OK, so it's a little after the fact, but RL got a bit in the way. Blizzard Entertainment has called off their plan to make RealID mandatory on Blizzard's forums. I just wanted to congratulate Blizzard decision makers for having the wisdom to change course on a controversial policy based on subscriber feedback.
All too often companies just institute policies that clients end up having to live with whether they want to or not; or completely walk away from the product. This would have been disappointing to me as a 4-year veteran of WoW with thousands of hours invested in my characters.
I am so pleased that Blizz back tracked on this.
ReplyDeleteThe whole idea was just steeped in fail from it's inception.
Already my GF has an RSS feed of my achievements from my armoury so she can check up on me(love you dear) and I can't do anything about it.
If they then change things so my personal details are coming up on the forum there will be nowhere left to hide.
I can just imagine a new employer googling me and seeing that I spent 8 hours farming TOC and deciding that I don't really fit the profile of what they are looking for.
Nice to see that blizz has remembered who pays the bills
@ Tomwebster ZOMG, I do that to my husband too! He lets his WoW playing get out of hand sometimes, especially since he can lose all sense of time when he gets into things. Through the armory I once caught him still playing at 4am in the morning. I confronted him and he denied it, saying no way it could have been that late. Except it was and I had proof, so that shut him up quick and we had a good laugh over it.
ReplyDeleteNeedless to say, things wouldn't be so funny if that information was used in another context, like the boss/employee relationship that was mentioned. There is such thing as too much information, Blizzard.
This is kind of funny. I never thought of the armory as a way to track activity, but sure as shootin', it is. I even used it as proof to Blizz that I had looted certain things right before my account got hacked. (I could see my main in the armory for a day or two after the hackers deleted it in game.)
ReplyDeleteAs far as an employer is concerned, I could see where playing an MMO might become a sackable offense, but only if you're playing when you should be working. I don't don't know what industry people are working in where online gaming is so offensive to employers. It's not like you're posting pictures of drunken debauchery on Facebook or something.
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the near future employers would be required to state whether the result of a hiring/firing decision were made on the basis of online research.