to people, so they could spam trade chat with her name and phone number (which was easy to look up since she had an uncommon name).
All of this stuff would be avoided if we were allowed to use nicknames. There is nothing any player wants that would be prevented by a nickname system -- if you like real names, you can always use one as your nickname. But Blizzard cares more about something else than about
any
player concern. My guess is it's the facebook deal.
Basically, Blizzard's response to serious customer concerns is to laugh at their customers and say they hope we leave. Some of us took them at their word. Now, maybe it seems trivial to you, but the feelings of a good friend are more important to me than the opinions of some random guy on the internet who doesn't see any reason to care about other people.
Post by
seebs
You have all this with the regular friend's list.
Please advise how I can friend all the alts of my close friends across my twenty-some characters mixed among both factions using the regular friends list. If you can show me that I can have the functionality I want without Real ID, I'll happily agree that being denied Real ID doesn't matter.
If you are worried about their intentions,
DO NOT
invite them to your Real ID.
Again, not just a question of "their intentions".
The guy named "Jessica" doesn't want to be called that. Not by friends, not by the game software. If the game software let us use nicknames, my friend could use Real ID to keep in touch with real-life friends. As is, he can't.
It can't get any simpler than this.
And it can't even get this simple without being wrong.
Post by
Varaconn
We've gone over this. Repeatedly. It's impossible.Why do people keep bringing it (RealID) up? This horse was dead and beaten back when RealID came out. We've gone over how entitled these "concerns" are. Repeatedly. It's an optional service. I agreed with the uproar about the forums, because that was ludicrous, as it wasn't optional (assuming you wanted to post on the forums.) This is.
It doesn't matter why, they simply don't. People have a right to privacy, and players can't really know who the people they meet in this game really are in real life, or what their potentially troubling intentions might be.
It matters why in the point that, if you need the privacy to keep your real name hidden from people that you've become
Real ID friends
with, then they're not your
Real (ID) friends
for whom this is really intended.
So don't use it. What's so complicated about that? It's not a logical reason to stop playing. As of now, nothing forces you to use it. You can safely turn it off and continue your gaming. I'm sorry, I just don't see what the big deal is.
Also, technically, if you had made your account with a fake name, or a commonly used name other than your legal, given first name (I know a lot of people that regularly go by their second name), that's what would display on RealID. It's not impossible to do, though it may be impossible to change.
As a side note, in complete unrelation to WoW or Real ID...if your friend is so bothered by his name, why hasn't he had it legally changed? Situations like this are among the reason why it's a possibility.
Post by
Lorkin
if your friend is so bothered by his name, why hasn't he had it legally changed? Situations like this are among the reason why it's a possibility.
Because they are lazy? Or they aren't ready to come out yet? My guild had trans-gendered folks in it (I guess they were more out than your buddy Jessica) that had their names legally changed. This would solve all your problems.
We are close friends. We've been friends a long time. We are also both altoholics; I have more than twenty characters that were active on one server (yes, I had three accounts). For us to use the in-game friends system to keep in touch while playing would be basically a nightmare, to say nothing of it not working since we both have characters on both factions. We would love to use a feature that let us friend each other once, instead of about a hundred times (on each faction, about five characters times ten characters), and didn't chew up a big chunk of that fairly limited friends list.
Solution: Have Jessica add YOU to their REAL ID list. Invite no one else.
But if we use that feature, EVERY TIME WE INTERACT, we get the name "Jessica" thrown at us, because Real ID pushes the legal name. That's unfun. It's uncomfortable. It's upsetting. It's something that would make interacting unfun.
You probably don't know this but only YOU see Jessica. Jessica doesn't see her own name on the Real ID. Now if YOU have a problem with that name showing up, I don't know what to tell you. Hint: Don't ever call your friend Jessica.
Again, I don't know what the big deal is. I get your crusade, but I think you should do more research before making a big deal out of something that doesn't even directly effect you. Btw can you fight the fight with Tibet for me while you're out crusading for justice?
Blizz has said many times they wanted to enforce real names on the official forums to reduce the amount of troll posts. That idea got thrown out the window due to protests. It's still their policy and it's enforced as such. People have found ways around it, but you don't want to "stoup" down to that level I guess. You sound like a boyscout that's fighting the fight just to fight the fight. People should realize boycotting generally doesn't work for such large giant corps unless you have the majority in your favor. In this case you are the very extreme minority.
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