I am Ixobelle. I am also Richard Ericksen. I don't have a huge deal with people knowing that, and one of the first articles I wrote over at NotAddicted concerned online Anonymity, and how silly I feel it is.
That said, I'm going to back up Hatch on this one and say that RealID is probably not the greatest move Blizzard has made. People are rushing to cash in on the Farmville/Facebook train, and I'm not exactly huge on either of those platforms, either.
I have three RealID friends right now, but I intend to break the functionality. I've gone through and changed my battlenet (and hence WoW) login to a gmail account that I created specifically for RealID. I've changed my billing address to
Street: A
City, State, Zip: A, AA 00000
(AA is Alaska, I guess? I had to choose something from the drop down.)
and I've changed my phone number to (000) 000-0000.
My NAME, though, remains unchanged, but not because I didn't try to change it. The name field on Battle.net isn't changeable. I tried to call Blizz on the phone, and this is what I got:
hmm. Must be handling a bunch of calls on the same topic?
I know Blizzard isn't wild about changing the billing name on an account to try and curb account selling, but really? What if someone takes over an account and just uses game cards? Um, I think I've just seen through your crazy defense system. Yes, it's a potential hassle that you couldn't auto bill to a credit card, but I really don't think it would be that big of a deal. I've cancelled my WoW subscription recently anyway as my guild died, and I find myself with no time to play on my own anyway. If/when I do play more, I have no problem using game cards myself if it will get the point across. I don't expect it WILL get any points across, but what the hell. I don't litter even though I probably could... right?
When Battle.net became required, I had to change the Owner Name of one of my accounts anyway (it was registered to Ramona Quimby), so I know it's possible. Whether they'll let you do it now that they're so close to having your Facebook friends list in their grasp remains to be seen.
Once I actually get through I'll keep you posted. I may even record it for shits and post the convo up here.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Changing My Name
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4 comments:
The AA for the state is for when you're sending to an APO address, for overseas military. Alaska is AK.
Damn babies, always in the background gurbling and stealing all the focus. Attention-seekers, thats all they are.
Ehm, anyways, I agree very much with you. When we in Europe get the opportunity to try this out, I do not think I will use it except for one of two very close friends who play on a different server.
I've always seen realID as more of an google-wave or google-buzz type of thing than farmville. Especially because noone uses them.
My parter and I have two accounts, but they both bill to my credit card. I turned on RealID for the sole purpose of being able to whisper her links and such while on different servers — I don't want to give anyone else the ability to identify and track all of my alts. However, every damn time she logs between characters I get a notice of the log off AND log on, and it's driving me nuts.
The icing on the cake? When she sends me a message, it's FROM ME. When I write her? It's FROM ME. That flood of log on/off announcements? Telling ME that I'M logging online. Screw the privacy concerns, they didn't even get the structural stuff right. If you tie to existing billing names, you're gonna have problems. One of the million reasons that permitting pseudonyms would be better for the users! It's effing ridiculous, I'm scrapping the entire thing.
Broken Toys brought up an interesting point, in that RealID chat allows you to effectively chat Horde to Alliance without even needing an alt (or 3rd party IM app), thereby circumventing their OWN rules for cross faction communication.
/sigh
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