Answers to Common Community
Questions About Real ID™
Since the launch of the Real ID™ system in World of Warcraft®, we’ve
received a number of questions from the community about our plans for
the service, features like StarCraft® II’s Facebook® integration, and
how we see Real ID evolving in the future. We've been keeping tabs on
the conversations on our forums, social media sites, and fansites, and
have compiled some of the most common questions to answer for you here.
We hope you find this information helpful, and we look forward to
hearing your feedback and continuing the conversation in the thread
below.
Q: Do you have any
plans to allow players to not show their real name to friends of friends
while using the Real ID system?
A: As with any
new feature we add to our games, we've been evaluating how Real ID has
been used since its release to identify new functionality that would
help improve our players’ experience. The in-game Real ID “friends of
friends” list is designed to give players a convenient way to populate
their Real ID friends list with other players they know and trust in
real life, allowing them to quickly and easily send Real ID friend
requests to these people without having to enter their Battle.net®
account names. However, we recognize that some players would prefer not
to be displayed on friends lists in this fashion, so we plan to include
an option that will allow players to opt out of appearing on their Real
ID friends’ “friends of friends” lists. We're anticipating this feature
to be available for StarCraft II shortly after release of the game, and
World of Warcraft at around the same time -- we’ll have more information
for you in the coming weeks.
Q: What are your
plans for Facebook integration?
A: With regard
to Facebook, our goal is to help Blizzard gamers on Battle.net more
easily connect to their real-life friends and family. For the launch of
StarCraft II, we are introducing an optional Facebook friend finder
feature to help achieve this goal. The friend finder enables players who
decide to use it to easily populate their Battle.net friends list by
sending Real ID friend requests to the people on their Facebook friends
list who have Battle.net accounts. We hope players will find this
feature convenient, but it's completely optional. In the long term, we
hope to give players who use Facebook some fun, and also optional, ways
to share what they're doing in Blizzard games with their friends,
similar to the optional World of Warcraft Armory integration now
available, but we don’t have any specific plans to share at present.
Q: How does the
friend finder in StarCraft II work? What's sent to Facebook?
A: When you
use the Add a Friend feature in StarCraft II, one of the options you’ll
see is to search your Facebook friends list for people who also have
Battle.net accounts in order to quickly send them Real ID friend
requests. When you click this button, you'll be asked to enter your
Facebook login information, and you’ll then see a list of your Facebook
friends who also have Battle.net accounts. You’ll then have the option
to send any of these Facebook friends a Real ID friend request in-game.
(Keep in mind that for someone to appear on the list, their Battle.net
account email address must match their Facebook email address. In
addition, you’ll see the names of any Facebook friends who have
registered Battle.net accounts, regardless of whether they have Blizzard
games attached to their account or just, for example, created the
Battle.net account to make a purchase on the online Blizzard Store.)
It’s important to note that Blizzard Entertainment does not share
any personal information with Facebook as part of this process. Keep in
mind that as with other Real ID features such as the “friends of
friends” list, our goal with the friend finder feature is to create
convenient options to help players easily find people they know in real
life on Battle.net without having to remember email addresses or account
names. We hope players will find the feature easy to use and
convenient.
Q: How can I
prevent World of Warcraft add-ons from accessing Real ID first and last
names without my knowledge?
A: As always,
we recommend that you get your UI add-ons through reliable sources. It’s
important to note that without installing a UI add-on specifically
designed to retrieve that information, there’s no risk of it being
accessed. On our end, we’re looking into the issue and are at work on
some changes that we can make to help protect against these types of
add-ons. We’ll provide further details as soon as we have more
information to share.
Q: Are you secretly
trying to build a social gaming platform with the new Battle.net?
A: It’s no
secret -- as we’ve discussed openly since we first started sharing our
plans about the new Battle.net, one of our goals is for it to serve as a
social gaming service for Blizzard gamers. This was a deliberate and
open design decision, driven 100% by the desire to create an even better
online experience for our players by giving them powerful tools to
compete with and stay connected to their real-life friends and family.
Q: If my account
was compromised, what information about my Real ID friends would a
hacker have access to?
A: We take
account security very seriously, and we offer a number of ways to help
players keep their account secure, including the Battle.net
Authenticator and the free Battle.net Mobile Authenticator app,
available for a wide range of mobile devices. Aside from your friends’
first and last names, no other personal information is shared through
the in-game Real ID system.
Q: What’s a
StarCraft II "character code"?
A: When you
first log in to StarCraft II, you’re prompted to choose a single
character name. This is the only name you’ll use on Battle.net, and it’s
tied to your StarCraft II license. In order to allow players to select
any name they wish regardless of whether another player is already using
the same name, we then generate and assign a three-digit character code
that uniquely identifies the player. When posting on the forums of the
new StarCraft II community site, players will be posting using their
StarCraft II character name and character code.
Q: Will the new
StarCraft II forum posting name format (character name + character code)
carry over into the forum communities of other Blizzard games?
A: Following
our recent decision to no longer use real first and last names on
Blizzard forums, we’re still evaluating how we’ll move forward with our
other forums. Our ultimate goal is still to promote constructive
conversations and improve the overall forum experience for our players,
and we think increasing accountability is an important part of achieving
that. StarCraft II already uses a character name and character code
combo in-game, which serves as a unique player identifier and fits well
with our goal for the forums. World of Warcraft handles player
identification differently, so we still need to determine whether adding
a character code system like in StarCraft II is the best solution.
Ultimately, we want to come up with a system that makes sense for each
community and fits our long-term vision for the forums.
Q: Are there any
plans to change the in-game Real ID system so that players will have the
option to display an assigned user name instead of their real names?
A: The Real ID
system is designed to help real-life friends and family who decide to
use it keep in touch with each other across Blizzard games, and our goal
in using real names is to ensure that players will be able to maintain
long-term, meaningful relationships on the service for years to come.
One way it helps make that happen is by eliminating the need to remember
who, for example, "Thrall123"
really is when you see him or her pop up on your friends
list
again after months -- or years -- of being offline. Ultimately, we think
this is the best way to ensure players who use Real ID are able stay
connected with the people they enjoy playing with most in the long-term,
and we don’t currently have any plans to change the system so it can be
used with character names or alternate handles instead. That said,
Battle.net is a living, breathing service that we will continue to
evolve over time as we evaluate how players are using it and identify
new ways to improve the experience.
Q: What plans are
there to improve moderation since the use of real names on the forums
has been changed?
A: Our new
community sites’ forums, beginning with the StarCraft II site, will have
an improved moderation system as well as a post-rating system which
will help our players promote the conversations they find the most
constructive, as well as help forum moderators identify quality
discussions. This, coupled with the unique StarCraft II character name
and code, will help us to create a more positive atmosphere based on
community interaction and accountability.
