Anyone who is anyone already knows what I'm talking about.
They way I work is that at first when I hear frustrating news, I get angry, usually rant on and on to somebody I know, but other then that I keep it to myself. Then after I calm down, I step back, and find the comedy in it, this is what I have done now.
Memorize the date above everybody, that is the date that Blizzard wrote World of Warcraft's suicide note.
For those of you who live under the proverbial rock, Blizzard has taken the proverbial knife, and severed A proverbial artery in the proverbial body of WoW....Okay ill stop. To get to the point, Blizzard came up with this wonderful idea that will, get ready for this ladies and gentlemen, stop trolls!!! :O. I know right!? And how they are going to do this is simply by making it so that when you post on the forums, it displays your Real ID. ...Wait what? Yup, apparently "Removing the veil of Anonymity" will stop "flame wars" on the forums. Yeah, that's terrific, for all 10 people who will be posting there.
NOW for SOME WEIRD reason that NO ONE at blizzard can comprehend, this has caused an outburst of rage from the WoW community!! :O. I KNOW! I'm just as confused as you are! Why would people object to having millions of people having their real name? Wait....Huh.
Now, to back up and be serious for a moment (yes, just for a moment), As everyone knows, the Real ID feature is something that came out very recently, that when you and a friend both willfully consent, you can give each other your E-mail addresses, and instead of displaying your character name when you log on, it shows your real name, first and last. This is supposed to be implemented on all of Blizzards games that come out from now on. This means that now matter what realm your on, or if your zerg rushing some poor sap in Starcraft II, or if your running around with the infamous Deckard Cane in Diablo III, your Real ID buddies will be able to see what you're up too.
Lets now fast-forward to just a few days ago, when Nethaera, a Blizzard poster, made this thread. This told us that very soon, near the end of July, when we post on the Battle.net forums, it will display our first and last names and IF WE WISH...our main character name...I know Blizz is so good to us.
Now since there are oh so many pro's to this new feature they are implementing, i figure its only fair we look at the con's, no? For starters, this may end SOME "flame wars", no doubt. But it will also ESCALATE several to point where it could very well becoming a safety concern for one, or several of the participants in said war. for example John Doe could call out Joe Smith and then Bob Davis would get in on the action. John calls Joe some very nasty words, and Bob says himself and Joe are going to hunt John down and hurt him. A quick Google search of the name, and ta-da, there is an address, Phone number, and oh! even pictures of John in his house! And his wife and kids are also named in said photos.
This is not the only downfall, what about the female gaming community, such as my beloved Cyphale? If you release the fact that you are female, your asking to get trolled, harassed, insulted, and begged for cyber-lovins. Its already bad enough, but if some poor girl wants to report a bug in-game? "OMG CUTIE!!! LETS HOOK UP!!" or more profane, "Hey____ suck my ____!"....yeah, pretty sure you get my point.
But oh no, to the most determined perverted scum, and there are A LOT of them, trust me, it doesn't end there. Nope, now they can Google search the name, get her Facebook or w/e, harass her from there, or even get her address and go to her house. What? It DOES happen and you know it. Not very often, but this is making it A LOT easier for them to do it now.
And finally, my personal problem with this. All of my parents, Mom, Dad, Step-dad, Step-mother, ALL work at a penitentiary, THAT'S A PLACE WHERE BAD PEOPLE GO! now, if some Murderer/Rapist who holds a grudge against one of my parents Googles there last name? and I happened to be friendly chatting with the other mages of the WoWnation about our class changes? oh! looks like that guy has a son! And he lives here!, you can probably see how that wouldn't fair well for me.
For all you people out there who are like "omfg, you guys need to calm down, you can't get all that information with just a first name", well you are just plain wrong. Infact, Blizzard did the liberty of proving you wrong themselves. Wasn't that nice of them? They made a separate thread, released some guys Real ID to show that it isn't dangerous to have your real name out there. This is the best part of my whole post, get ready.
Within MINUTES of having this guys name, people where able to get his address, his phone number, and pictures of him. Guess how Blizz responded to this? they took down the thread... Win Blizz...Win. If you don't believe me, its on the news, go check it out.
What I personally think is happening here, is that Blizzard saw the Star Wars: The Old Republic Hope trailer and were like "...It's over, lets kill it now." And decided to let the game suffer a slow and painful death starting with this.
If this is not the reason I fully agree with the very first poster on this topic named "Tophla" who said:
"This is possibly the worst thing I've ever read in blue.
I can't even begin to fathom why you would do this."
Blizzard, if you are expecting WoW to survive through 2011/2012, you CANNOT be making moves like this, with SW:TOR and GW2 just on the horizon, you might as well just shut down the realms right now if you are going to be doing stupid things like this. JUST LISTEN to the outcry on your thread, there are already 80 pages of 90% negative comments about this. How can you knowingly go through with this knowing that the VAST MAJORITY of people range from not liking this to f****** furious at you. So many people are canceling their accounts because of this, so many that the canceling feature is backed up from how many people are doing it. Show us just once that you care for your fans and your community, show the people that pay your ridiculously over priced 40$ every two months to play your 5 and a half year old game. You can't seriously think that this is a good idea anymore.
OH! also! They are reducing the talent trees from 71 points to 41 points.... Oh wait no one cares because of the Real ID thing.
I know everybody and their dog has replied, posted threads, or blogged about this, but I just had to, I had no choice. I had to do my part in this war against the stupidity of Blizzard. Blizzard, I know trolls make you sad, and gold spammers are annoying, but this won't do ANYTHING to solve these problems, it will only create more for you. I appreciate what you are trying to do for us, but with all these negative effects that could, and will happen, there has to be a better way. Lets hope for the best WoWnation, this has been Amorianths longest post yet, and I'm out, you guys stay frosty through this cold dark time in WoW history.
By the way guys, if you want more information on the subject, and not a mockery like I have given you, this guy is all over it, and his information is legit, his posts will help you more then mine.
Druiddigest.blogspot.com
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