A hollow victory
We won; no real names on the forums.
It’s a hollow victory though – because (like many others) I feel that something has changed, now. They hid the knowledge of the Real ID plan from us. When they introduced it in-game, I thought it was a nifty thing. I’d missed my cross-server buddies. I liked using it. But, shortly after that, they announced the forums plan – which, obviously, had been in planning for a long time – so why did they pretend that Real ID in your friends list was the full extent of the plan for now?
I feel deceived.
And because I feel deceived, I’m not sure I can ever really believe them again, nor stop worrying about when the next big announcement will be, and at what cost.
I want to leave this game when either A) real life drags me away (kicking and screaming), OR B) the game actually ends. But for the first time, I saw myself quitting. Real ID on your friends list, and even on the forums – I can handle that. But the question was – where next? In the armory? In trade chat? In mouseover tooltips?
I don’t subscribe to most of the arms-flailing, slippery slope cries – but after this, it’s hard to ignore that we could be heading towards a transformation, chipping away at our privacy (and immersion) bit by bit, until we’re all playing World of FacebookCraft.
And the sad, sad realisation for me was that if they did that, I simply couldn’t continue to support them. I can’t support a company that thinks it is ok to share everyone’s personal information. None of us signed up for that.
RealID can be a COOL feature, a feature that people will LOVE and embrace – but ONLY if you listen to us when we tell you the features that we need included – like the ability to hide from friends-of-friends, to use aliases if we want (after all, once we’ve found our RL buddies, they can add a note to say “this is Keeva”), and ways to appear offline. And NEVER force it on us, or make it opt-out only.
Treat us like you value us. Give us the features we need, and make it opt-IN.
I would hate to leave – I love the game, and I love this blog especially, and I’m not ready to give it up. But yesterday, I was genuinely concerned that the time to quit was somewhere around the corner. Blizzard’s statements don’t do anything to ease my concerns:
Q: Is there a possibility that a future game will require a person to use their real identity?
A: We haven’t announced any plans along these lines.
Sidestepping makes me a little nervous (not that ANY of us are surprised that it’s a “not at this time” response). I don’t think this is over.
I am not normally a cynical person – and excuse the melodrama – but this hit me pretty hard, and I felt pretty depressed over it. I saw my beloved game going downhill, and fast, because the bosses at Activision Blizzard don’t seem to be in touch with their customers. It seems that this time, 50,000+ voices made a difference, and they listened. But that doesn’t for one second convince me that they are actually in touch with us after all.
For now, I’ll keep playing, keep enjoying, keep looking forward to Cataclysm.
But I’m afraid I see this as a stay of execution, not a pardon.
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This entry was posted by Keeva on July 10, 2010 at 11:25 AM, and is filed under Changes, Community. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. Comment Policy - Comments are welcome! I don't mind at all if you disagree with what I have to say here, provided that a) you are civil about it, and b) you do not try to dictate what I should or shouldn't be writing on my blog. This is my corner of the web, and I reserve the right to edit or delete comments that I deem to be offensive. |
My name is Emma and I live in Australia. I’ve been gaming on and off since I was about 11. I won’t tell you exactly how long ago that was, let’s just say long enough.
about 1 year ago
Reposted from Gnomeaggedon, originally from Achtung Panzercow (http://panzercow.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/yub-yub-thats-ewok-for-we-won/):
“But rest assured that I will never take anything they say at simple face value ever again, and nor should you. With their claim that “this is just to de-troll the forums!1!”, they insulted my intelligence. I don’t like that.”
about 1 year ago
Recent events are certainly cause for cynicism, Keeva, and I won’t deny sharing in your distrust of Blizzard and their level of commitment to their customers.
I have to disagree, however, with labeling this a hollow victory. IMHO, the thousands of voices who spoke out against the Real ID change succeeded in drawning a very clear line in the sand that Blizzard (or any other game developer) knows now they cannot cross.
It’s a scary thought to imagine, cutting ties with a game that has brought us so much entertainment for so long, but take comfort in knowing that we (the players) can still dictate to the developers where the boundaries are. As long as we are willing to fight those battles, we will be free to enjoy this great game the way we always have.
Just the ramblings of an old idealist… take it for what it’s worth.
Beck´s last blog ..Back that thang up
about 1 year ago
First and foremost, businesses are in the business of making money. We can pretty it up and believe that they “care” or would go above and beyond to merely please their customers, but honestly at the end of the day, it comes down to (current and future) profits.
While you may discount the slippery slope tinfoil hat wearing basement trolls, I think what we saw this past week was part of what they have planned for their unannounced MMO. I think once the Facebook integration was announced for their current games, the unmentioned little secret was that it was the heart and soul of their new unannounced property.
I’m fairly certain that RealID will be front and center in the new game and arbitrarily thought they could slowly standardize things across all their platforms and bring unity across their universes.
Also, I’m certain there was likely a big spoonful of group think thrown in for good measure. They all thought it was a good idea, so they thought we’d be gung-ho about it. After all, who foolishly would put their name out there for thousands of angry trolls as an example? Did you honestly believe they wouldn’t be calling his mother within 5 minutes of the posting, just out of spite?
Lastly, if you have any reservations about how much Blizzard values their customers, I’d like to direct you to their Customer Service forums? Customer Service is a horrible business, trying to balance staffing and employee retention against the desire to make as much profit as possible. Look at how many days it takes to get a response for run of the mill requests. How long have they been experiencing “elevated level of calls/tickets”?
They’d rather burn out their employees than staff appropriately so they’d have a moderate workload. I believe wholeheartedly that they try their little hearts out, but those CS folks are in the middle of it and eventually lose their soul.
At any rate, keep up the good work Keeva. I’m fairly new to your blog, but it would be a shame to see your postings disappear or lose any of their enthusiasm. Hopefully in a couple weeks the whole RealID thing will slip from everyone’s mind and we can go back to complaining about the loss of tree form.
about 1 year ago
Thanks Bob! Love your work, by the way.
about 1 year ago
Thanks for your thoughts, Keeva. I, like you, don’t know that I’ll ever feel the same way about this company again. I trusted then 5 years ago when I entered in my name rather than a fake one to form my account. That trust has been betrayed and they’ll never get it back. Blizzard will never get my real name again, because I’ll always remember what they tried to do with it.
Let’s hope that Beck is right, though, and that the line in the sand is clear. Because as The Who (a nice band name considering the circumstances, eh?) reminds us, “don’t get fooled again”.
about 1 year ago
Thank you for this post Keeva. You’ve summed up my feelings on this. On the one hand, it’s great to see a huge portion of the community come together to protest a horrid change, and actually see real results. On the other hand, something about Neth’s post fills me with a sense of foreboding. I guess it’s because it sounds very temporary – “We’re not putting it on the forums for Cata launch.” All these recent moves have left me feeling very betrayed. Now I look at her post as reading “well, we won’t put it in right away, but it’s not off the table by a long shot.”
RealID, if done right, could be a huge positive for the game. Make it a master nickname (no real names please!), disable the friends-of-friends part, and add an anon feature so people can alt in peace when they need a break.
I guess what it comes down to is, the way they handled the whole mess, from just announcing it out of the blue to deleting threads asking legitimate questions and forcing people to use the monster thread that grew far faster than anyone could read, rubbed me the wrong way. It makes me wish I hadn’t signed up with my real name now. Blizzard lost my trust, and while this victory helps, they have a long way to go to earn it back.
about 1 year ago
I’ll just leave this here…
I TOLD YOU SO
I’ve been saving that one up.
about 1 year ago
Yes dear.
Keeva´s last blog ..Slayer of Dragons
about 1 year ago
That doesn’t work on me.
about 1 year ago
Curses.
Keeva´s last blog ..Slayer of Dragons
about 1 year ago
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.
We will never really know if it was an honest mistake, a failed attempt to slip one past us or a Byzantine PR exercise. There will probably be another crisis and when there is, there will be another chance to get it changed. Until then, I prefer not to let the hurt overwhelm the many years of enjoyment Blizz have charged me a very modest fee for.
Sorry if this sounds preachy, I play WoW and have poor social skills. You sounded down. BTW excellent idea about community moderation.
about 1 year ago
Good post Keeva, I feel the exact same way. This signifies a major paradigm shift for Blizzard. In the past, they treated Azeroth as their baby, and did their best to make WoW the best MMORPG it could be for the players and community.
That time has unfortunately ended. Honestly, I think we’ll look back at this as the beginning of the end for WoW. Blizzard is no longer giving gamers what we want, but instead of they’re trying to shove garbage we don’t want down our throats.