Patch 3.3.5 comes to the US this week, and with it comes Blizzard’s new Real ID system. To sum it up quickly, Real ID lets you add friends to your battle.net account, rather than your friends list ingame. This lets you see if they are logged on, what game they are playing, what character and what server they are on – that’s right, Big Brother is watching, and you’re it!
I totally “get” the idea. It would be strange if Blizzard runs three major games and don’t offer some way to communicate between them. I can chat with my friend while he flies around in Starcraft 2, and my guild master can see if I’m skipping a raid to play Diablo 3.
Of course, people can’t see you like this unless they know your Battle.net e-mail. You have to share that e-mail with your friends before they can add you, and you have to approve new friends as they send a request – online the current friend system ingame that just lets people add you without your knowledge. They get more information on you, after all, so that is fitting.
Check out my new post on Real ID – real names on public forums!
Incidently, my Battle.net e-mail is also my personal e-mail. An e-mail that many people have, that many people can find via Facebook and forums, so I worry just how many requests I might get. Unwanted requests, that is. The Facebook tool is slightly annoying – only slightly. A quick way to avoid this whole Facebook thing would be to hide your e-mail from friends, making the tool unable to see your e-mail and unable to check if it is tied to a Battle.net account. Or, you could simply change the e-mail on your Bnet account – although that seems like a bit of a hassle.
I guess it would be a bit too paranoid to think that random business contacts were to look me up just to see if I was a gamer, and even if they did, they would be marked as nerdy little gamers too. However, it is free to create a Battle.net account, so the question really is if its possible to create a Bnet account with no games at all, and add people to it.
So is it actually useful? Yes, I suppose it is for some people. Personally, there are very few people I would add, if any. I have a very good friend who is likely to play a lot of Starcraft 2 – but we can chat over MSN or the like anyways. Then there are some old friends from previous guilds that would be fun to talk to – but I have those on MSN as well, and with the luxury of no less than three monitors, I don’t think I’m going to miss room for an MSN chat box. It would be cool to talk to alliance players on my server, but I don’t know any, but I suppose it could be fun to add other druids who are active in the community, and have a chat with them once in a while.
To be fair, I don’t have that many friends… who plays Blizzard games. I mean, real life friends… who plays Blizzard games. I can count them on one hand. Oh sure, there are probably more, but we don’t really talk WoW or anything. I consider many of my guild mates my friends as well, but there is no need for them to have my Real ID when all of my alts are on the same server and in the same guild. And if I’m not ingame, I am usually on Ventrilo.
But I may just be a special case. It might just be me, so saturated with other programs and so snoppy about this new initiative that I won’t really find a use for it. It is a good idea, and I’m sure that there are tons of people who will benefit a lot from it. I just don’t think I would use it for more than just a few people, if any.
How about you? Will you be a Real ID fanatic?
I am not a fan at all. The reason I definitely won’t be using it is that friends OF FRIENDS can see your real name. Then I’d have to worry about not just whom I choose to friend, but whom my friends choose to friend. No thanks.
Ah yes, that is an issue, and a valid concern. But, I suppose it’s the same with stuff like Facebook and the like, where my friends friends can see my name as well. Then again, I’m not really secretive about my name, and unless people know who I am, I don’t think they are going to care about a “Dan A. Poulsen” on the list – and if they do know who I am, then who gives a fret anyways, right?
First time poster, huge Qieth fan
I dont know… I can see this system working and at some point i’ll probably use it, but at the same time i’m just wondering if its worth it since i have all my friends on either facebook, steam, msn or skype. I’m having a hard time finding room for one more “chatprogram”.
Besides i always play WoW and so does the people closest to me so i dont need to know what they are playing.
And i understand your concern about people adding you when they can see your email on facebook, but surely there must be some kind of way to counter that.
And hi Qieth! You missed me?
CHIMMIE!!! Long time no see, slacker. I vote for an meetup again soon 
“CHIMMIE!!! Long time no see, slacker. I vote for an meetup again soon”
Maybe via Blizzard’s Real ID?
I personally won’t be using Real ID – I have no interest in my friends knowing which game/alt I’m playing at every moment of every day. I don’t want to have to deal with the “you’re a friend who can see all so I can add you”.. “you’re a nice person and I like to chat.. but I wanna be able to be online without you seeing me, so sorry you’re declined”. It’s easier just not to add anyone.
I have a bunch of people I talk to online. Do I want them to know my every alt on every server? Definitely not. Sometimes I want to be online and just not talk to anyone. You know, the times when you’re feeling completely anti-social, or you just have 10 minutes so starting up a conversation isn’t really something you want.
I don’t feel like I need a cross-game chat either, because I use Steam.. and if you play in windowed mode MSN or any chat program works just as well. I just want to have the option of “hiding” – and the Real ID doesn’t allow me that.
IDK. Personally I tend to the A.D.D. as far as games go and have 50+ characters spread across 10+ servers on WoW, plus 10ish characters on Diablo2 (and will be playing Diable 3) so I can find it very annoying to try and see who is on when. I don’t like having to go through 3 differant vent channels and a stack of servers to check that. That said I only have 2 80s (A.D.D. and not enough time to maintain them all) so even when people ARE on it’s hit or miss.
The biggest issue I see is basicly what Saga was talking about. Part of why I am on so many differant servers is to have characters to relax on, but Real ID will cause me issues with that and if they add an Invisible feature I worry that we will have people that are always invisable (I can think of a few friends on Yahoo like that) and then what’s the point of Real ID?
We will see how this works out. Overall, I’m for it, even if it means I have to tag myself as Busy sometimes and team my friends that Busy means “I don’t want to talk to you right now, GO AWAY!” in a polite manner.
So Blizzard already has a rampant problem with hackers stealing accounts and now they’re taking steps to essentially assist hackers. Someone who gets hacked and is using Real ID heavily has now given that hacker email addresses to send phishing emails to in hopes of hacking more accounts. Email addresses of close friends, co-workers, and other people that they know and will have to answer to in person.
Throw a pseudonym option in there and I might be willing to try it. Until then my friends will have to contact me the old fashioned way and pick up a phone.
I think that may be overreacting a bit. How would someone’s real ID list make much of a difference? Sure, they can see e-mails that they can try and send scam mails to, but it’s not like there are plenty of those already. One more won’t make a difference.
I think many of us can “fondly” recall the days of the Lich King beta and hearing about all the people who got hacked falling for phishing emails. That was a widespread issue because of two things: people wanted a beta invite so desperately that they put their email all over the web looking for them and then didn’t check validity when they got a phishing invite.
Phishing works because people still fall for it. That puts more work on Blizzard’s customer service sorting out more accounts that have been hacked which can mean even longer wait times for assistance.
True – but I don’t think we will see an increase in these incidents, just because of the Real ID. Stupid people will still be stupid
I get a couple of phishing mails a week anyways, getting one more isn’t really going to change anything