Tuesday (22 Jun) - Anti-Social, Old fashioned or Just Weird

Tuesday (22 Jun) - Anti-Social, Old fashioned or Just Weird

A strange title for a post about the latest patch, 3.3.5, which went live this morning. The servers are still down but there will be a crush of players trying to get into the new raid dungeon, Ruby Sanctum, the second those servers come up. Massive excitement, and massive lag, will reign for a few days until the novelty wears off. Ruby Sanctum (RS) has only one boss with a few mini-bosses similar to the Obsidium Sanctum. The new loot will be welcome, and Wild is certainly looking forward to getting in there. For now it's uncertain whether RS will become a scheduled weekly run or not. It will certainly be PUGed to death once it's secrets have been plumbed and strategies defined.

The only other major release from the patch is Real ID. The background behind this starts with how game accounts were handled. I have two WoW accounts, Wild's and Philly's. Those accounts were at one time managed completely independently with their own account information (password, login ID, etc). A few months ago Blizzard forced the merger of all such accounts (multiple accounts owned by the same person, to include all of Blizzard's games, not just WoW) under the same account called a Battlenet account. I resisted this because of the obvious question of account security - hack one account and under Battlenet both accounts are at risk, instead of just one. After being forced into a Battlenet account, I'll admit it's more convenient, although I did purchase an Authenticator key for better security.

This was all backend stuff, though, not anything that affected the game itself. Using Battlenet, though, Blizzard has now expanded it's capabilities in what is called Real ID, which was released with this patch.

Using Real ID is voluntary. It's an in game system that expands on the existing Friends List. The original Friends list simply listed the character name, allowing players to see a list of friends in game and as they login or logout. If a player has more than one character (as all do) then every character name had to be entered if you wanted to find that player in game, or you had to know who all that players other characters were.

When players agree to become Friends under Real ID, their real name is displayed in the friends list, along with whatever character they are on. No matter what character that player is playing, he will show up in the friends list. This ability extends across Blizzard games as well. Someone playing Starcraft online will be able to contact a Real ID friend playing Warcraft. Real ID friends playing on different factions (one playing on his horde character and the other on his alliance character) can chat with each other, something never allowed before. Messages can be broadcast to all Real ID Friends, and players can set a status that tells friends whether they are Available, Away, or Busy.

Now, I'm a person who doesn't use twitter, or facebook, or any other social networking site. I'm not anti-tech - I use email, a cell phone, a blackberry, etc. I'm not anti-friends - I have many friends and family who do use those things. More power to them. But I am a private person that has a more limited idea of how much personal information and access should be shared over the internet.

How does that relate to WoW? Well, I've often alluded to some of the things I'll just say plainly here. Not only do I have two accounts, and not only do I have toons in four different guilds, I also have two private guilds just for me. The private guilds are mostly to make use of the guild bank space I can get, but it's also to provide a little privacy when I want it. For example, it took a long time for me to decide to let Philly join the MM guild. That exposed Philly to an entire guild of new people who only knew me as Wild. Philly will never be able to play "under the radar" ever again, because she and Wild are now the same to both the MM and FS guilds. I don't regret doing that since I want Philly to grow into a raiding toon, but it did change how I play her, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

Under Real ID,frankly it bothers me that every move of every one of my toons in the game can now be tracked by anyone I accept as a Real ID Friend. Yes, it is voluntary. Yes, I can set my status to Busy if I want. But there also does not appear to be any way to opt out on a character by character, or account by account, basis. It's in all the way or not at all. Which gets to the real question. How will other players feel about those of us who would prefer not to participate in Real ID? Am I anti-social? Am I just an old geezer not in tune with the times? Am I just weird? Or all of the above?

One aspect of that is how important Real ID will become to guilds. Will it become something that guild leaders will demand of guildies, like Vent, or using the in game calendar, in order to be able to contact guildies regardless of what toon they are on? Will guildies who opt out of that be seen as not being as supportive of the guild as they should be? Will turning down a request to become a Real ID Friend be seen as dissing or rejecting that player?

I treasure my in game friends and enjoy their company whether we are doing something together or off doing our own thing. Those that know me know my little foibles, so I'm not really worried on that front. However, it is going to take some time for me to find the right balance of companionship and privacy with this new system, if I opt to use it at all.