RealID has been talked about a lot over the past couple of days (I have even talked a little about it once already), but some things have been bugging me about the entire concept that I feel like I need to mention. If you’re tired of hearing about it already feel free to ignore this particular post, and if you like my writing enough to stick around anyway then I certainly thank you!

We can summarize the initial reactions pretty easily: forcing users to display personal information is not a good idea, just as forcing users into a “social networking environment” is not a good idea. Claiming the forums are optional is just a bullshit excuse.

Now, here are two things that haven’t really been talked about and/or key points I want to highlight:

Gold Sellers and Account Hackers

With this change, anyone who posts on the forums those who have some sort of malicious intent that is directly targeting World of Warcraft have access to that much more information to be able to ruin a person’s experience or potentially compromise them financially.

What is the next step?

Certainly the implementation of chatting across games and being used on the forums are not the only plans for RealID. The announcement reeks of plans to use RealID in other ways, just like the announcement of a partnership between Activision and Facebook reeks of eventually having Battle.net and Facebook profiles tied together in some fashion. (Press release is here, pertinent section quoted below).

“We’re pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players,” said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. “This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together.”

The new Facebook functionality in Battle.net will be tested in the near future via the ongoing StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty beta test and will be available to all StarCraft II players when the game ships later this year. Information about other Facebook-related features on Battle.net will be announced at a later date.

Personal Notes

It’s really difficult to find a logical argument for supporting this type of change (and note that I do not support this idea in the slightest). The claim that it will make the forums a “better place” is misguided at best, and a complete failure on the part of whoever thought up the idea to understand human behavior and interaction.

Privacy and security concerns are obviously an issue for many. While I’m certainly not exempt from those concerns, I’m not as concerned about it from the standpoint of having already shared my name online as a personal choice. This isn’t to say it doesn’t still frighten me a little… after all, where I choose to share personal information is a choice that I make, and this change would remove any control I may have over whether or not to share my personal information with the millions of potential other players on any Blizzard forum.

I won’t subject you to yet another long-winded rant about any of these notes, but I felt my previous post was incomplete without at least touching on these issues also. My response to RealID at this point? Account cancelled (reactivated before expiration and cancelled again to make sure my point was clear in the reason why field) and complete avoidance of all future Blizzard products. Now I get to go make a list of games that I thought might be interesting and make sure Activision doesn’t have a hand in those…