Decoding Dragons

RealID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices

When I first heard of the latest news from Blizzard, that our Real Names will be visible when we post on the new forum system (this change will not be retroactively implemented) I spent about 40 minutes typing out an impassioned rant talking about privilege and how many people are oblivious to the concerns of others. Then I had to raid, and then the internet and twitter exploded and I figured it would be better to sleep on it. This news is definitely not surprising (and quick on it’s heels was the reveal of a security flaw in the current in-game implementation of Real ID.)For every person putting their real name out there, there are hundreds more that are horrified at this change. Personally I suspect I will post on the forums with my real name, but with no connection to this blog or my characters visible. The reason I will do so I will go into later in this post. Warning, this post is going to be a long one as it is going to cover analysis of additional new forum features.

First I shall start out by linking to the ‘official’ threads – a 49 page thread at battle.net, a 1000+ page thread on the US forums, and another 140 page thread on the EU forums. Chastity over at Righteous Orbs perfectly encapsulates my visceral reaction to everyone who has answered the outcry against RealID with “‘lol i can share my name it’s totes not a problem stalkers aren’t real” or even “All the people objecting are probably trolls anyways.” My blogroll is full of folk objecting to this change, with only a few coming out in agreement with Activision (or at least calling everyone who objects paranoid.)

Trolls won’t stop

Lack of anonymity does not remove trolling. People are quite willing to put their real names to misogynistic, racist speech and harassment all over Facebook. ‘Real Names’ is not some magic pill that is going to make everyone act politely. Physical proximity to a person doesn’t do that – going to a club I can see a person’s FACE and that doesn’t prevent them from groping me without my consent. Walking down the street I can be subjected to sexual harassment by strangers (who I can clearly identify). The idea that a real name (which can still be false, as it appears that some folk can register fake names to their Real ID. I am unable to change the name on mine.) will increase accountability is false.

It will stop the ‘level 1 troll alt’ culture of course, but instead we will see a wave of fake Real ID accounts. To stop trolling they need to invest more money into enriching the moderation infrastructure. They need to invest in the individual forum communities, and stop treating them as one monolithic entity. On a day to day basis the only official forum I touch down on is the Realm Forum, and even on our tiny server it is under moderated.  More moderators and better tools for dealing with infractions, more transparency of moderation – this is what it takes to build a useful, thriving community.

Opt-in and Opt-out

‘Well don’t post then’. You opt-in to the new realid forums by posting. Currently many a Blizzard support email will simply tell you to participate on the forums. One of the ‘defences’ of the new system is that you don’t have to post. Blizzard will be legally obliged to inform posters what information will be made public if you chose to post, otherwise they really would be opening themselves up to lawsuits and the like. As it is, by reading the forum terms and being informed of the fact that your real name will be made publically available, Blizzard are likely to have covered their asses legally.

A problem with this is that Blizzard Technical Support is notorious for redirecting people to use the Technical Support forums. While I am not a fan of the current forum system (I have 8 years experience in managing large communities) I actually feel their public technical support is very good for what it is. While there are a lot of annoying bugs that don’t get solved, the CMs are generally on the balls and the stickies are brilliant resources. Having to opt out of this because Activision decided that Real Names are worth losing the voices of Marginalised Groups  for is extremely disheartening.

Silencing Marginalised Voices

Now, in order to not share your name, you can no longer participate in any community discussions. If you have a concern (tinfoil or legitimate) about your privacy, you can no longer make your voice known without revealing personal information. Part of Blizzard’s Mission Statement is “Every Voice Matters” : Mine apparently no longer does. So much for “Lead Responsibly”.

Are Real Names really worth losing and alienating these marginalised gamers? Blizzard isn’t giving out your name without your permission if you post, but the net-effect of this change will just mean a lot of constructive voices not posting. Another white 20 something male posting his real name and saying ‘go on google men’ is just displaying his privilege, he is not convincing anyone that using a real name is a safe thing to do on-line, especially after 15 years of Government warnings about looking after your personal information.

The standard response to those of us saying we are worried about harassment is to not post. Way to go with being inclusive.

The New Comment System Will Be Abused

There has been remarkably little commentary on the new posting system. Not only will they bring back threaded comments (really? really? All the major forum software coders now provide flat listings as standard.) but they will also use wow.com style voting up and down. While it gives us as users the power to vote down horrible comments, it also gives arseholes the ability to silence people on the basis of their gender, or a name that reveals a particular ethnicity.

We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.

I can see the ‘vote down’ simply being used BY trolls (even with their real names) to silence the voices of others. This makes it even easier for the majority to silence and dismiss dissenting voices that don’t fit into ‘mainstream gamer culture’.  Currently it is possible to participate without revealing your gender, or to share a story about issues of gender, sexuality, ableism and even racism without attaching your toon or real name to it. That won’t be possible any more.

The Dangers of Online Stalking are REAL

I am fed up of seeing stalking dismissed by so many people. It may never have happened to you, but it can and does happen to a lot of people worldwide. We’ve all heard the extreme stories where people get murdered, or a Minor has been saved from a pedophile. However there are millions of women (and men, and non-heteronormative people) worldwide who experience daily harassment, both cultural and personal, and shouldn’t have to. This is a good link on how sexism is still wildly rampant when it comes to the tech and gaming communities (not to mention the prejudices faced by those with non-binary gender, sexuality, or people with disabilities.)

It is a legitimately dangerous and scary thing, even if it never progresses beyond anonymous comments on a blog, or anonymous email. It can escalate even further and impact on your career, your mental health, and your family. And often there is nothing you can do about it. Dealing with harassment is not something that can be simplified into ‘oh well, report him to the police then’ because the Police are not there to protect you 24/7 and they do have limited resources.

Context of information is important

“But all of your information is on facebook/the phonebook/the electoral roll!”

Hah. Right. Okay. I may end up getting harassed while I walk down the street, but my real name isn’t stamped across my forehead so I don’t have to worry about that harassment once I have left the area or gone home. Information is power, but without context it can be fairly meaningless. Unattached to anything on the internet, it floats. Once you attach it to things, then it starts becoming dangerous, a tool for harassers. A convenience for them, even.

I think this is especially true for roleplayers, who are taking the steps of immersion even further. While no one should have to be ashamed of a hobby, it doesn’t change the stigma attached to MMOs or to more old-fashioned roleplaying. The name on the WoW forums is a problem because it identifies you in a gaming context, specifically a very hostile and public one, and opens your name up to use by folk who will harass you via other mediums.

Part Two coming soon!

RealID Saga Part One: Silencing Voices was published on July 7th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 48 comments on this article so far.

Dragon Colours Matter and Pewter revisits RealID

Is Halion Pink or Purple? That’s what I want to know! The argument has kept my guild busy between pulls. The purple and pink factions get very passionate about their debate matter, it gets quite heated and there is blood, tears and broken gear before bed time.

I enjoyed the fight. I know a lot of people are /yawning at it, and it has already been beaten by many people, but in my guild we’ve learned to take things at our own pace. We’re a large bunch of friends having fun doing content together, and while we have some very talented players, we’re never going to be competing for even server firsts again. Also the heat on Thursday night probably didn’t help. Apparently one of our tanks was sweating so much his fingers were slipping on the keyboard.

Now there’s an image for you!

We actually started the attempts pretty well, but after 22:00 server time our group concentration dropped like a stone, and we started effing up (or over-thinking) Phase 2. It’s always demoralising when you start messing up a part of the fight that you thought you had in the bag. The trouble with heat is that apparently many of us Europeans just can’t handle it – and thus we have an extra distraction and all our individual capacities for error increase. Which means, for the entire 25 man raid, there is an even greater chance of someone dropping a Mark in the middle of the raid.

Yeah whatever Pewter, what about Halion?

A few brief points for Elemental Shaman

  1. Ghost Wolf is your friend on the pull (if your raid leader won’t let you use mounts) as it allows you to get in tight to Halion so that Searing Totem doesn’t bug out. (And it seriously needs to stop bugging out now.)
  2. Coordinate with other shamans in your raid about totems (and if you don’t do this already GET WITH THE COMMUNICATION) – in Phase 3 melee is likely to be in the Twilight realm, so it is preferable to have a shaman healer (or enhancement shaman) dropping melee totems, while you stick with WoA to buff the caster group in the Physical realm. This should be obvious, but of course we didn’t initially realise that the Resto Shaman was spending Phase 3 in the Twilight Realm.
  3. Don’t rely on one marked person to save your ass from the Twilight Cutters. It will make you (and the raid) lazy and you will all die when the marked person gets a little tired.

Real ID happened and Pewter’s world did not end

I am using the system, and only with a few people I trust (including some bloggers I respect). My scepticism and disappointment in the system still stand. The implementation is non-intrusive, which I am very happy about, and the much derided ‘Friend of Friends’ list is not obvious to open.

I still don’t like

  • No ‘friends only’ setting i.e. no way to hide your name from friends of friends, although of course they don’t get the extra information about status, character and broadcasts.
  • Having to give out a battle.net login in order to use the feature
  • Why can I see some folk that are able to use clearly false names on their accounts, when I cannot remove mine?
  • Why can’t I filter some characters (while still showing my online status) so that they aren’t visible.

I’m using it, but only after being fully informed of what information is given out to other players, and I’m being cautious about who I add. If you’re going to use this feature, please be aware of what it does. I’m still angry that the implementation means giving up some privacy to use a relatively (imho) basic feature, especially for those who are dealing with serious harassment, trans-folk, or those who just value the security of their online life.

Dragon Colours Matter and Pewter revisits RealID was published on July 6th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , under the Warcraft category. There are currently 8 comments on this article so far.

Real ID Implementation Is Not Good Enough

One of the features I was most looking forward to with battle.net integration was being able to chat with cross-server friends while in World of Warcraft, and ignore an entire account if someone was harassing me. Not that it happens often, but I can imagine most people get tired of ignoring level 1 alts when they’re being harassed by an arsehat.

A few clarifications

  1. I am on Facebook and yes I do add long-time guildies that I have known for years. I use the many privacy options where I can, and I don’t associate email addresses, websites or nicknames with my real name on Facebook itself.
  2. I have been cyberstalked/harassed in the past, as it were, and have in my time received a death threat. This came out of a) The guild meet being held at my house and b) a mentally ill individual who reacted badly to being asked to leave the guild. Since then I’ve been a lot more careful with personal information.
  3. So I take a medium approach to ‘security’. I don’t give out login names or passwords, I use different email addresses for my battle.net account. I limit use of my real name in association with my blogging and warcrafting.

You can read the Real ID FAQ in full here, and I am going to pick up on some pros and cons of Blizzard the Gaming Company moving into Blizzard the Social Media Company.

What is the Real ID System?

The Real ID system is an optional layer of identity (i.e. you the player as opposed to you the character) and will allow battle.net members to communicate across games, servers and factions. Instead of asking you to pick a player pseudonym, it will use the REAL name that is listed on your battle.net account – so your ‘friendlist’ will read much like a facebook friend list, as opposed to a xfire buddylist. They are, in essence, making battle.net into a full social networking system that happens to be connected to a computer game.

What Information do my Real ID friends get?

  1. Your real name
  2. The real names of all your friends.
  3. Your battle.net email. Even though it is not displayed, the initial contact with people is made by sending a real ID request by knowing each other’s email address.
  4. A list of all your battle.net characters in all games. Yes. All of them. No, you can’t hide any of them.
  5. Rich presence information – What character you are playing, what you are doing on any battle.net game
  6. Sending and viewing ‘broadcast messages’. Blizzard describes this as a ‘corkboard’.
  7. The ability to chat cross faction, cross server and cross game.

And if I don’t use Real ID? Can I get any functionality?

According to the FAQ you can still add characters to your friends list in the current fashion of a World of Warcraft buddy list, but it doesn’t work cross game, there are no cross-server/faction chat functions, and all you will be able to see is their on/offline status. I’m not even sure if that works cross server/faction either.

So what’s the real issue? It’s only my name.

And to friend someone in the first place, you need to know their battle.net email address. For internet security you should never need to pass your login out to anyone. While the amount of information that can be seen as far less intrusive than the amount of information that Facebook now gives out with default privacy settings, you only opt in or out. There are no granulated privacy settings. Even on Facebook it is possible to use a nickname if you’re really that concerned. I am on facebook and utilise the privacy features heavily because I have no wish to share all my information with my entire friendslist.

I have no idea whether I will use this service yet. I suspect there are one or two people I will share it with, but my ‘real friends and family’ either don’t play the game, or have my phone number/facebook/IMs to contact me by. One person I might share it with sits NEXT TO ME WHILE I PLAY. I don’t need real ID to communicate with people I already know well, I need something similar to communicate with acquaintances that I might not also want to give my real name and phone number to.

A very basic, intrusive Social Networking Site

If a Social Networking Site is going to be created, give us the same controls that a social networking site gives us. I have no problem using such a thing, but give us more control over our privacy. The ability to shield certain or most characters from it, use a pseudonym or a different email address to the one we use to login to the account with. I all I really want is my ‘friends’ to know that I’m online, not that I’m idling in Dalaran or base-jumping in Nagrand. I don’t want or need them to know the name of my Bank Alt, or my ‘get away from it all Alt’ on another server.

It is opt-in or opt-out (and parents will be able to prevent their youngsters from using it, but this requires the parents being informed enough to do so.) No granularity and with such features that many people will start using it without thinking twice about the privacy and account security implications.

An upside – Accountability

Currently the internet makes one anonymous. We can all act like arsehats and say heinous stuff without that much of a repercussion. If you act like an idiot on one character, you can log on as another and be viewed as a paragon of the realm community. Now? Anyone with your real ID will be able to see that it is you trolling trade chat and spouting homophobic garbage. Anyone with your real ID will be able to see that YOU are the notorious ninja of the server.

There will be the option to permanently block someone from contacting you. I don’t know if this involves knowing their real ID, or simply a secondary ignore function that will cover all their future characters, thus preventing harassers and abusers from trying to circumvent the /ignore feature. This would be a great step, especially if it doesn’t need Real ID for implementation.

Guild Security

I’ve seen a few guilds where management requires you to get our your Core Hound Pup to prove you have an authenticator – what impact could Real ID have on top level raid guilds? Will we see sharing your Real ID with the GM or Officers become a requirement for joining a top level guild?

I know of several women in top 100 guilds who are unlikely to want to share their real name with anyone, due to the amount of harassment they already receive in game. All it would need is for one person on a woman’s Real ID friendlist to have an arsehat on their Real ID friendlist, and that woman’s name could be leaked for all the trolls to see (and there is a never ending stream of anonymous players who are happy to call top level female players all kinds of names that a male player will rarely have to fear.)

There is a lot to explore, I think.

Aren’t you overreacting?

No, I don’t think so. If you completely trust everyone you share your Real ID with, more power to you. Be educated and understand that you are sharing the personal information of your current friends list whenever you add a new person to your friendslist.

I’m just somewhat worried, because the Facebook Integration was announced alongside the Real ID details.  Facebook started out as a small and somewhat closed system, and look at what it is now – a global medium for sharing personal information, used by millions of people who don’t quite understand what they’re doing.  The concern about battle.net is not about where it starts out, with the minor thing of sharing your game activities without filter and your real name with friends of your friends; it is about where it could possibly end up.

Conclusion

If you have nothing to fear, have never been stalked or harassed online, have never been hacked or had credit card details stolen, you’re very very lucky. The more information that you give out, the more possibility there is for it. Don’t dismiss people with privacy concerns as being paranoid just because you’re not worried. They might actually have a point.

Make sure you really read and understand the Real ID documentation before you use it. And make sure you don’t have any reason for the trolls to come after you. And make sure all the people you friend take the same precautions.

Real ID Implementation Is Not Good Enough was published on May 10th, 2010, with the tags , , , , , , , , under the Meta-blog, Warcraft category. There are currently 23 comments on this article so far.