Don't be daft. 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.

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.

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.

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. :)

wrong sister. You can turn that off.

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?

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.

@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".

FYI, actually you currently cannot turn off or control the friends of friends feature. You can control broadcasts were are slightly different.

@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.

@ 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.

@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.

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.

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. ;)

@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.