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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsPatch 3.3.5 PTR: Battle.net Real ID system
by Gregg Reece 
May 13th 2010 at 1:00PM
After several tries at character copies, extended-extended downtime and Battle.net issues, we've been able to hop onto the public test realm and play around with the new Real ID features. We were able to grab a lot of screenshots of the new chat features.
Now, if you're not familiar with the Real ID system, I'll give you a quick summation. If you have a real-life person you know who also plays Blizzard games and you would like to keep in touch with them despite realm, faction or even game (Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft), then you can now add them in a social media-type format with announcement, statuses and cross-realm/faction/game whispers. This is not something you want to do with someone you've only ever known in game. The reason you don't want to do this with just anybody is that you will be using your Battle.net email login.
If you happen to try out this feature on the PTR, please note that we're still in an early test realm build and there are still a lot of bugs in the system. This means you're going to get Lua errors off of the default interface, and the Battle.net server managing your friends list is often down as they're tweaking things behind the scenes. It's the test realm; it's meant to test things. So don't take its stability as a sign of what the functionality will be like when the patch hits the live realms.
Now, if you're not familiar with the Real ID system, I'll give you a quick summation. If you have a real-life person you know who also plays Blizzard games and you would like to keep in touch with them despite realm, faction or even game (Diablo III, StarCraft II or World of Warcraft), then you can now add them in a social media-type format with announcement, statuses and cross-realm/faction/game whispers. This is not something you want to do with someone you've only ever known in game. The reason you don't want to do this with just anybody is that you will be using your Battle.net email login.
If you happen to try out this feature on the PTR, please note that we're still in an early test realm build and there are still a lot of bugs in the system. This means you're going to get Lua errors off of the default interface, and the Battle.net server managing your friends list is often down as they're tweaking things behind the scenes. It's the test realm; it's meant to test things. So don't take its stability as a sign of what the functionality will be like when the patch hits the live realms.
Filed under: News items, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
Tori May 13th 2010 2:05PM
Erm, that's exactly the point. If you have friends that you'd rather not give that information to, then...don't. They can remain as just your WoW friends and they would not have access to your name, email, etc.
Simply befriend people that you absolutely know and trust. If you don't have anyone like that then you don't have to use it.
brin_adur May 13th 2010 2:05PM
okay.....so
"I have many people I'd trust with any in game item or task and sure even my first name. But I don't want or need many knowing more than that."
Dont add people you dont trust.
Sister Christian May 13th 2010 2:06PM
And be sure that trust includes judging who to trust, remember your information will be shared with everyone they friend as well. Oh and that none of those people get hacked, cuz then you trust everyone the hacker has friended as well. Cuz you know we should all trust hackers. :)
brin_adur May 13th 2010 2:10PM
wrong sister. You can turn that off.
Michelle Madison May 13th 2010 2:10PM
People keep saying, "don't add people you don't trust" so I'll say it for the third time, you may trust them, but do you trust everyone else they choose to befriend too? Because it's going to become a huge pile of Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation.
And even if you trust your friend, and the people they befriend with your first and last name and battle.net e-mail login, do you trust all of them to never get hacked?
Magma May 13th 2010 2:16PM
Brin you're still missing the point. I want to be able to chat across realm/faction and I'm fine if they see my alts. Why are you telling me they need my name for that? And if that's not what you mean stop saying then don't use it.
brin_adur May 13th 2010 2:27PM
@magma---I honestly have no idea what point you are trying to convey. I really dont. But im going to take a stab at addressing what i think your point is.
If you dont want someone to know your name, why would you befriend them in the first place? Maybe it is just me, but i generally dont talk to people outside of my guild (there are obvious exceptions, of course), and generally the most i say to someone in a random dungeon is "hi" and "thanks for the easy badges".
Sister Christian May 13th 2010 2:31PM
FYI, actually you currently cannot turn off or control the friends of friends feature. You can control broadcasts were are slightly different.
brin_adur May 13th 2010 2:38PM
@Sister
It appears they changed that from the SCII beta RealID system. But let's face it: Blizz is not stupid. If they were stupid, we wouldnt be shelling out $15+ a month to them. It is fairly obvious that something that essential would be implemented.
Tori May 13th 2010 2:41PM
@ Sister
Don't forget that this is still a PTR thing. I'm sure the features aren't finalized yet, and since the SC II beta currently has the option to turn that off I'm sure WoW will get that as well.
Magma May 13th 2010 2:46PM
@brin
My point is that I have friends and we enjoy talking. I don't need to share real life info to enjoy talking with someone. None of these features even have a valid reason for using your real name.
Sister Christian May 13th 2010 2:45PM
I don't think they see it as essential. Or rather they are intentionally ignoring that for some reason. They are smart people, they couldn't have missed most of the things we are pointing out... so therefore that must be another reason. I think they are intentionally trying to blur the line between the character and the player. I don't know why, I have mentioned some of my ideas in other comments. It's pretty obvious they want your characters and activity in blizzard games to be tied to who you really are.
Hell it could be that this is some edict from Activision, and Blizzard is trying to make this thing so unsafe that no one will use it.
Tori May 13th 2010 2:49PM
Wear your tinfoil hats now if you must, but it's far too early to be jumping the gun when these features aren't even live yet. ;)
Sister Christian May 13th 2010 4:08PM
@Tori
That's kinda why I am trying to make as big of a stink about this as possible. I want Blizz to get it right. So far I don't have much hope. Currently this is the type of thing where it's "bad" but not "quitting the game bad" however that could change.
Lee Weaver May 13th 2010 1:51PM
On the test realm forum a topic came up that the "Blue" advised would better be served if posted in another area, since the "Blue's" on the test realm forums don't do Dev work.
With the new Battle.net chat features I have to give my E-mail address to someone so they can add me or they have to give me theirs. This is fact as posted by Dresorull a Blue on the test realm forums.
This breaks account security by giving someone your account user name since battle.net requires the use of a e-mail address as a username.
Granted it's only part of the equation, but it is still giving away "Sensitive" information. Anyone with any sort of a security consciousness about them will use a unique e-mail address that was created specifically for this use, and for nothing else, and it's probably a random string to prevent guessing.
Handing it out to people this defeats this purpose.
So either Blizzard either:
A) Doesn't take account security as seriously as they say they do.
Or
B) Doesn't really want this "Feature" used.
This isn't a potential problem, it's a full scale IT security calamity in the making and Blizzard is blindly stumbling forward without even considering that there could even possibly be a problem with it.
Sister Christian May 13th 2010 2:20PM
Lee, I can think of several options off the top of my head.
Blizzard signed a deal with facebook, the only way that will work is if they tie your in game name to your real name for use in facebook.
There probably have been several problems over the years due to accounts being virtually anonymous, by starting this up in a seemingly innocuous way it makes future changes more tolerable by the player base.
Blizzard doesn't like account sharing or selling, with Real ID enabled it makes more obvious when that occurs.
Blizzard probably has several future game features designed with Real ID in mind... Maybe a iPhone Premium App of some sort. Just guessing. By starting with this and sticking to it the way they have, it's saying that Real ID is important to Blizzard, which scares me.
Don't get me wrong, the x-game, x-realm chatting is aweome and I wantz it!! But it is very dangerous to use Real ID.
TR May 13th 2010 5:07PM
This is a very valid and real concern considering there may be Facebook and other "social network" connections. Facebook is currently coming under fire for making marketing preferences (as AOL did years ago) and profile visibility/activity visible by default. When I joined Facebook I made everything in my profile except my name Friends only. After recently reading that they'd changed these things to open to the web, I went back and learned that not only was Name, Location, Age visible to web searches, but Friends of friends, and applications like Docs.com could pull all the other information out BY DEFAULT. It's a maze to try and go back and reset all of these things to the way they originally were.
It becomes more than a question of the security inherent in Real ID, but also that of the network they're connected to. Blizzard always suggests not to give your real email address out, but if another app or social network can pull that data automatically and that other app or network gets hacked....
Malvyn May 13th 2010 1:55PM
I for one have a few privacy concern issues with the current options. As it stands now. But, it's in the beta phase and I have high hopes for how this could change the game for the better. I'd like to see them implement the ability to que for dungeons with people you've met on other realms that you thought were cool and added to your friendslist. Currently, if you've met some cool people for randoms and they're on other realms, without exchanging contact info -- you never get to see them again. Unless someone makes an alt on the other realm or pays RL money to transfer which isn't always possible/convient.
Lissanna May 13th 2010 2:40PM
You aren't going to be able to add acquaintances to your friends' list cross-server, because that requires you to give the person your RL name & e-mail, so it's never going to be useful for this purpose (and if you do use it for that purpose, it's going to greatly compromise your account & personal security, and leave you open for RL harassment).
BattleNet May 13th 2010 1:56PM
I was just hoping they would integrate a system to allow cross-server chatting by adding friends with their Username@ServerName. I don't want to give out my e-mail and real name to my RL friends because one of them has recently been hacked, and if that happens again I would probably be their next target. Maybe they could have everyone pick separate usernames to connect across game, but that would get messy, I suppose.