I’m excited about the Real ID system. I left behind a lot of friends on my US PvP server, because the timezone wouldn’t work for me, and I wanted to try Horde, too. Now I play Horde on an Oceanic server, but I miss my buddies back on Mannoroth.

With the new system, the people I’m already close to but can’t chat with in-game (due to cross-server and cross-faction boundaries) will seem as if they’re right there with me, on Cael.

My plan is to level a character or two on that server come Cataclysm – for fun, while I’m not busy on Keeva. I’m excited to think that maybe I’ll be playing on Cael and one of my Manno buddies will be all like, “Hey Keevz, log on, we need a healer!” and such. Very nifty. And I won’t have to guild all of my 50 billion lowbie alts just to have some company – I can roll on some obscure server to kill some time, but still have people to chat to in-game.

Am I worried about FoF lists (friends of my RealID friends) seeing my real name? Nah. It’s like Facebook. I can go look at all the people on my sister’s friends list, but they’re just random names to me. Unless I already know someone on that list (and therefore already know their real name), then they’re all meaningless. RealID FoF will be the same – if they see my real name on someone’s list, they’ll either know who I am already, or they won’t have a clue. It won’t give out my character names or email, so people will need to know me already to make the connection that I play Keeva.

And the people I know and chat with generally know my name anyway – many of them are on my IM lists, Facebook, or have had my email and name details for ages. Some even have address and phone details. They know my name, my face, my email, where I grew up, the fact that I like cheese and tomato sandwiches, and I can’t stand Jimmy Barnes’ music. I’m happy for those guys to be on my Real ID list. I can’t wait to add them, so that we can chat about random stuff while we play.

But, I do understand that many people don’t want to link their real name with their characters, and I don’t blame them for that. I do think Blizz should create a “toggle real name/nickname” feature – I can’t imagine it would be difficult. There should really be a choice to show your details, and also a choice to toggle FoF view off, if you don’t like the idea of your name (meaningless as it is) appearing on someone’s list.

I also question whether it’s a great idea to have people passing their login email back and forth. Obviously you should only do this with people that you trust, and once the email is entered into the system, it isn’t displayed to your friends at all, but wouldn’t it be better and more secure to invites work via character name, so that emails are never revealed at all?

Overall though, I’m very much looking forward to testing it out and chatting with my long-lost US buddies – as well as Aussie buddies that are on different Oceanic servers.

I won’t be friending many people, though, and I doubt I’ll friend many people that are in my guild (they can already reach me, and don’t really need to see my alts). I’ll mostly be using it to catch up with people from other servers, rather than keeping in constant contact with people on my own. I’ve also informed my boyfriend that we can be “Battlenet buddies” and chat endlessly while I play WoW and he plays Starcraft.


He didn’t seem very enthusiastic, which was odd..



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