So no, you can’t just “change your personal info” on your Real ID.

I tried that when RealID went in as a chat tool. You can’t. Your RealID is a static, unchangeable field that is populated either from the name you first used when you signed up on the service or from the credit card you use to pay for your account — I’m not sure which, since I did both at the same time (signed up and entered credit card information).

If anyone else knows of a way to change their RealIDs, I’d be perfectly happy to be proven wrong on this. But I most definitely did try this a few weeks back, and could not even type in the box where my “real name” goes, let alone delete characters from it.

A person choses to “opt-out” of forum posting. Their account is hacked. The hacker steals not only their gold and items, but makes a forum post. Now the hacker can steal their name, additionally their name is now on the forums against their will. This can’t be recovered even by deleting the post, the name has already been out there.

What prevents marketing companies from creating accounts simply to collect the names of gamers to spam them or make sales lists? Take a new company… and you want to get access to a list of thousands of names and contacts? $15 a month is a steal. ”

From here: post 38657

“After a rather hostile reaction from the community of players, the studio revealed that it would be continuing to talk to players about the system but that it would nonetheless go ahead with its implementation.”

“Our goal is to create a social gaming service that players want to use.”

*****
And more reading – the USA Today Interview on what Battle.net and Facebook integration will look like.

“Our goal and vision in this partnership is to really to cross-populate the social networks and to easily find and add your friends from Facebook onto the new Battle.net service as the first step and extending it to other features in the future.”

So my question is… what are those other features? Just how far is this going? Blizzard’s given me no reason at all to trust them anymore about this.

*****
From the Battle.net Terms of Use

#
DISCLOSURES; THIRD PARTY FEATURES.

1. Massive.
Blizzard’s Games and the Service may incorporate technology of Massive Incorporated (”Massive”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation (”Microsoft”), that enables in-game advertising, and the display of other similar in-game objects, which are downloaded temporarily to your personal computer and replaced during online game play. As part of this process, Massive may collect some information about the game and the advertisements delivered to you, as well as standard information that is sent when your personal computer or game console connects to the Internet including your Internet protocol (IP) address. Massive will use this information to transmit and measure in-game advertising, as well as to improve the products and services of Massive and its affiliates. None of the information collected by Massive will be used to identify you. For additional details regarding Massive’s in-game advertising practices, please see Massive’s In-Game Advertising privacy statement at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=122085&clcid=0×409. The trademarks and copyrighted material contained in all in-game advertising are the property of the respective owners. Portions of the Service are © 2008 Massive Incorporated. All rights reserved.
2. Facebook.
If you are a registered user of Facebook you may use your Facebook data to enable you to find your Facebook friends on the Service. Your Facebook account is subject to separate terms and conditions provided by Facebook. Note that if you have a Facebook account, your Facebook friends will be able to associate your screen name with your real name on the Service when they use the Facebook friends feature. You hereby acknowledge that Facebook is not responsible for any liability as a result of your use of the Service.

So it ain’t just Facebook folks… it’s in-game advertising too. Tell me again why I should believe that there is any sort of desire to make a /good game/ in this anymore?

*****
Security Risks with RealID – both with the forum implementation and the current ability of any addon with the proper script to reveal anyone’s RealID who hasn’t enabled Parental Controls.

Oh did you miss that? Yeah, you don’t have to USE RealID. It comes automatically enabled, and the only way to turn it off is to pretend to be your own mother and turn on Parental Controls on your account. If you don’t do that, any predatory addon (and I don’t know which ones, this is still pretty new) can find out your name AND your battle.net login email.