battle.net real IDs

[tethealla]

I found this:
http://us.battle.net/realid/index.html
and a FAQ
http://us.battle.net/realid/faq.html
and a blue post about it on the PTR: http://www.worldofraids.com/topic/16620-patch-335-ptr/

My opinions:
I learned about this last year at blizzcon and got very excited about it. It's blizzards answer to their player-base splitting between their games. They don't want you to get sucked into SC2 and forget WoW... or even lose the social ability WoW provides. Lets face it... at this point, that is a lot of the reason we're all still playing.

I like this for two reasons
1) At different points I've decided to either play on other servers or cross-factions. This has created a void in friends. You literally split your time between servers. You give up one server to play on another. Previously in BC, I played on two servers. More recently, with this server transfer, I tried to split my time to keep up with friends.. but just gave up and moved totally here to Uldum. Battlenet Real ID, will close this gap. You can chat with your friends across servers or across factions. I've been considering starting a horde toon to try out leveling 1-60 prior to cataclysm... I might just do that now.

2) friend list cleanup! The vast majority of my friends list has always been multiple toons of all my really good friends. All of these go away because they'll be battle net friends.

3) So they have the broadcast ability where you broadcast to your entire friends list. The idea is that you broadcast to everyone not playing WoW that your ICC raid is starting or something like that. Unless they have ways to limit who it goes to, it seems like a dumb idea. I only want to broadcast that to ppl in my guild, not all of my friends. I'll wait and see on this one. Blizzard usually doesn't do stupid things if given an option.

Scaryness:
You give people your real account login. What if someone is a good friend now, and becomes less of one later? They might try unfortunate with your WoW account. Of course authenticators help with that. The anonymity that wow names provided were somewhat nice.

I'm just going to be VERY careful who I invite to be my Real Friend

Now I'm sure all of you SC2 ppl are looking forward to the cross-game chat. I've long since learned I totally FAIL at RTS games, so this interests me less =]

[Norfolk]

I guess that provides all the more reason for people to come up with stronger passwords for their accounts. Alphanumeric w/symbols tend to work best.

[Winterborn]

I'm definitely looking forward to this. Longer passwords and token ring are becoming a must more than just a "really should."

[Chamomile]

And here I thought token ring was dead ten to fifteen years ago.

[kyo]

And here I thought token ring was dead ten to fifteen years ago.

Maybe coax would be even more secure?