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So, aside from snagging a Dofus: Frigost key, and a random invite to LoTR’s beta for their free model, today I received an invite for FFXIV!

The timing couldn’t be better, since I’m fighting WoW burnout big time.

Sadly, because of the NDA I won’t be reporting too much, but still! Yay beta!

In what has turned into a somewhat frightening (in the reality it brings) twist, angry WoW subscribers have decided to show Blizzard what a bad idea this publicizing your real, full name on the forums can be.

A Blizzard employee, Bashiok, decided to post his real name on the forums. An almost deranged seeming act of faith that the community won’t take advantage of that information. And oh, how wrong Micah Whipple turned out to be.

Over on the website wowriot.com, a poster named godmode decided to turn the paranoia around on Blizzard.

Not only did he find Bashiok’s Facebook account (which has since been deleted), he uncovered and publicized Bashiok’s:

• home address
• phone number
• family members’ names and ages
• photos of his current home
• photos of the home where he grew up

Scared yet?

What about the rampant hacking that goes on in this game now? I know of four people, within the last month, who have been hacked. What’s to stop random psychopath hackers people from using that information to go on the official boards and smear people’s names now? It’s almost tinfoil hat scary, especially when you consider how much the internet and the record of what we do on it during your personal time is becoming a bigger part of people’s professional futures and reputations.

I read a comment somewhere in my travels today: “Empires fall apart from the inside before they are destroyed by outside forces.” Blizzard is turning into their own worst enemy at a time when the MMO market is about to be in a state of flux with incoming competition for them. In the end, they may be the perpetrators of their own undoing.

Related articles: [wow.com] [mmo-champion.com] [kotaku.com]

Remember when I was heralding that whole RealID thing? Yeah, I totally take that back like ten-fold now.

Yes, it has been awesome getting in touch with at least 3 friends of mine from college who play/ed. I enjoy chatting about stuff with them while grinding away on my almost 77 mage.

However, Blizzard has decided that RealID is waaaaay too good to pass up and not exploit, so now if you post on the official forums (once the change goes live- it won’t be retroactive, thankfully), no longer will your “handle” be whichever of your toons you choose. Nope. Once this goes live, your “handle” will be the same thing you go by in real life- your first and last name.

Of course, some people were still untrustworthy and didn’t use their *real* first and last name when setting up their Battle.net account. For the rest of us, sadly, no such luck (unless you can go in and change it? I’m going to need to do that eventually anyway, as post-divorce I’ll be changing my name back).

Yes, the elimination (or reduction, at the very least) of trolls on the official boards is nice. Having punk ass unnamed kid being able to search for more info on you on the ‘net? Not so much.

A few years ago, when I took my current job in the public sector, I thoroughly went through and locked down or removed any information about me I could that I wouldn’t want a co-worker or other person stumbling across when looking for me. Not everyone, however, out there has the ability, skill, know-how or, well,  had the foresight to do that themselves.

I’ve been reading various forums about this issue today, because yes, it does concern me greatly. There are, as expected, people on both extremes but then there are people with serious concerns- people who were previous victims of stalking, people who worry about this coming up when a future employer does a background check (as MMORPGs and WoW in particular have a certain stigma and stereotype attached), female players who are concerned about the impending influx of “socially backward” males taking the fact they’re a female on an MMO as free reign to obnoxiously hit on them. It’s not looking good here on the horizon.

When RealID launched a few weeks ago, Blizzard came out and said the service was for people who were looking for some sort of cross-realm/game communication with friends and family members who were not nearby. It was something that customers had been requesting for a long time (and as I said in my previous post regarding this subject, something FFXI already offered through the PlayOnline interface). They were emphatic that if you didn’t want someone- or anyone- to know your RealID information, you could opt out and either choose not to join in, or completely turn off the functionality via the Parental Controls options.

Granted, this is just on the forums. For now. Is this where it will start or end, though?

Mostly because there are no epic level 80 deaths by bunneh in World of Warcraft.

Tuesday brought about Patch 3.3.5, which contains the eventually-will-be-activated Ruby Sanctum Raid, but the big one is the Real ID system.

People have been asking Blizzard for a long time for some kind of cross-server chat functionality. This is something FFXI had a looooong time ago (though its implemented through the pain in the arse called Play Online).

When I started playing WoW, like rolled my first toon started playing, I was with my boyfriend at the time, and we were playing along with a couple we were friendly with from FFXI. Time passes, we went our separate ways, and eventually, I came back to WoW. I decided to stick with my original server, since now that I was back I knew no one. Time goes by. I quit and start playing again. This time I find out not only is another good friend of mine from FFXI playing, but a bunch of people I was friends with in college also play.

And of course, everyone’s on different servers.

And all seem to play dirty Horde (but I digress ).

The only way we could ever keep in touch in WoW, was to roll alts. I have a smattering of them across a few different servers (including a Tauren with a name based on Mad Cow Disease). But between raiding and real life, it was hard to find time to just hop on a shoot the breeze. And how did I even know said friends would be online when I logged into my level 9 cow?

In comes Real ID, and it makes my life SO MUCH EASIER. My current boyfriend? I can now delete all eleven thousand of his toons off my friends’ list. I can chat with my one best friend’s husband, who’s out in Arizona (I am here in New Jersey, for those who don’t know). I was able to reconnect with an old friend of mine last night through it. My boyfriend can now chat regularly with his best friend (who lives in Vegas) and his mom (who lives in Oregon, and yes, plays WoW).

Hell, thanks to Real ID I’ve got tentative plans to see a friend from college for dinner sometime soon. And I know had it not existed, I probably wouldn’t have made those plans (because I despise talking on Facebook, whose privacy policies are about a thousand times more shady than Real ID).

Seriously, I am thrilled with it. I have some other friends who used to play WoW, but will be rabidly playing Starcraft II once its released. While we chat on a very regular basis (thanks to the wonder called Blackberry Messenger), we can now harass each other in-game now. Cross-game. C’mon, how awesome is that?

When it comes to security… I’m not concerned. I’ve been tinfoil hat careful with my PC (Avast! and Firefox with AdBlock and NoScript. Plus I do zero casual web browsing on my gaming rig). I have an authenticator (and will lecture guildies to suck it up and get their own once they get hacked. Like I did the other day). Your battle.net email is not displayed anywhere once you’re friended. As I stated above, Facebook’s privacy policies are a lot worse than this.

Now, I’m not going to add everyone and their brother, obviously. Going to keep it to people I know in real life, and people I’m in contact with on a regular basis. Everyone and their brother doesn’t really need to know how much I play when I’m at home, after all. :3