Posts with tag friends-list

Ever since the Real ID friend system was announced, players have voiced concerns about hackers and phishers exploiting this system. They're worried that hackers will move through a group of Real ID friends like a wildfire during a drought. While it is always good to have concerns about account security, sometimes paranoia is a bit too much.

Yes, you do need your friend's email address to add them as a Real ID friend. However, that is the last time you'll ever see that email address in your game client -- once you hit the "Send Request" button, that's it. There is no way to look up that person's email address from the interface again. The only personal information in the client after that is your friend's name.

Just remember that this system is meant for your real-life friends and family and not for some guy who was a good healer in your ICC PUG last week. If you don't know where to go to knock on the person's door if something happens to your account, then don't share your email address.

Blizzard has just announced that you will be able to pull your Facebook friends into your Battle.net friends list. They will be testing this functionality soon in the StarCraft II beta. Since we know that the Battle.net functionality will come to WoW before Cataclysm, that means we'll be able to import our Facebook friends into our WoW friends list at that time. This is just another example of the worlds of Facebook and MMOs colliding.

Vaneras -- Battle.net Facebook Integration

The action taking place on the battlefield is just one part of the StarCraft II experience -- we're also working to make sure that you can easily connect, communicate, and play with your friends. To help accomplish that, the new version of Battle.net will offer integration with Facebook. This new functionality will start off by allowing you to quickly import Facebook friends into your Battle.net friends list, and additional features will be added over time.

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Of course, the integration will be voluntary. This announcement does not mean that all those friends you have in Facebook just to increase your mafia will automatically know you are playing WoW. You will choose if you want to integrate and which friends to import.

The full PR announcement after the break.

As noted in my previous article on the subject, the new and improved Battle.net won't affect only StarCraft II -- among other things, the Real ID feature will allow you to see what other Blizzard games your real-life friends or acquaintances are playing, should they desire it. But that's apparently not the only perk for WoW players. Blizzard recently announced that migration of WoW accounts to Battle.net accounts will soon be mandatory, and posted a FAQ about it on the official website; one detail immediately caught my eye...

What will change in World of Warcraft after the forced migration?

The core gameplay experience will remain unchanged as a result of the migration. However, you'll be able to take part in all of the new Battle.net features, such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat.

That's right. Got a friend that plays Horde and you play Alliance? You'll be able to talk to them from inside WoW, even if they're on a different server. Heck, even if they're playing StarCraft II or Diablo 3, you'll still be able to chat with them. How cool is that?

To quell some concerns that'll surely get posted in the comments, the extent that others can utilize your Real ID is completely up to you. You decide who gets to see what information and to what extent -- if you want your best friend to be able to see what game you're playing or what server you're on, you can do that, but you can also prevent your annoying cousin from pestering you to play StarCraft II while you're raiding. No, Jeff, I actually can wait for you to "pwn" me. Gots to get me some purps.

I play several characters often. I also like to keep track of people I pug with who play well, friends who are not in the guild, etc. The built-in friends lists works pretty well, especially now that it supports notes, but it is kept separately for each character, which makes it difficult to keep track of everybody at once. Sounds like a job for an addon!

A job for Friend & Ignore Share, to be specific. F&IS is a low-configuration, drop-in solution to my problem. After it's installed, your friends lists will automatically be synchronized between all your characters. Also, by default, your alts are all added to your friends lists for easier mailing auto-complete. Ignore lists are also synchronized, as the name suggests, although this is responsible for some "player not found" errors at log-in (players need to be online to be added to the ignore list).

You've got friends, or at least you tell people you do. In fact, through your days of rolling PUG's, random premades and adding that Resto Shaman who saved your behind in STV, you've got a long list of friends. If you're anything like me, it can be weeks before one of your randomly added friends checks in with you, giving you plenty of time to forget why they were your friend in the first place.

Enter AuldLangSyne, an addon that combines the functionality of CT_PlayerNotes and FriendsFacts. I have also been able to replace Fubar_GuildFu and Fubar_FriendsFu with this one, so it has come in quite handy. Let me just take a second to show my deep appreciation for developer's who add Fubar or Titan Panel embeds to their addons.

So then, what can this addon do for you? Keep reading to find out about the features AuldLangSyne provides.