BellaStrega

Thank you.

This has been one of my primary objections to RealID so far. I don't give my battle.net login address to anyone.

And he thinks this actually proves that RealID implementation is fine? He put his name online and someone just got massive amounts of harassment for it and this isn't a problem?

This is exactly why they shouldn't release real names.

Also, causing bodily harm happens to be illegal.

No strawmen, you're just unwilling to address most of the arguments.

I'm not answering Venture because I learned 15 years ago on usenet that talking to Venture is a waste of time. I just want to say that this is nonsense.

People have been stalked online. They've been stalked by abusive exes, or by angry young men looking to cause problems. I've been stalked online. I've been stalked on this forum. I've had an abusive ex try to track me down. This isn't hysteria.

People who have reason not to put their real names on Facebook pages either don't have Facebook pages or use assumed names (I don't have a Facebook page).

Venture talks about people like a see of statistics, and it's vanishingly unlike that any random individual person would care about any other person, so of course there's no reason to suspect that anyone would be googling your name or use your name to track you down because on average no one cares about you. But yet for some reason stalking still happens, women still get harassed, women still get murdered.

Venture's wrong. People aren't being hysterical. People have a right to be upset when a company they've invested time and money into decides to take some control out of their lives.

WTF does accountability mean, though? You think having real names is going to provide a magical aura of ~*~accountability~*~ that will make people behave? You don't think that anyone will use this information to cause harm? I can tell you from years of Usenet that real names do not keep people from trolling. What keeps people from trolling is active enforcement of community rules.

You say that it's possible to track people down anyway, but you're failing to realize that adding real names to the equation removes a barrier to doing so. Yes, it is possible to track people down without their real name, but fewer people will do so.

You're cherrypicking your arguments to support your very shaky points.

Anyway, this decision is not about cleaning up the WoW community. This decision is about how Bobby Kotick (the worst man in gaming) wants to monetize WoW further. RealID and Facebook partnerships coming so close together? I mean, really?

You're ignoring much of this thread, then.

This is stupid. People aren't at fault when they've been victimized. This is why you don't understand why people are concerned: Because you don't understand how crime works.

So I'll give you a tutorial:

* Criminal decides to victimize someone
* Criminal victimizes that someone
* Poptart Fairy lectures victim that it's his or her fault because even though he doesn't have the facts his particular failure of imagination leads him to believe he can guess them.

Get over it. How NinjaPirate signs his posts (or that he chooses to do so) is completely irrelevant to this or any other discussion.

What, you mean other than completely changing how the game's been working, privacy-wise for the past 6 years?

Or that just being on Facebook won't hurt your employment prospects, but playing WoW can?

Or that Facebook lets you insulate your personal information so that people can only see as much of your profile as you let them?

Or that WoW is a game, intended for playing and raiding dungeons and getting phat lewt, whereas Facebook is intended for building social networks and keeping in touch with friends and family?

Multiple concerns have been stated in this thread. Go ahead and read them, we'll wait.

Was Tabula Rasa, I'm pretty sure. I was in the beta and used the opportunity to catch up with her.

I can't be positive, because I was in Auto Assault's beta too.

I hate to be the "this" girl, but

This.

I agree with this post.

I think population size has a big impact on trolls - not just the number, but how they can bounce off each other and set new bars for crappy behavior.

Thank you!

And I even appreciate MoMC's backhanded endorsement.

Do you need someone to interpret my post for you?

I said that someone else said something like that on WoW's forum. I argued with that person over there just as I'm arguing with you over here, because you're both full of ****.

I can't find the edit.

Also, I was part of the WoW community as well, and I wasn't trolling and flaming. And I was participating in constructive discussion, as were many in the role forums (esp tanking and healing).

Your sweeping generalization's pretty falsifiable.

Hahaha.

I actually had a very similar conversation over there last year.

There's plenty of useful discussion on the forum, and the majority of posters are not trolls. The trolls are just the loudest and insufficiently moderated.

They're extremely active. People use them for theorycrafting, casual conversation, they have a community there like we do here, just more active.

You can use a pseudonym on Facebook. It's pretty much unenforceable. But yeah, this is one reason I'm not on Facebook myself.

Uh, no, the WoW community is not responsible for Blizzard's boneheaded, customer-hostile decisions.

Do you know what a slippery slope fallacy is?

That's because the worst of the crop have been filtered out. There were some pretty terrible trolls around here in 2004-2005.

What about safety? I've been internet stalked before. I know other women who have been. There was a post on the Borderhouse by a woman talking about how a guild member actually tracked her down to her dorm to confront her because his sexist comments to her got him banned from raids.

And yes, as I linked, there are employers who do not want to hire WoW players.

As long as this policy is in place, I think I'll pass on everything Blizzard.

I hope they come to their senses.

Oh, yeah, anyone remember this?