[Air-L] Fwd: Blizzard Forums will soon display real name

Thu Jul 8 10:03:35 PDT 2010

Hi,

I conducted part of my research on the social aspects of World of
Warcraft and had an account opened with Blizzard. Below, there is the
official communication regarding Real ID which I received from
Blizzard. What is interesting enough, when clicking on the FAQ link,
the FAQ part is displayed in Polish (?). I used Google translate and
they appear to say that, although for the game the Real ID is
voluntary and optional, the people who post on the forums will appear
with their real names. This move appears to question the tradition of
openness linked to anonymity that Internet has.

I do agree that Blizzard did their homework regarding the
connectedness between online and offline, people enjoying to play with
friends, and the hipe of social networking websites (as Luca noticed)
and, perhaps, try to take advantage of this in the wake of the
launching of StarCraftII. I speculate that all their efforts go now
into the new game. Thus, they want to absorb part of the player base
already at hand. And what better way to do this than by maintaining
the in-game associations of players and 'transport' them to the new
game? At the same time, the move will assure that the WoW forums will
be kept free of unwanted 'flaming wars' and the moderators could focus
on the forums of the new game. This is all just a speculation, but I
am curious what do you think.

"Soon, World of Warcraft® players will have access to a brand-new
feature called Real ID, a completely voluntary and optional level of
identity that will keep players connected across all of Battle.net®.

When you and a friend mutually agree to become Real ID friends, you'll
have access to a number of additional features that will enrich your
social gaming experience in new and exciting ways:

Real Names for Friends: Your Real ID friends will appear under their
real-life names on your friends list, when chatting, communicating
in-game, or viewing a character's profile. Real ID friends can also
see whos on each others Real ID friends list, making it easy for
players to connect with other people they know.

Cross-Realm and Cross-Game Chat: With Real ID, friends can chat
cross-realm and cross-faction in World of Warcraft, and will be able
to chat across future Blizzard games such as StarCraft® II.

Rich Presence: See additional info on your friends list about what
your Real ID friends are up to in World of Warcraft and upcoming games
like StarCraft II in real time.

Broadcasts: Broadcast a short status message for all of your Real ID
friends to see, whether you want to issue a call-to-arms or let your
friends know about an important change of plans.

Friend Once, See All Characters: Real ID friends will automatically
see all of each other's characters on their friends list even
characters created in future Blizzard games helping players stay
connected with the people they enjoy playing with most.

 Getting Started:
To send a Real ID friend request to another player, youll simply enter
his or her Battle.net account name (an email address) using the Add
Friend function in-game. The other player will see the pending request
in their friends list, and if they accept, you will become Real ID
friends with each other.

Real ID Parental Controls:
With the launch of Real ID, we will be updating our Parental Controls,
giving parents the ability to decide whether their child can
participate in Real ID. Well be sending an email to existing Parental
Controls users with more information once the feature becomes
available.

Real ID is scheduled to launch with World of Warcraft patch 3.3.5;
keep an eye on www.wow-europe.com for details.

For more information on Real ID, visit the Real ID webpage or check
out the Real ID FAQ.

You can find out how Blizzard safeguards user information by reading
our Online Privacy Policy.

-The Battle.net Team''

Best regards,
Dana Zabet
PhD student
School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent at Canterbury, UK

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Luca Rossi <luca.rossi at uniurb.it>
Date: Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Air-L] Blizzard Forums will soon display real name
To: air-l <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>

Blizzard and Facebook are moving fast along the social gaming path.
This seems to be the consequence of a couple of assumption that have
been largely done during the last years:
- online experience is everyday more connected with our everyday
offline experience.
- we share online spaces with our real friends, with our class mates,
colleagues from works etc.
- we love to play with with our friends while we spend a lot of time in sns.

The battle.net 2.0 will bring the gaming experience within Blizzards
game to a new level of continuity with non-gaming online experience.
What's wrong with that? Still not sure, but I'm wondering what's going
to be the impact on the "minority" that wants to keep their gaming
experience far away from their public presence or to all the role
players out there. But those, anyway, are small numbers and I really
don't think Blizzard or FB will think about them.

l.

--
Luca Rossi
LaRiCA - Advanced Communication Laboratory
Faculty of Sociology - "Carlo Bo" University, Urbino
luca.rossi at uniurb.it
T. +39 0722 305726 F. +39 0722 305727
http://larica.uniurb.it/redline
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