Re: Real ID information
Posted: Fri Jul 16, 2010 5:39 pm
That is a nice compilation of answers to common questions. I'm really happy blizzard put it together.
After reading it, my take on their opinion of friends of friends was good intentions gone bad. They wanted you to have an easy way for a circle of friends to quickly get on each others friends lists. It's pretty obvious they based a lot of Real ID off of the facebook model. In facebook, your friends are publicly accessible. I'm sure blizzard didn't think it would be a problem. The road to hell is paved with good intentions... and blizzard is full of them.
So what exactly does opt out mean. I can see it meaning two things
1) Bob and I are friends. Bob right clicks on my name and is not given an option to see my friends
2) Bob and I are friends. Bob and Sally are friends. Sally right clicks on Bob and selects friends. She does not see me.
The link above specifically talks about #2, but doesn't say anything about #1.
The engineer in my is starting to see a flaw in this whole Real ID system and how the players are complaining about it.
I see this at work. Customers don't know what they want. They think they know what they want, and they'll come to you with solutions of what they want. It's our jobs to figure out why exactly why they want the solution they are presenting to us. My CTO once told me that you always have to ask a customer "Why do you want that?" at least 3 times before you get a real answer.
Why are you using Real ID if it bothers you that it uses your real name?
Answer: Because it allows you to talk x-realm or x-faction.
Because it allows me to have 1 person on my friends list instead of 1000 alts.
People don't want Real ID without your real names. They want the benefits that Real ID friends gives you without
Blizzard could easily provide us the first one w/o having it connected to Real ID. The last is more closely tied or Real ID, but it doesn't really have to be.
Either blizzard hasn't figured out what people want, or they really want to push Real ID, and doesn't want to provide this functionality any other way.
In any case, questions like that irk the software engineer in me.
After reading it, my take on their opinion of friends of friends was good intentions gone bad. They wanted you to have an easy way for a circle of friends to quickly get on each others friends lists. It's pretty obvious they based a lot of Real ID off of the facebook model. In facebook, your friends are publicly accessible. I'm sure blizzard didn't think it would be a problem. The road to hell is paved with good intentions... and blizzard is full of them.
So what exactly does opt out mean. I can see it meaning two things
1) Bob and I are friends. Bob right clicks on my name and is not given an option to see my friends
2) Bob and I are friends. Bob and Sally are friends. Sally right clicks on Bob and selects friends. She does not see me.
The link above specifically talks about #2, but doesn't say anything about #1.
The engineer in my is starting to see a flaw in this whole Real ID system and how the players are complaining about it.
This question right here pokes at it.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?
I see this at work. Customers don't know what they want. They think they know what they want, and they'll come to you with solutions of what they want. It's our jobs to figure out why exactly why they want the solution they are presenting to us. My CTO once told me that you always have to ask a customer "Why do you want that?" at least 3 times before you get a real answer.
Why are you using Real ID if it bothers you that it uses your real name?
Answer: Because it allows you to talk x-realm or x-faction.
Because it allows me to have 1 person on my friends list instead of 1000 alts.
People don't want Real ID without your real names. They want the benefits that Real ID friends gives you without
Blizzard could easily provide us the first one w/o having it connected to Real ID. The last is more closely tied or Real ID, but it doesn't really have to be.
Either blizzard hasn't figured out what people want, or they really want to push Real ID, and doesn't want to provide this functionality any other way.
In any case, questions like that irk the software engineer in me.