If RealID ran along the lines of Steam, etc. that would be different. Comparing it to Facebook or Twitter... no. You can use whatever name/identity you want there. But to give someone access to your real name and email address with the number of hackers that attack WoW daily. It's stupid. The security with Battle.net so far isn't inspiring.
Besides the fact of how unsafe this is for children and women.
When they implement a user name maybe. I don't care if guildies or friends no my real name/email. but friends of friends no way. It's too unsafe.
The other thing Blizzard should implement is the ability to decide which of your characters are seen by whom. Some of us do like downtime away from the guild or play on different servers. That bit of private time would be gone as well.
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Why couldn't they just have blatently copied Steam? They blatantly copied so many things in all of their IPs and features..... WHY NOT THIS TIME??
And what the hell is this whole "Real Names are Awesome on the Internetz" trend all about??
The Internet is not some magical land of fairies where everybody lives together in peace.... It's a shady place full of predators, stalkers and rapists and they want chicks and kids to use their real names?
wow.... what an extraordinarily useless system...
The Thing I'm worried about the most is that they are planning to make SC II tournaments in the future REQUIRE Real ID....
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H> An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots! www.stealth-industries.de
As someone who works professionally with information disclosure policy definition and enforcement, I've got to weigh in here.
A substantial number of commenters are being dismissive about the nature of the threat. There's the ordinary contingent of "If you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?" voices, but any kind of personal privacy or civil liberty concern always gets that clueless chorus.
The more serious issue is people who say "The system is safe if you just share with people you trust." This makes me want to clutch my head in despair. Unrestricted FOAF dissemination of information is a kind of "hyperefficient aggregation of failure" model. Anyone who says that this kind of system can be made trustworthy by exercising prudent choices is completely unfamiliar with the implications of the Network Effect (there's a decent wikipedia article about the subject.) There is no such thing as a 100% prudent choice, and when your potential network of disclosure is the vast population of Warcraft users (including the vigorous and numerous community of phishers, scammers, gold farmers et al), the risk that your real name and real email address will eventually wend its way into the hands of someone who will try to exploit that is extremely high.
There's the secondary concern of social pressure: if you are "only" sharing your RealID info with friends and family, you will be vulnerable to emotional pressures from real life: family pressure can be very acute, and if you intuitively don't trust your stupid cousin to be sufficiently careful, but family members are saying, "Oh, just add him, what can it hurt?", well...
Another line of reasoning in comments is the comparison to Facebook. Two things about that: 1) Facebook is toxic to privacy in the first place, and 2) At least Facebook lets you block that abusive stalker ex-boyfriend. That's not a very solid safeguard, but it's something.
The odd thing is, Blizzard could easily have implemented this with a much more solid security model. Until they do, though, I'd recommend that nobody use it, ever.
Another excellent article Jaime. You have to wonder about developers like Blizzard who seem to have lost any sense of consumer privacy.
In it's current stage anyone not opting out of RealID is a complete fool in my book, they are just asking for all manner of nasty things to happen to them.
I will admit that the article was good. It has some valid points. However, I suspect many of the people posting here are mostly in it for the Blizzard bashing part. I will be using RealID and I still think it's a great addition to the battle.net platform. I have been a facebook user since it first began and i've never experienced any kind of security issues. I mostly have co-workers, friends from my school days or other people I have some real life connection to.
Doesn't matter if it's Blizzard, it would be a concern if SOE,Rockstar, Turbine, Bioware, Valve or other large companies would have done it too.
A bad implementation is a bad implementation, it just isn't suddenly not a bad implementation if you've found a way to work with it or haven't been a victim of the privacy leak yourself. It seriously needs some better, more detailed tools because how RealID is implemented now at the moment, it's among the worst of the privacy&security-weak applications around.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Funny....everyone is saying its idiocally desinged and its a major breech in your security and to be honest...it sounds like Facebook. In fact just about every issue mentioned, from friends of friends seeing more information, using your real name, the whole nine yards are all complaints about Facebook. And yet people take the time to use it properly, don't have thier identities stolen, and life goes on. I'm willing to bet many people here are on Facebook, but won't say the same things about it they say about this. Just because you don't bother to take the time to learn about something before you dive headlong into it doesn't mean the entirety of the system is flawed. Of course, no one ever wants to adimt they don't know enough about something, they just do it, get hurt by it, then blame the object. Much like a child grabbing at a hot metal car in the summer heat. The car did it. Of course as an adult you're expected to actually think and be cautious (a child is still learning) and a parent...while I admit you can't be everywhere 100% of the time, you also can't pass 100% of the blame. Sure you thought it was ok for your kid to play without controls, and this change blindsides you, but did you take the time to teach the kid about strangers, the internet and what is and isn't ok to give out?
In short, if you hate the new system fine. If you hate the idea of having to give that information out, don't. If your guild demands it, they're jerks, leave em. But please people, we need to stop crying when we do something without thinking, or taking the time to LEARN before we do something, not just blame the object after we screw up. But hey, no one ever wants to admit they screwed up because they didn't do something, right?
Except that I don't share my credit card info with Facebook, and I can disable anyone from ever seeing my Facebook profile except the friends that I add.
Even then, Facebook is already incredibly sketchy with the info they share with the world, and everyone who uses it should be worried about Facebook's "all your info is public" attitude.
I'm glad I've quit on activisioned Blizzard games. First the rushed Wotlk release, now the realid, SC II 1/3 (fully priced no lan and no oversea playing), Diablo III looking like Wow and other crap. Can't believe there are still people stupid enough defending this privacy lowering service.
Why aren't people allowed using an alias for this? Oh well I guess it because of the facebook implementation so they can share data with each other.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play." "Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Sony has cross game chat and channels.. You can talk to friends from any game they host and to people on different servers. It uses your account handle which can even e totally different from your account name as you set it seperatly.. I'm very superised that Blizzard would go the rout of using real world information at all.. I must get 5 spam mails trying to get account info from me a day and I haven't played WoW since I beta tested it LOL
Funny....everyone is saying its idiocally desinged and its a major breech in your security and to be honest...it sounds like Facebook. In fact just about every issue mentioned, from friends of friends seeing more information, using your real name, the whole nine yards are all complaints about Facebook. And yet people take the time to use it properly, don't have thier identities stolen, and life goes on. I'm willing to bet many people here are on Facebook, but won't say the same things about it they say about this. Just because you don't bother to take the time to learn about something before you dive headlong into it doesn't mean the entirety of the system is flawed. Of course, no one ever wants to adimt they don't know enough about something, they just do it, get hurt by it, then blame the object. Much like a child grabbing at a hot metal car in the summer heat. The car did it. Of course as an adult you're expected to actually think and be cautious (a child is still learning) and a parent...while I admit you can't be everywhere 100% of the time, you also can't pass 100% of the blame. Sure you thought it was ok for your kid to play without controls, and this change blindsides you, but did you take the time to teach the kid about strangers, the internet and what is and isn't ok to give out?
In short, if you hate the new system fine. If you hate the idea of having to give that information out, don't. If your guild demands it, they're jerks, leave em. But please people, we need to stop crying when we do something without thinking, or taking the time to LEARN before we do something, not just blame the object after we screw up. But hey, no one ever wants to admit they screwed up because they didn't do something, right?
I agree its exactly like facebook and we talk about facebook games all the time on here. No one everr mentions along with the facebook game that their information was stolen because they played with so and son on farmville or castle age.
You have been living under a rock, because I have seen complaints about Facebook's policy in the news and in these forums about their open-information methods, and I have read of complaints from harrassment to criminal activilty from information gleaned from Facebook obtained information.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
All accusations aside, there is never any excuse for the less-private, or least-private, option available to be *on* by default. Period. No exceptions.
Absolutely!
As I understand it, it's not really a problem unitl you allow that first friend; that's when your info could become more public than you intended.
However, if ANY of the info I gave Blizzard could now be accessed by this system (or any other) without any say-so on my part, that is a serious issue, and every piece of information - EVERY - should be off by default.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
It's rare when I find myself in agreement with one of Ms. Skeltons articles or arguements. In this case I will make a huge exception. She is 100% correct on all points. Real ID is a good idea that was poorly implemented to such a degree that one wonders how the hell it ever made it past the most basic review from the security people?
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Don't no where you get this, but if you read the FAQs on the RealID it specifically says that anyone on the list will be able to see ALL of your toons that you play, and you do NOT have to accept them as individuals for them to contact you.
If I put Joe on my list, and Joe puts Fred on, and I'm playing my toon Taenar, Fred can contact me as I'm playing Taenar and I may not even know who Fred is. I might not be identified as Taenar to him at that time, but he still knows that is one of my toon's names, and it would be very easy to figure out which one was logged on.
Now, at that point I can decide to take Fred off the list (or, if I know Fred is Joe's friend and on his list but I don't like him, I can do it as soon as I put Joe on my list and see Fred's name on the extended list), but the fact is Fred will know my real name and the toons I play and I DID NOT TELL HIM that info.
What should happen is that I put Joe on my list, and he presents a list of his friends, and I allow EACH ONE by choice, or all if I want, but they are NOT automatically added to my list. If there is an option to automatically add people to your friends list, it should be OFF by default, not on.
ETA - I was in error here - more about it in a later post.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
I have a really uncommon name, and if you Google my real name, everything that comes up is me and things I've posted, etc. I really would like to compartmentalize my life a little bit, so I am not entirely happy with this. On the other hand, the people I play WoW with already know my real name, and this just means they'll be able to hunt me down on alts, which is great, because I haven't been playing long and haven't really settled into a main character yet.
The system is good except for one thing: The friends of friends. I have friends, but i don't always know his friends. If they would prevent it from sharing my info with friends of friends I think you'd have a more secure system, but I think they just want to make a steam-like system.
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Don't no where you get this, but if you read the FAQs on the RealID it specifically says that anyone on the list will be able to see ALL of your toons that you play, and you do NOT have to accept them as individuals for them to contact you.
If I put Joe on my list, and Joe puts Fred on, and I'm playing my toon Taenar, Fred can contact me as I'm playing Taenar and I may not even know who Fred is. I might not be identified as Taenar to him at that time, but he still knows that is one of my toon's names, and it would be very easy to figure out which one was logged on.
Now, at that point I can decide to take Fred off the list (or, if I know Fred is Joe's friend and on his list but I don't like him, I can do it as soon as I put Joe on my list and see Fred's name on the extended list), but the fact is Fred will know my real name and the toons I play and I DID NOT TELL HIM that info.
What should happen is that I put Joe on my list, and he presents a list of his friends, and I allow EACH ONE by choice, or all if I want, but they are NOT automatically added to my list. If there is an option to automatically add people to your friends list, it should be OFF by default, not on.
Really the FAQ said that? Well the FAQ is wrong, because I'm online in wow righ tnow and I'm looking at my friend's friend of friend list. I click on said name of one of his potential friends. And lo and behold, it doesn't tell me the characters name, only the real name. Yes they can request to be your friend. However it doesn't tell them if the request went through or if you declined the request, ONLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE REQUEST CAN THEY CONTACT YOU. When you look at friends of friends, you are adding them through that window and not by email login. THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS
"THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS"
Wow, the ignorant can get upset. Sorry, if you have not figured it out yet, if they have your real name it takes next to nothing to find out all manner of information including your email address(s).
You might want to think next time before you post something as foolish as your reply was.
Umm....Can't we just change our last name to just an initial in our account settings? Won't that affect what is seen by others using the RealID? Or is Blizzard against us changing our account info or even using a different last name? Can anyone tell me if that is allowed?
Umm....Can't we just change our last name to just an initial in our account settings? Won't that affect what is seen by others using the RealID? Or is Blizzard against us changing our account info or even using a different last name? Can anyone tell me if that is allowed?
Not if they take your information from your billing settings.
RealID is enough reason for me not to buy the new starcraft or diablo. No way i am going to risk my privacy because of games. The again i refuse to use facebook and twitter for the same reasons. To many lunatics are on the web prowling on this sort of stuff.
Umm....Can't we just change our last name to just an initial in our account settings? Won't that affect what is seen by others using the RealID? Or is Blizzard against us changing our account info or even using a different last name? Can anyone tell me if that is allowed?
Not if they take your information from your billing settings.
If you use a game card, then no name is given, correct?
Not if they take your information from your billing settings.
If you use a game card, then no name is given, correct?
You need to give a name when setting up the account, regardless of how you go on to pay for it.
People are unlikely to have given fake names when signing up due to Blizzard often requiring faxed evidence of identity (drivers license / passport) to prove account ownership, and also because no-one could have predicted something like RealID back in '04.
Only workaround to satisfy everyone is to have RealID turned off by default. That should be something Blizzard can do almost immediately to alleviate peoples' justified (and they are justified, believe it or not) privacy concerns. I just can't understand why they had everyone (except accounts with parental controls) opted in by default, it's really not smart.
Comments
If RealID ran along the lines of Steam, etc. that would be different. Comparing it to Facebook or Twitter... no. You can use whatever name/identity you want there. But to give someone access to your real name and email address with the number of hackers that attack WoW daily. It's stupid. The security with Battle.net so far isn't inspiring.
Besides the fact of how unsafe this is for children and women.
When they implement a user name maybe. I don't care if guildies or friends no my real name/email. but friends of friends no way. It's too unsafe.
The other thing Blizzard should implement is the ability to decide which of your characters are seen by whom. Some of us do like downtime away from the guild or play on different servers. That bit of private time would be gone as well.
No Thanks!
Proud member of Hammerfist Clan Gaming Community.
Currently playing: RIFT, EQ2, WoW, LoTRO
Retired: Warhammer, AoC, EQ
Waiting: SWToR & GW2
As a small aside, the friends of friends thing NEVER identifies you as a character name/real name combo. You can see a list of your friends friends, that's it. There's nothing saying who is online, who isn't, who is who. You can send requests from their list, but that person has to approve you before you can see their online status. Is the system perfect? No, it needs work. But used as intended, by real friends who might play on other servers or soon other games, it's pretty handy really. I play on several servers, nice to be able to keep in touch without being on vent all the time.
Why couldn't they just have blatently copied Steam? They blatantly copied so many things in all of their IPs and features..... WHY NOT THIS TIME??
And what the hell is this whole "Real Names are Awesome on the Internetz" trend all about??
The Internet is not some magical land of fairies where everybody lives together in peace.... It's a shady place full of predators, stalkers and rapists and they want chicks and kids to use their real names?
wow.... what an extraordinarily useless system...
The Thing I'm worried about the most is that they are planning to make SC II tournaments in the future REQUIRE Real ID....
<S.T.E.A.L.T.H>
An Agency that kicks so much ass it has to be written in all capital letters... divided by dots!
www.stealth-industries.de
As someone who works professionally with information disclosure policy definition and enforcement, I've got to weigh in here.
A substantial number of commenters are being dismissive about the nature of the threat. There's the ordinary contingent of "If you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem?" voices, but any kind of personal privacy or civil liberty concern always gets that clueless chorus.
The more serious issue is people who say "The system is safe if you just share with people you trust." This makes me want to clutch my head in despair. Unrestricted FOAF dissemination of information is a kind of "hyperefficient aggregation of failure" model. Anyone who says that this kind of system can be made trustworthy by exercising prudent choices is completely unfamiliar with the implications of the Network Effect (there's a decent wikipedia article about the subject.) There is no such thing as a 100% prudent choice, and when your potential network of disclosure is the vast population of Warcraft users (including the vigorous and numerous community of phishers, scammers, gold farmers et al), the risk that your real name and real email address will eventually wend its way into the hands of someone who will try to exploit that is extremely high.
There's the secondary concern of social pressure: if you are "only" sharing your RealID info with friends and family, you will be vulnerable to emotional pressures from real life: family pressure can be very acute, and if you intuitively don't trust your stupid cousin to be sufficiently careful, but family members are saying, "Oh, just add him, what can it hurt?", well...
Another line of reasoning in comments is the comparison to Facebook. Two things about that: 1) Facebook is toxic to privacy in the first place, and 2) At least Facebook lets you block that abusive stalker ex-boyfriend. That's not a very solid safeguard, but it's something.
The odd thing is, Blizzard could easily have implemented this with a much more solid security model. Until they do, though, I'd recommend that nobody use it, ever.
Unless, of course, you have nothing to hide.
Another excellent article Jaime. You have to wonder about developers like Blizzard who seem to have lost any sense of consumer privacy.
In it's current stage anyone not opting out of RealID is a complete fool in my book, they are just asking for all manner of nasty things to happen to them.
I will admit that the article was good. It has some valid points. However, I suspect many of the people posting here are mostly in it for the Blizzard bashing part. I will be using RealID and I still think it's a great addition to the battle.net platform. I have been a facebook user since it first began and i've never experienced any kind of security issues. I mostly have co-workers, friends from my school days or other people I have some real life connection to.
Doesn't matter if it's Blizzard, it would be a concern if SOE,Rockstar, Turbine, Bioware, Valve or other large companies would have done it too.
A bad implementation is a bad implementation, it just isn't suddenly not a bad implementation if you've found a way to work with it or haven't been a victim of the privacy leak yourself. It seriously needs some better, more detailed tools because how RealID is implemented now at the moment, it's among the worst of the privacy&security-weak applications around.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Except that I don't share my credit card info with Facebook, and I can disable anyone from ever seeing my Facebook profile except the friends that I add.
Even then, Facebook is already incredibly sketchy with the info they share with the world, and everyone who uses it should be worried about Facebook's "all your info is public" attitude.
Not paranoid enough.
Outstanding article!
I'm glad I've quit on activisioned Blizzard games. First the rushed Wotlk release, now the realid, SC II 1/3 (fully priced no lan and no oversea playing), Diablo III looking like Wow and other crap. Can't believe there are still people stupid enough defending this privacy lowering service.
Why aren't people allowed using an alias for this? Oh well I guess it because of the facebook implementation so they can share data with each other.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Sony has cross game chat and channels.. You can talk to friends from any game they host and to people on different servers. It uses your account handle which can even e totally different from your account name as you set it seperatly.. I'm very superised that Blizzard would go the rout of using real world information at all.. I must get 5 spam mails trying to get account info from me a day and I haven't played WoW since I beta tested it LOL
Very foolish of them if you ask me..
You have been living under a rock, because I have seen complaints about Facebook's policy in the news and in these forums about their open-information methods, and I have read of complaints from harrassment to criminal activilty from information gleaned from Facebook obtained information.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
Absolutely!
As I understand it, it's not really a problem unitl you allow that first friend; that's when your info could become more public than you intended.
However, if ANY of the info I gave Blizzard could now be accessed by this system (or any other) without any say-so on my part, that is a serious issue, and every piece of information - EVERY - should be off by default.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
It's rare when I find myself in agreement with one of Ms. Skeltons articles or arguements. In this case I will make a huge exception. She is 100% correct on all points. Real ID is a good idea that was poorly implemented to such a degree that one wonders how the hell it ever made it past the most basic review from the security people?
Don't no where you get this, but if you read the FAQs on the RealID it specifically says that anyone on the list will be able to see ALL of your toons that you play, and you do NOT have to accept them as individuals for them to contact you.
If I put Joe on my list, and Joe puts Fred on, and I'm playing my toon Taenar, Fred can contact me as I'm playing Taenar and I may not even know who Fred is. I might not be identified as Taenar to him at that time, but he still knows that is one of my toon's names, and it would be very easy to figure out which one was logged on.
Now, at that point I can decide to take Fred off the list (or, if I know Fred is Joe's friend and on his list but I don't like him, I can do it as soon as I put Joe on my list and see Fred's name on the extended list), but the fact is Fred will know my real name and the toons I play and I DID NOT TELL HIM that info.
What should happen is that I put Joe on my list, and he presents a list of his friends, and I allow EACH ONE by choice, or all if I want, but they are NOT automatically added to my list. If there is an option to automatically add people to your friends list, it should be OFF by default, not on.
ETA - I was in error here - more about it in a later post.
Have played: Everquest, Asheron's Call, Horizons, Everquest2, World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, Darkfall
I have a really uncommon name, and if you Google my real name, everything that comes up is me and things I've posted, etc. I really would like to compartmentalize my life a little bit, so I am not entirely happy with this. On the other hand, the people I play WoW with already know my real name, and this just means they'll be able to hunt me down on alts, which is great, because I haven't been playing long and haven't really settled into a main character yet.
The system is good except for one thing: The friends of friends. I have friends, but i don't always know his friends. If they would prevent it from sharing my info with friends of friends I think you'd have a more secure system, but I think they just want to make a steam-like system.
Really the FAQ said that? Well the FAQ is wrong, because I'm online in wow righ tnow and I'm looking at my friend's friend of friend list. I click on said name of one of his potential friends. And lo and behold, it doesn't tell me the characters name, only the real name. Yes they can request to be your friend. However it doesn't tell them if the request went through or if you declined the request, ONLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE REQUEST CAN THEY CONTACT YOU. When you look at friends of friends, you are adding them through that window and not by email login. THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS
"THERE IS NO PHISHING PROBlEM INCREASE BECAUSE THERE IS NO EMAIL GIVEN TO STRANGERS STOP YOUR UNIFORMED BS"
Wow, the ignorant can get upset. Sorry, if you have not figured it out yet, if they have your real name it takes next to nothing to find out all manner of information including your email address(s).
You might want to think next time before you post something as foolish as your reply was.
Umm....Can't we just change our last name to just an initial in our account settings? Won't that affect what is seen by others using the RealID? Or is Blizzard against us changing our account info or even using a different last name? Can anyone tell me if that is allowed?
Not if they take your information from your billing settings.
RealID is enough reason for me not to buy the new starcraft or diablo. No way i am going to risk my privacy because of games. The again i refuse to use facebook and twitter for the same reasons. To many lunatics are on the web prowling on this sort of stuff.
If you use a game card, then no name is given, correct?
You need to give a name when setting up the account, regardless of how you go on to pay for it.
People are unlikely to have given fake names when signing up due to Blizzard often requiring faxed evidence of identity (drivers license / passport) to prove account ownership, and also because no-one could have predicted something like RealID back in '04.
Only workaround to satisfy everyone is to have RealID turned off by default. That should be something Blizzard can do almost immediately to alleviate peoples' justified (and they are justified, believe it or not) privacy concerns. I just can't understand why they had everyone (except accounts with parental controls) opted in by default, it's really not smart.
NVM...You can't change your name in contact information. Only address and phone number.