This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser.
Live
PTR
10.2.7
PTR
10.2.6
Beta
The first patch I've missed... it's weird.
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
seebs
Other species do not have gender identity issues.
Actually, uhm, they do. Not very often, but it happens. Read a book.
If this ideological malarkey had basis in reality, it would be omnipresent and self-evident. It doesn't, because it's a modern cult.
This is entirely off-topic, and if you want to argue it, let's take it to a more appropriate forum. I'd be happy to debate this -- I've done all the relevant research, I've seen the brain scans and the cross-sections of the hypothalamus and everything. (I can be easily found at Talk Rational or Online Life.)
Long story short, humans are viable as long as the vast majority of them can breed, and occasional weirdness that prevents breeding doesn't kill the species for us any more than it does in all the other species that have occasional weirdness.
Post by
93865
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
Yeah, as I said, if you wanna talk about that, feel free to look me up at Talk Rational or Online Life. I have absolutely no interest in polluting the wowhead forums with this junk.
Honestly, what I was really interested in was the fascination that stuff like reforging, and new talent trees, still has even though I'm not playing the game. This isn't unique to WoW -- I am still interested by updates to a Unix variant I don't use anymore, for instance. It's just sort of weird because there's so very many recent updates, and I'm finding it weird watching them without the usual impulse to go try them out.
Post by
627247
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
Were you expecting people to beg you to come back?
No.
And honestly, given the WoW community in general, I was expecting a lot more posts like yours, which have no purpose but to assert that you don't care. Yeah, we know you don't care, we were there. :)
I had actually, and this is admittedly unrealistic, been thinking people would actually respond to the substance/topic a bit more -- maybe comment on times when they've watched a patch but not been playing, or whatever. You know, talk about the game, or something. But apparently, that's not nearly as important as arguing that someone who dislikes something is wrong.
Post by
627247
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
But you're not talking about the game itself
I was talking about it originally. Then I responded to what other people said.
And you though more people would post why exactly?
I thought more people would make posts like yours because WoW is dominated by people who consider it a matter of personal pride to brag that they don't care about other people. I have actually been positively impressed by the number of people who offered real contributions and thoughts. While I'm not persuaded by Lorkin's posts, they've been thoughtful and interesting, and raised some interesting ideas. (In fact, after a bunch of people said they thought Blizzard would be able to handle the name thing, I have in fact written billing to ask; I'm curious now.)
Post by
627247
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
OK but you have yet to answer WHY you made this post in the first place?
Actually, I've answered that a few times, but maybe I should try again in case someone who reads comes along.
New patches are always interesting. It's interesting to me that my interest in WoW extends past actively playing it into general specultion and chatter about the game mechanics. This isn't unique to WoW; I enjoy talking about the rules of various editions of D&D, even the ones I don't play. I find games fascinating in general, and I'm really interested by some of the changes in WoW for 4.0. (I'm also fascinated by the rules discussions about Guild Wars 2, even though I have no interest at all in playing it.)
I just thought it was interesting coming to the forums and seeing the discussions of a major patch, for the first time as an "outsider" of sorts -- I'm no longer really active in the WoW community. I don't maintain my addons anymore. I don't actually have the game installed. And it's interesting how some stuff stays similar and other stuff changes a lot. I still find the demands that class X be nerfed/buffed or millions of people will quit hilarious.
Post by
627247
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
seebs
I admit defeat and apologize =P
WTF. You'd better go say something about metroid in trade chat or they'll boot you from the game.
I felt like bringing the entertaining thread back to life and when you responded i decided to go along. =]
Well, I'm being boring now. I wrote billing@ to ask about this situation, on the off chance that they're willing to be helpful. I still think the only reason we don't have nicknames in that system is the facebook deal, and I still think it sucks, but... eh, whatever. If they can fix the names, I might be able to get a friend or two back into the game, if they can't, I can occasionally browse the forums for the joy of watching people act like the numbers matter.
I guess that's the thing. I see the question of whether or not you can use a name you like in Real ID as much, much, more significant than pretty much any game balance issue short of reckoning bombs. In the entire time I played from 1.8.3 to this July, I never once actually cared about one of the game balance issues people made such a big deal about. I had one of every class on both factions, plus a couple of duplicates, and I never once cared. Every class was, with reasonable gear, able to do quests and level professions and do okay in instances. Heck, prior to endgame, most content was pretty viable to three-man.
So part of the confusion, to me, comes from that -- I can easily see people caring a great deal about being able to use nicknames, especially 'cuz a couple of my friends care strongly about it. (And heck, I care more than I might otherwise, just because I find modern names break immersion, and one of the things I liked about WoW was the immersion in the setting. Yes, I played on RP servers exclusively.) I can understand how it could matter to someone; I could see it actually changing whether a given thing was fun or not-fun.
I can't comprehend all the angst over game balance tweaks. The closest I ever got to caring about one enough to talk about it was the story of how they added 7% to shaman base health because no one could remember why it had been lower to begin with. I just thought it was funny. My most active 80s, both factions, were shamans... and I don't think I even noticed when they applied that change. I just thought it was funny to see it in their discussion of upcoming changes. "Well, we don't know why we did this, so we're undoing it."
Post by
627247
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
xaratherus
I can't comment on patches coming out in WoW while I haven't been playing, because well - I haven't stopped playing.
I can comment on City of Heroes, as I haven't played that in a long while, and I know Going Rogue is getting ready to come out. I've been curious about it - but frankly, I got bored with CoH in a way that I have not gotten bored with WoW. After about 6 months, I found myself only logging in to play with the character creator, and dreading yet another instanced mission set in some variant of warehouse/cave/office building. I reactivated my account once, for about a month - and found myself back to playing with the character creator, and so discontinued again. I may do the same thing with Going Rogue - but unless they've made drastic changes and added a whole slew of non-instanced content that doesn't involve 'Kill Skuls', I probably still won't stay.
Commentary on Blizzard's business practices aside, they put out a product that I find more entertaining than other MMOs on the market, and that is enough for me to continue to give them my $15 a month (or technically $45, as I pay for two roommates' accounts currently as they're out of work). RealID has room for improvement, but as a gay man, living with two gay men, and bisexual woman, and a transvestite man who goes by 'Amy' 90% of the time in real life, I still just can't see it as a big enough deal to quit over it. But to each their own.
Post by
seebs
I can comment on City of Heroes, as I haven't played that in a long while, and I know Going Rogue is getting ready to come out. I've been curious about it - but frankly, I got bored with CoH in a way that I have not gotten bored with WoW.
FWIW, GR came out. The new content, though there isn't all that much of it, is MUCH better -- the Praetoria stuff has some missions with actual moral choices to make, and even though a lot of it is a bit simplified, the option of doing the same mission on different characters, once serving one side, and once as an undercover agent for the other, is sorta awesome.
but unless they've made drastic changes and added a whole slew of non-instanced content that doesn't involve 'Kill Skuls', I probably still won't stay.
It's not mostly non-instanced, but AE has been doing a lot for me in terms of variety-of-content. I have also utterly LOVED the existence of a support-class alternative to "healer".
RealID has room for improvement, but as a gay man, living with two gay men, and bisexual woman, and a transvestite man who goes by 'Amy' 90% of the time in real life, I still just can't see it as a big enough deal to quit over it. But to each their own.
I think it depends a lot on personal issues. Some people are in better places than others to deal with it. Some people are not at a point in their lives where it works out well for 'em.
I think... The thing I'm offended by isn't the sucky implementation, but the Blizzard responses to complaints. Sucky implementations happen. That's normal. Things take a while to get fixed. But on this issue, we've had Blizzard people flat out lying about what they intended or meant, and getting busted on it. We've had blue posters expressing contempt for their customer base. And that kind of thing is a big deal to me.
If they'd come out and said "look, we know this real name thing is gonna suck for some people, but that's the deal we made with Facebook", I might just say "whatever, it's some facebook deal, as long as it's optional I don't much care". It's the dishonesty that makes it into a bigger deal -- it makes the envirnoment a lot less friendly.
And yes, I'm quite sure they were lying. While they have now backed down on the forums thing, they were quite clear about telling us that it had been their plan and intent all along -- which means that it is absolutely, totally, false that they were expecting real names to be used only with close personal friends. They said that, repeatedly, while aware that their next step was to show real names to everyone. That's lying, and that's the thing that most bugs me about it -- that they clearly aren't being honest with us before.
Honest screw-ups are a lot less bothersome to me.
Post by
Varaconn
Yeah, as I said, if you wanna talk about that, feel free to look me up at Talk Rational or Online Life. I have absolutely no interest in polluting the wowhead forums with this junk.
Just wanted to give you a cookie for this, because you don't see this kind of consideration often.
Post by
632573
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
xaratherus
If you think that is what 'furious' looks like, you should try to get out more.
Personally I don't get why people had a problem with folks they don't know and will never meet, finding out their real name. It's not like it isn't easy to find out the name of some random Joe/Jane who you happen to run into out on the street.
The only thing I can guess is that it takes away some of the anonymity of being on the internet and some people get a little nervous at the possibility of repercussions of their actions. Not saying that's the case with the op.
I understand the privacy concerns for some people. If you have an unusual name, it can be very easy to find out detailed information simply through Internet searches. If you have a more common name, it's not as easy, but may still be possible.
As an example, in the prior discussion thread, some people who were not terribly concerned about privacy posted their real names, and with that information others were able to track down things like phone number, home address, Facebook pages, and so forth*.
And yes, I'm quite sure they were lying.
It's also possible that the people making those statements were not informed as to the full plans. I work for a major international software company, in a 'customer-facing' position, and there are unfortunately times where I unintentionally provide misinformation because of 'dissemination lag'.
My gut tells me that they were being dishonest - but assumption is not always accurate.
While it makes me rather annoyed to realize it, I am apparently jaded enough from the mis-marketing and double-speak (read: lying) that is far too common in the corporate world o consider Blizzard's actions reprehensible enough to stop playing a game I enjoy.
*As proven to me in discussions about RealID earlier, being stringently careful with personal information can make it prohibitively difficult, if not impossible, to track someone down solely through their name. I made a bold statement, and it turned out that I was wrong. However, I would still posit that the level of care required to 'zero' yourself in such a manner is not the norm.
Post by
seebs
And yes, I'm quite sure they were lying.
It's also possible that the people making those statements were not informed as to the full plans. I work for a major international software company, in a 'customer-facing' position, and there are unfortunately times where I unintentionally provide misinformation because of 'dissemination lag'.
The statements "we've been talking about this and planning this for a long time" with respect to the forum names policy, and "Real ID is for use only with people you know and trust in real life" are necessarily mutually exclusive. They
can't
both be true. And even now, they continue to advocate uses of Real ID that can't possibly be consistent with "people you know and trust in real life".
While it makes me rather annoyed to realize it, I am apparently jaded enough from the mis-marketing and double-speak (read: lying) that is far too common in the corporate world o consider Blizzard's actions reprehensible enough to stop playing a game I enjoy.
In and of themselves, they might not be. However, "trust" is a big part of what made me happy with Blizzard in the past -- I felt confident that it was reasonable to trust Blizzard with personal information, because they had demonstrated a long and consistent pattern of treating their customers decently and not lying to us.
But that was just one of the things. The blue poster saying they know people will leave and think the game will be better as a result really stood out to me. When he said that, all or nearly all of the MVPs had said they'd stop using the forums if this happened, thousands of other people had said the same, and not one of the complainers had been one of the forum trolls. He was showing contempt for the customer base, and not for the trolls, but for the serious posters and adults. But wait, you say! He may have been talking about the trolls they expected to leave, not the people who were actually upset! But if so, then he was telling everyone they'd anticipated this and were okay with it
without even making the most cursory effort to evaluate what people were actually saying
. And that, too, shows contempt.
Even after that, I had been mostly planning to resub based on them backing down, until the interview with Mike Ryder where he said they were not doing the real names in forums thing "for the time being". Maybe it's a regional usage thing, but in the English I speak, "we won't do <x> for the time being" means basically the same thing as "we'll do <x> later, but not now". That got me thinking, and looking more closely at stuff, which was the point at which I noticed that Blizzard had not once acknowledged the substance of any of the complaints. I haven't seen a single blue post, anywhere, ever, which says anything to the effect of "that's a good point" or "we didn't think of that". And that's usually a pretty big red flag for me. Blizzard has historically been able to admit to errors. They've flat out said that things were bad ideas, that things didn't work as planned, and so on. And this time, they've been curiously unable to do that.
Basically, I smell a rat. Until I know what's up, I'm not going to feel comfortable with Blizzard, or feel like I can trust them with information... And that makes the game unfun.
tl;dr: I ceased to enjoy the game when Blizzard started being jerks to the customer base.
Post by
seebs
Personally I don't get why people had a problem with folks they don't know and will never meet, finding out their real name. It's not like it isn't easy to find out the name of some random Joe/Jane who you happen to run into out on the street.
Sure, but you're unlikely to have reason to care.
The problem comes when you can find out the name of a specific person you're mad at. And WoW is full of people who get really, really, mad at other players, not necessarily for sane reasons.
Dangerously unstable people are quite rare. Lots of people have mild mental disorders, but the vast majority of them are harmless. Real sociopaths, psychopaths, or paranoid schizophrenics are a tiny, tiny, fraction of the population. Let's say it's 1% of 1%. That means that, in the WoW player base, we would expect there to be about 1,200 such people.
I saw people raging against other people repeatedly in the game. Some of them tried to call other people out into real-life conflicts. There's a lot of room, once real names start leaking more broadly into the game, for people to find out someone else's name... And there's a lot of unstable people with grudges.
The only thing I can guess is that it takes away some of the anonymity of being on the internet and some people get a little nervous at the possibility of repercussions of their actions. Not saying that's the case with the op.
Oh, it's definitely a concern I'd have. The thing is, it's not that I'm worried about the repercussions of my evil and harmful actions -- that really doesn't come up much. It's that I'm worried about the repercussions of my perfectly normal actions.
I was in a group with a huntard (no offense to real hunters). While we were waiting for the tank, he decided to misdirect the nearest boss onto the healer. This was at the beginning of AN, so we got all three of the watchers and the first boss. We died. He blamed the healer for the wipe. One of the other people in the group was in his guild, and when he found out that the hunter had done this on purpose "because he was bored", he was pretty mad, and he contacted the guild master to have the guy booted from the guild.
Guess what. The next day, the huntard was in a blind rage, because "that stupid lame healer who caused us to wipe" had gotten him kicked out of a guild.
Now, you might feel that it's unreasonable for someone to blame the healer in that circumstance. I sure did. But the player in question was a pretty sucky player, he was a teenager, and he had a poor sense of how cause and effect work. He didn't make judgements that adults would normally recognize as rational.
Now, imagine this: Imagine that he's 16, and he can drive, and he can find out the healer's real name. I could see the healer being worried about the "repercussions of his actions" at that point.
That's part of why I think it's a big deal. The other reason is just the general category of people whose names reveal things about them that they don't want anyone in game finding out.
(p.s.: I was the healer. I was a fresh 80 pally, and I didn't have the tools or survivability yet.)
Post by
GravenTerenas
If you really didn't care about beating the RealID deadhorse, you wouldn't even have mentioned it. Instead, you've spent 5 pages whining about it and arguing with every single person who has responded.
Now you decide you don't want to argue any more, and the thread is suddenly all about your nostalgia for the game, and nothing else, honest!
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.