Comments on: The Obligatory WTT:[RP] Real ID Post

By: Itanya Blade

Itanya Blade — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 16:04:04 +0000

Oh hell woman, I really hope that those things you listed came out of our conversation. When I broached you about the topic of Real ID, I was just asking. Hell, I totally understand not wanting to do it. For the way I play, it is not a big deal. I don’t have secret alts, mostly because I simply seem to be able to play WoW and not tell people.

I have no problems with a large portion of my friends having my Real ID. I also don’t feel slighted when friends don’t want me to have their Real ID. It’s a bloody choice, for god’s sake.

I know that a lot of people keep saying ‘I have them on my gtalk, or they have my phone #.” The thing is, I like the ease of not having to tab out of game to talk to those people. People need to make their own decisions and their friends need to respect that decision.

By: Corise

Corise — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:49:05 +0000

This pretty much sums up my feelings about the feature in a nutshell. I know some of my friends (who are, in fact, my real-life friends who know my name and email and all that sort of thing) are using RealID, and I feel a little bad for telling them that I don’t feel comfortable with it… but the thing is, if any of those real-life friends (and quite a few of my closest online friends) want to get in touch with me? They know most of my alts already (most of my public alts are in at least one RP channel). They have my email addresses and IM info. We post on several of the same forums. A few of them follow my twitter feed. And some of them have my actual phone number. If they can’t get in touch with me in any of those ways? I probably don’t want anyone getting in touch with me at all at the moment.

Also, I don’t want folks I might not know (friends of friends) to be able to see my real name in-game like that. Yeah, it’s probably a silly and irrational reservation on my part. Yeah, if someone was determined enough, they could track down that information and more from other sources online. That doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want my real name associated quite so closely and immediately with my WoW characters.

By: Teuthida

Teuthida — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:18:53 +0000

I’d settle for #2 and #3! But you have nailed it: accessibility is the key here, not privacy per se. I remain undecided on Real ID; I may give it a whirl, but its utility for me depends on which of my friends are using it, of course, and since most of us are pretty well agreed that it’s not so great without an invisible feature and a “private alts” feature at the least (and I wouldn’t mind being able to sign up under the name of “Ovistine Lighthammer”, either — a name that people would actually recognize rather than one that makes most of them go “eh?”, even if they’ve been raiding with me for years), it may not be much good for me just yet.

I hold out some hope that they’ll implement the invisible feature, at least. We’ll see!

By: Tryston

Tryston — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 20:15:33 +0000

I found, after a great deal of thought, that RealID will be something that has utterly no use to me in regards to WoW play. Everyone that could potentially need to contact me has a number of means to do so: GTalk for a select few, the realm forums, the TRI forums, or the Rider boards, Facebook, etc.

A use for it that Jackie and I are both quite interested in is for the people we do not play WoW with. Friends who are going to play Starcraft 2, or Diablo 3, who we would love to have more avenues of communication with. For me, running out of game messenger conversations while running WoW gets hectic, so having something built into the game that I can use to talk to my SC2 buddies or Diablo gamers appeals… but only for that reason.