reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
In an interesting development, apparently the newest version of Starcraft 2's beta, which became available earlier today, got rid of the "friend someone with your e-mail address" business in favor of some sort of "friend code" system. Whether or not this is a permanent change reflective of things to come once the game goes retail, one can only speculate.
As a European gamer and therefore a second grade costumer I haven't been able to log on yet to verify myself, so I'm only relying on what people are saying.
In an interesting development, apparently the newest version of Starcraft 2's beta, which became available earlier today, got rid of the "friend someone with your e-mail address" in favor of some sort of "friend code" system.
It's like they're in the fucking wilderness trying to make fire with two sticks when they have a perfectly good pack of matches in their pocket
In an interesting development, apparently the newest version of Starcraft 2's beta, which became available earlier today, got rid of the "friend someone with your e-mail address" business in favor of some sort of "friend code" system. Whether or not this is a permanent change reflective of things to come once the game goes retail, one can only speculate.
Because we all saw how well that particular system went on the Wii :x
Shorn Scrotum Man on
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I was only half kidding when i said facebook/armory integration was coming. It very likely may be!
It seems pretty likely at this point. If you will give personal information to the random bottom feeders in the WoW forums, just give it to everyone.
The RealID thing, which I thought was going to be a kind of private friend-only thing, is clearly not. Instead it's now a social network that nobody wanted.
Apparently no one told them that Facebook is free.
In an interesting development, apparently the newest version of Starcraft 2's beta, which became available earlier today, got rid of the "friend someone with your e-mail address" business in favor of some sort of "friend code" system. Whether or not this is a permanent change reflective of things to come once the game goes retail, one can only speculate.
Because we all saw how well that particular system went on the Wii :x
But this time you just need to enter your friend's social security number. That's a lot easier to enter than some 16 digit Wii code.
Neva on
SC2 Beta: Neva.ling
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
In an interesting development, apparently the newest version of Starcraft 2's beta, which became available earlier today, got rid of the "friend someone with your e-mail address" business in favor of some sort of "friend code" system. Whether or not this is a permanent change reflective of things to come once the game goes retail, one can only speculate.
Because we all saw how well that particular system went on the Wii :x
But this time you just need to enter your friend's social security number. That's a lot easier to enter than some 16 digit Wii code.
True, that would make things a whole lot easier!
Shorn Scrotum Man on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
edited July 2010
Additional details: the "friends with e-mail" thing isn't gone, you can still add friends that way if you want, the code system is provided as an additional way to add a someone as a RealID friend.
I'd rather give away a friend code than my username/email.
This sums up the entire RealID situation for me.
I'd rather have a code to share than my email, they work exactly the same except that the code is meaningless outside of its intended use here but my email is important to me and my privacy.
I'd rather have a unified name (of my choosing) for my b.net account than using my real name, they work exactly the same except that the b.net name is meaningless outside of its intended use here but my real name is important to me and my privacy.
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
I'd say it's more that they realized nothing short of "my bad, we screwed up and we're changing our minds" is going to fix things. Since they have nothing to say to that effect, they just stopped posting on the subject.
About how long is it taking the parental controls email to reach people? I submitted for mine about 10 hours ago and it still hasn't arrived.
I got mine immediately, but then again I did this tuesday. I would imagine either your spam filter caught it (hard not to with all the WoW phishing emails going out these days) or their system is just that overloaded with requests.
I am going to go out on a limb here, to give you an idea of the people out there in the world
I am semi-comfortable with this, as I have lived with this for awhile, so talking about it for me is easy, but I think people at Activision know exactly what they are dealing with
My name is Tim Kapitan, and I am a schizophrenic. Not your mild mannered controllable lives a normal life schizophrenic, the "I think the world is out to get me and kill me" level of schizophrenic
I literally believe people in the world are out to harm me, from the grocery staff at a store too my very neighbors, I believe at all times in a moments notice they will betray, hurt or possibly kill me
I believe that if I sleep with an appendage hanging over the bed that something akin to a monster etc will grab my leg/hand/feet whatever while I sleep and will drag me under it and kill me
I believe that the government is out to get me at all times, to say "Oh you're not sick" and then take away my disability benefits, and I am thrust back into the world, where the simplest of stress has me panic and go suicidal
I believe that my neighbors are watching my every step, morning, noon and night, so I watch my room with a camera every time I go out, I can only leave my place of residence a hour or two at a time, after that I start panicing that I have been gone too long, that right now somebody is rooting and stealing all the stuff I basically need to avoid going MORE nuts (God bless the net, it fills my social nitch to avoid talking with people in person, something I fear)
I believe so strongly people are out to get me, I have not left my place at the same time for two days in a row in over 7 years, if I need to go shopping two days in a row, I'll go at 8:48 AM one day, and then I'll go at 4:40PM the next day so people that are watching me can't predict my schedual, which makes me feel safer because they don't know when I will or won't be back
I never believed the voices in my head etc were real, or the things I saw sometimes were real, but they were heavily disturbing all the more, they are still disturbing
My mental filter of events IRL is so god damn shot that when I am faced with a situation, any situation in the world when I am dealing with, even family members, small pets, and even small children, not only do I get the mental options to say hi to somebody, or to give them a small hug etc if they are family, I am also getting thoughts at the same time of breaking their necks, throwing babies at the floor, strangling dogs, cutting open somebody with a knife, making coffee for somebody to scoop out their eyeballs or even my own, I have extreamly violent thoughts go through my head every day, 24/7. I don't act on them, but they are there.
Now tell me this, and be honestly serious, as I am going out on a limb here because I really do want people to think before they back this RealID thing, I am a relatively stable person, as I am no danger to myself or others, but think about this, after everything I have just mentioned to you about my illness, and I was -NOT- stable, don't you think me having the ability to find your real name, possibly address, phone number etc, being made -EASIER- make you feel safe?
I don't feel safe over RealID, for reasons of semi-insanity etc I think people on the net are also out to get me, but also to emphasis there is people in the world out there, like me, almost exactly like me, who are -NOT- as stable as I am, and giving them the tools to find out exactly who pissed me off in WoW is -NOT- a good idea
I hope you don't think of me differently, as I am really a nice person, albit very paranoid at everything, but I just wanted to paint a picture that there is people in the world like me, that DON'T have their cookies togeather, well, don't have them as togeather more so then me
ShamisOMally on
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
About how long is it taking the parental controls email to reach people? I submitted for mine about 10 hours ago and it still hasn't arrived.
I don't think anyone here knows. RealID has only been partially implemented in SC2 beta to my knowledge, so they might not be updating the controls in regards to it. Or maybe they want to dick around opt-outs to get people to say "fuck it" and ignore it.
Edit: Overloaded with opt-out requests seems more likely.
I got mine almost instantly. I would just resubmit for a new one.
Also for people who want to opt out of RealID.
1. Go to the appropriate battle.net site for your region.
2. Push the Create or Manage a Battle.net Account button.
3. Log in as normal.
4. Click on Parental Controls, which is an option listed under Manage My Games.
5. Choose the No - Setup Parental Controls button.
6. Fill in your info as both the child's account and your own.
7. You will receive an email. You need to save this email, because the link in there is the only way to get to the parental controls. Otherwise, you have to make Blizzard resend it. Click the link to get into the controls.
8. Save Settings and then be told it will take up to 30 minutes to go into effect.
skorch on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
I'd say it's more that they realized nothing short of "my bad, we screwed up and we're changing our minds" is going to fix things. Since they have nothing to say to that effect, they just stopped posting on the subject.
Obviously the scenario I laid out is pure fantasy and the result of whatever strange fumes those are that encroach upon my property from the neighbour's direction. They're a company, they'll never admit a mistake.
I got odds they aren't reversing course until it becomes a major disaster. Everyone on the ship sees the comets and the black hole, but Bobby Brannigan is only interested in being a hero
The problem is more and more jobs are doing google searches on employees (presumably to see if they come up on facebook, or have blogs where they complain about stuff).
Some employers evidently have a problem with people playing WoW, for whatever reason.
It's not rocket surgery that the two will intersect, and the current job market isn't one where people can just blow off a job because they want to continue playing WoW.
What floors me is why people keep their facebook and myspace.
Blizzard hasn't said anything about doing that, but alot of people are afraid that it's on the way.
They didn't say anything about the forums using RealID, either (in fact they said only friend and friend of friends would get it...). Until they did.
I really don't think they will link RealID to the armory. At least, not as in "everyone gets it! (unless you use parental controls, in which case armory is disabled for you completely)". But at this point it is the next logical step and I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
I don't like this one bit. I'm not comfortable with the amount of information a stranger can gather about me using just my name yet I feel ike there is little I can do about it.
Sure, my Facebook is locked down tight. I'm even considering deleting it and making a new one just so that I don't have those Wall Posts from like freshman year of college -- god knows what they say.
But beyond that, there's just a bunch of stuff that comes up on Google for my name. There are like 6 people in the entire world with my last name, so it's not very hard to google-stalk me and my immediate family. People can find out about my college experience, including externships. They can find out about work I've done as a photographer for newspapers. They can find out about research I've worked on, and other jobs I've held. I'm pretty sure by branching out from these, a lot more can be found out about me as well.
None of those things are really uses of my name that I directly consented to -- and unless I go be a huge dick and tell people to take my name off their websites, this sort of thing will just keep accumulating. Even with my trying my best to keep my identity fairly private, having my RL name exposed would reveal a lot more about me than I'm comfortable with.
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
I'd say it's more that they realized nothing short of "my bad, we screwed up and we're changing our minds" is going to fix things. Since they have nothing to say to that effect, they just stopped posting on the subject.
Obviously the scenario I laid out is pure fantasy and the result of whatever strange fumes those are that encroach upon my property from the neighbour's direction. They're a company, they'll never admit a mistake.
honestly the silence may not be a bad thing. I would be willing to bet that they issued a gag order on all customer facing employees and are probably trying to figure out how to make everyone happy. God only knows what that will mean though.
Well, they have to know that regardless of what happens now, the word "RealID" has gotten a very negative stigma attached to it and they'll have to figure out what to do about that.
Lars on
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
I'd say it's more that they realized nothing short of "my bad, we screwed up and we're changing our minds" is going to fix things. Since they have nothing to say to that effect, they just stopped posting on the subject.
Obviously the scenario I laid out is pure fantasy and the result of whatever strange fumes those are that encroach upon my property from the neighbour's direction. They're a company, they'll never admit a mistake.
honestly the silence may not be a bad thing. I would be willing to bet that they issued a gag order on all customer facing employees and are probably trying to figure out how to make everyone happy. God only knows what that will mean though.
"All customers must make one forum post per month to activate their Activision Blizzard games."
See, it'll be great because now those people who are saying they're not entirely sure if they want to keep using the forums have a good reason to keep using the forums. It's brilliant!
Personally I am hoping that their non-responsiveness is a sign that they are furiously looking for a way to back pedal and save face at the same time.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
Except that they did think it through and they knew exactly what was going to happen. The only data they are actually looking at is the number of canceled accounts. Financially, they stand to gain so much with Facebook integration that it would take hundreds of thousands of canceled accounts before they would even need to take a second glance at their business plan. (100k accounts is ~ 1% of their user base.)
Phase 1: Announce and implement RealID, analyze result (some grumbling, a fair number of adopters)
Phase 2: Mandatory real names on the forums, analyze result(lots of grumbling, maybe tens of thousands of canceled accounts.
Phase 3: As long as the number of canceled accounts at this point is below the "go" value, step it up. Probably something like: "We reserve the right to publish your name on our facebook page if you get a world first or win a serverwide contest".
Rinse and repeat. With each step, the amount of money they can make off the people who go along with the change is more than offsetting the canceled accounts.
Dropping Loads on
Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
0
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Additional details: the "friends with e-mail" thing isn't gone, you can still add friends that way if you want, the code system is provided as an additional way to add a someone as a RealID friend.
It doesn't add them as a "RealID" friend if you use their FC, it adds them as a "Character" friend...just like adding the old "Name.name" syntax, or adding a character to your friends list in WoW.
How much money could they possibly make off of this deal? It's gotta be a drop in the bucket to what they make now, why the fuck risk what they have for a very shaky potential revenue stream?
Edit: I mean, you're right and they will, but it's stupid
Blizzard hasn't said anything about doing that, but alot of people are afraid that it's on the way.
They didn't say anything about the forums using RealID, either (in fact they said only friend and friend of friends would get it...). Until they did.
I really don't think they will link RealID to the armory. At least, not as in "everyone gets it! (unless you use parental controls, in which case armory is disabled for you completely)". But at this point it is the next logical step and I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
That was exactly my point, actually. I didn't mean for it to be condecending if that's how it sounded. It's a valid thing to be concerned about. Remember, I was one of the people concerned about the Real ID thing when it was just a friends list in game!
Shorn Scrotum Man on
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Madpandasuburbs west of chicagoRegistered Userregular
I am saddened after everything I posted about myself, a -REAL- crazy person talking about other real crazy people in the world, that everyone chooses to ignore it
And sadly, this is why RealID will go through, cause people will choose to ignore it
How much money could they possibly make off of this deal? It's gotta be a drop in the bucket to what they make now, why the fuck risk what they have for a very shaky potential revenue stream?
Edit: I mean, you're right and they will, but it's stupid
Just to simplify, say they have 10 million subscribers at 10 dollars each for 100 million dollars of revenue a month. If they lose 100 thousand subscribers, that revenue goes to 99 million a month. To make up that difference they'd need to get an extra $1 million / 9.9 million subscribers = TEN CENTS out of each subscriber that is left. Just in marketing mailers, you're personal information is worth more than that. If they get a dollar out of each customer that's left, they just increased revenue by 9%. In a down economy, no less.
There's a lot of "screw the customer" room left before they are anywhere close to making less money than they are now, certainly in the short term, and it seems that Activision-Blizzard's strategy is looking to take the money and run.
Edit: I added override's quote back in since this took me longer to post than I thought .
Edit: And to clarify , that extra dollar of revenue isn't coming out of the customer's pocket directly, but it's the third party value of customers willingly exposing themselves to marketing.
Dropping Loads on
Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
I am saddened after everything I posted about myself, a -REAL- crazy person talking about other real crazy people in the world, that everyone chooses to ignore it
And sadly, this is why RealID will go through, cause people will choose to ignore it
Until its a problem anyways
What are you going on about?
Nobody here is ignoring realID. Or...the thread wouldn't exist.
I am saddened after everything I posted about myself, a -REAL- crazy person talking about other real crazy people in the world, that everyone chooses to ignore it
And sadly, this is why RealID will go through, cause people will choose to ignore it
Until its a problem anyways
You should be happy that everyone chose to give you an opportunity to clarify yourself before they misinterpreted it It was hard to tell if that was original or if it was pasted from another forum, which has been happening a lot in this thread. Thanks for coming back and having something to say.
You're right that RealID will go through because people don't care. It can't be my personal job (or anyone's personal job) to make idiots care that someone else is robbing them. All you can do is make sure you don't get robbed yourself.
Dropping Loads on
Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
Posts
As a European gamer and therefore a second grade costumer I haven't been able to log on yet to verify myself, so I'm only relying on what people are saying.
It's like they're in the fucking wilderness trying to make fire with two sticks when they have a perfectly good pack of matches in their pocket
Because we all saw how well that particular system went on the Wii :x
It seems pretty likely at this point. If you will give personal information to the random bottom feeders in the WoW forums, just give it to everyone.
The RealID thing, which I thought was going to be a kind of private friend-only thing, is clearly not. Instead it's now a social network that nobody wanted.
Apparently no one told them that Facebook is free.
PSN: Threeve703
But this time you just need to enter your friend's social security number. That's a lot easier to enter than some 16 digit Wii code.
"Everyone who is capable of logical thought should be able to see why you shouldn't sell lifetime subscriptions to an MMO. Cell phone companies and drug dealers don't offer lifetime subscriptions either, guess why?" - Mugaaz
True, that would make things a whole lot easier!
I'd rather have a code to share than my email, they work exactly the same except that the code is meaningless outside of its intended use here but my email is important to me and my privacy.
I'd rather have a unified name (of my choosing) for my b.net account than using my real name, they work exactly the same except that the b.net name is meaningless outside of its intended use here but my real name is important to me and my privacy.
If they just came out and said "Okay, so maybe we didn't think this real name thing through properly, so instead you'll be identified on the forums and in the RealID system with a single user name that you get to decide that is bound to your Battle.net account", I'd give them a thumbs up and go pre-order a bunch of their games.
I'd say it's more that they realized nothing short of "my bad, we screwed up and we're changing our minds" is going to fix things. Since they have nothing to say to that effect, they just stopped posting on the subject.
I got mine immediately, but then again I did this tuesday. I would imagine either your spam filter caught it (hard not to with all the WoW phishing emails going out these days) or their system is just that overloaded with requests.
probably got a giant backlog now
I am semi-comfortable with this, as I have lived with this for awhile, so talking about it for me is easy, but I think people at Activision know exactly what they are dealing with
My name is Tim Kapitan, and I am a schizophrenic. Not your mild mannered controllable lives a normal life schizophrenic, the "I think the world is out to get me and kill me" level of schizophrenic
I literally believe people in the world are out to harm me, from the grocery staff at a store too my very neighbors, I believe at all times in a moments notice they will betray, hurt or possibly kill me
I believe that if I sleep with an appendage hanging over the bed that something akin to a monster etc will grab my leg/hand/feet whatever while I sleep and will drag me under it and kill me
I believe that the government is out to get me at all times, to say "Oh you're not sick" and then take away my disability benefits, and I am thrust back into the world, where the simplest of stress has me panic and go suicidal
I believe that my neighbors are watching my every step, morning, noon and night, so I watch my room with a camera every time I go out, I can only leave my place of residence a hour or two at a time, after that I start panicing that I have been gone too long, that right now somebody is rooting and stealing all the stuff I basically need to avoid going MORE nuts (God bless the net, it fills my social nitch to avoid talking with people in person, something I fear)
I believe so strongly people are out to get me, I have not left my place at the same time for two days in a row in over 7 years, if I need to go shopping two days in a row, I'll go at 8:48 AM one day, and then I'll go at 4:40PM the next day so people that are watching me can't predict my schedual, which makes me feel safer because they don't know when I will or won't be back
I never believed the voices in my head etc were real, or the things I saw sometimes were real, but they were heavily disturbing all the more, they are still disturbing
My mental filter of events IRL is so god damn shot that when I am faced with a situation, any situation in the world when I am dealing with, even family members, small pets, and even small children, not only do I get the mental options to say hi to somebody, or to give them a small hug etc if they are family, I am also getting thoughts at the same time of breaking their necks, throwing babies at the floor, strangling dogs, cutting open somebody with a knife, making coffee for somebody to scoop out their eyeballs or even my own, I have extreamly violent thoughts go through my head every day, 24/7. I don't act on them, but they are there.
Now tell me this, and be honestly serious, as I am going out on a limb here because I really do want people to think before they back this RealID thing, I am a relatively stable person, as I am no danger to myself or others, but think about this, after everything I have just mentioned to you about my illness, and I was -NOT- stable, don't you think me having the ability to find your real name, possibly address, phone number etc, being made -EASIER- make you feel safe?
I don't feel safe over RealID, for reasons of semi-insanity etc I think people on the net are also out to get me, but also to emphasis there is people in the world out there, like me, almost exactly like me, who are -NOT- as stable as I am, and giving them the tools to find out exactly who pissed me off in WoW is -NOT- a good idea
I hope you don't think of me differently, as I am really a nice person, albit very paranoid at everything, but I just wanted to paint a picture that there is people in the world like me, that DON'T have their cookies togeather, well, don't have them as togeather more so then me
I don't think anyone here knows. RealID has only been partially implemented in SC2 beta to my knowledge, so they might not be updating the controls in regards to it. Or maybe they want to dick around opt-outs to get people to say "fuck it" and ignore it.
Edit: Overloaded with opt-out requests seems more likely.
Also for people who want to opt out of RealID.
1. Go to the appropriate battle.net site for your region.
2. Push the Create or Manage a Battle.net Account button.
3. Log in as normal.
4. Click on Parental Controls, which is an option listed under Manage My Games.
5. Choose the No - Setup Parental Controls button.
6. Fill in your info as both the child's account and your own.
7. You will receive an email. You need to save this email, because the link in there is the only way to get to the parental controls. Otherwise, you have to make Blizzard resend it. Click the link to get into the controls.
8. Save Settings and then be told it will take up to 30 minutes to go into effect.
Obviously the scenario I laid out is pure fantasy and the result of whatever strange fumes those are that encroach upon my property from the neighbour's direction. They're a company, they'll never admit a mistake.
FTFY.
They didn't say anything about the forums using RealID, either (in fact they said only friend and friend of friends would get it...). Until they did.
I really don't think they will link RealID to the armory. At least, not as in "everyone gets it! (unless you use parental controls, in which case armory is disabled for you completely)". But at this point it is the next logical step and I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
Sure, my Facebook is locked down tight. I'm even considering deleting it and making a new one just so that I don't have those Wall Posts from like freshman year of college -- god knows what they say.
But beyond that, there's just a bunch of stuff that comes up on Google for my name. There are like 6 people in the entire world with my last name, so it's not very hard to google-stalk me and my immediate family. People can find out about my college experience, including externships. They can find out about work I've done as a photographer for newspapers. They can find out about research I've worked on, and other jobs I've held. I'm pretty sure by branching out from these, a lot more can be found out about me as well.
None of those things are really uses of my name that I directly consented to -- and unless I go be a huge dick and tell people to take my name off their websites, this sort of thing will just keep accumulating. Even with my trying my best to keep my identity fairly private, having my RL name exposed would reveal a lot more about me than I'm comfortable with.
honestly the silence may not be a bad thing. I would be willing to bet that they issued a gag order on all customer facing employees and are probably trying to figure out how to make everyone happy. God only knows what that will mean though.
"All customers must make one forum post per month to activate their Activision Blizzard games."
See, it'll be great because now those people who are saying they're not entirely sure if they want to keep using the forums have a good reason to keep using the forums. It's brilliant!
Except that they did think it through and they knew exactly what was going to happen. The only data they are actually looking at is the number of canceled accounts. Financially, they stand to gain so much with Facebook integration that it would take hundreds of thousands of canceled accounts before they would even need to take a second glance at their business plan. (100k accounts is ~ 1% of their user base.)
Phase 1: Announce and implement RealID, analyze result (some grumbling, a fair number of adopters)
Phase 2: Mandatory real names on the forums, analyze result(lots of grumbling, maybe tens of thousands of canceled accounts.
Phase 3: As long as the number of canceled accounts at this point is below the "go" value, step it up. Probably something like: "We reserve the right to publish your name on our facebook page if you get a world first or win a serverwide contest".
Rinse and repeat. With each step, the amount of money they can make off the people who go along with the change is more than offsetting the canceled accounts.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
It doesn't add them as a "RealID" friend if you use their FC, it adds them as a "Character" friend...just like adding the old "Name.name" syntax, or adding a character to your friends list in WoW.
Edit: I mean, you're right and they will, but it's stupid
That was exactly my point, actually. I didn't mean for it to be condecending if that's how it sounded. It's a valid thing to be concerned about. Remember, I was one of the people concerned about the Real ID thing when it was just a friends list in game!
http://asnowstormbyanyothername.blogspot.com/
Steam/PSN/XBL/Minecraft / LoL / - Benevicious | WoW - Duckwood - Rajhek
Real ID troll
And even congress is against it! http://legislatorsagainstrealid.com/
(Ok, so that's a different Real ID. Who cares
Holy Shit. This should be fun.
And sadly, this is why RealID will go through, cause people will choose to ignore it
Until its a problem anyways
Just to simplify, say they have 10 million subscribers at 10 dollars each for 100 million dollars of revenue a month. If they lose 100 thousand subscribers, that revenue goes to 99 million a month. To make up that difference they'd need to get an extra $1 million / 9.9 million subscribers = TEN CENTS out of each subscriber that is left. Just in marketing mailers, you're personal information is worth more than that. If they get a dollar out of each customer that's left, they just increased revenue by 9%. In a down economy, no less.
There's a lot of "screw the customer" room left before they are anywhere close to making less money than they are now, certainly in the short term, and it seems that Activision-Blizzard's strategy is looking to take the money and run.
Edit: I added override's quote back in since this took me longer to post than I thought
Edit: And to clarify , that extra dollar of revenue isn't coming out of the customer's pocket directly, but it's the third party value of customers willingly exposing themselves to marketing.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.
What are you going on about?
Nobody here is ignoring realID. Or...the thread wouldn't exist.
You should be happy that everyone chose to give you an opportunity to clarify yourself before they misinterpreted it
You're right that RealID will go through because people don't care. It can't be my personal job (or anyone's personal job) to make idiots care that someone else is robbing them. All you can do is make sure you don't get robbed yourself.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.