Nethaera's Post about the Real ID Change

Blizzard today announced an upcoming change to the way users are represented on the official forums: included with each post will be the user’s real name. Obviously, the shitstorm was immediate and intense. (Over 5,000 posts in the four hours after the announcement, not to mention all the other threads the change has spawned. Update: 12,500 posts after 7.5 hours.)

The highlights:

• Your real name will show up next to your forum posts.
• You may optionally pick a character name to display alongside your real name.
• This change will affect the new forums going live around the Cataclysm release, so existing posts will not be affected.

I have an opinion, but maybe not the opinion one might expect if you’ve ever had a conversation with me about privacy and freedom.

People have the right to privacy. I believe this right does not need to be defended: there is no “but what about…” here. There are a variety of defenses, of course, be they medical, religious, sexual, or political, to name a few, but I think the desire to act in private is itself enough. The “honest people have nothing to hide” argument is ignorant at best and dangerous at worst.

Not every space is a private space, though. My home, the contents of computer, my browser history, are private (or at least I consider them private), but many of the spaces I frequent are public. In, say, a park, you have the right to take a photograph, even if I am in the frame. I do not have the same right to privacy that I have in my home.

Historically, the World of Warcraft (WoW) forums offered a level of privacy. You could create characters on any of the multitude of servers and post as those characters, rather than your “main” character, effectively hiding your identity from everyone but Blizzard employees. There are many potential uses of this feature, some good (asking opinions about your guild leader’s controversial decision) and some bad (trolling or threatening posters).

I am not against Blizzard displaying the poster’s real name next to their post. I think it will reduce the number of posters on the site (good) and result in more thoughtfully constructed posts (also good).

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

NPR recently ran a piece entitled “Website Editors Strive To Rein In Nasty Comments.” It elaborates on John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which posits that Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad (“Shitcock!”). I believe that the addition of real names to the forums will prevent many of the flame wars from starting as people consider that the words they say become part of their online identity. I also believe that it’s harder to berate someone when you see their name on the screen in front of you. Picture two forum posters, Happycowlol and Dave Burkhart. Both post the same question as they struggle with basic game mechanics. How likely are you to tell Dave to log off and delete WoW, particularly if your comment is signed with your real name?

Blizzard recently added Real ID Friends to World of Warcraft. You can add a person to your buddy list and see them online, no matter which game they are playing or which character or server they’re playing on. This is opt-in: you explicitly grant the right to be your Real ID friend and see you online. Likewise, posting on the forums is a choice. If privacy is your concern, there are hundreds of other forums, some of which may even attempt to protect your data. I do not believe Blizzard is obligated to provide users with an anonymous (or quasi-anonymous) message board. On the contrary, I believe this is one of the best things they could do to foster real discussion and discourage trolls.

Some constructive, helpful, genuinely good posters will be driven away by this change. But they have not had any of their rights taken away from them. They are still anonymous in the game, they have just lost the ability to be anonymous on the forums.

Update: There’s an additional blue post over on the European forums:

Posted by Wryxian on 2010-07-07 12:17:

We have been planning this change for a very long time. During this time, we have thought ahead about the scope and impact of this change and predicted that many people would no longer wish to post in the forums after this change goes live. We are fine with that, because we want to change these forums dramatically in a positive and more constructive direction.

It’s been very obvious over the last few years that the forums are an exceptionally valuable source of information both for players and for us to gather feedback. There are many threads on this forum now, and over the last few years, that people have been constructively discussing many aspects of the game. They’ve received new wisdom and have then been able to go back to the game and enjoy it further with the new knowledge acquired through the forums.

These threads, however, can often be lost amongst a great deal of other threads that are basically filled with trolling, name calling, flaming, off-topic conversations and that’s just a small amount of some of the content that has been found in these forums over the years. We don’t want that anymore, and we believe the Real ID change will bring about a lot of the improvement that we are hoping for.

There’s a lot of scare-mongering going on about the change, but there seems a need to make something very clear. The forums have always been an optional extra — something you can choose to participate in if you wish to. With our Real ID changes for the forums, this is still the case. The only difference will be, if you do choose to participate in the forums, then you will do so by using your real name. But only after you’ve been warned and accepted this in advance.

Looking through the archives, it seems I never documented the level 70 ding for Cetoh. The screenshot has been lost, probably to a dead hard drive, so the exact date escapes me. But, the rogue was first to 60, the priest was first to 70, and the death knight was first to 80. Old characters lag behind: the rogue sits at 68, and the priest hasn’t moved past 70. Gotta wonder what I’ll be playing at level 85.

The world looks a bit different since I last hit the cap. Cataclysm has been announced, and promises to reshape Azeroth. The achievements system has been brought online. Mounts are available at level 20. People have started getting their Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake.

My death knight is Exalted with two factions (my first two on any character). 1,008 quests brought her from level 55 to level 80, over the course of nearly 11 months. (Winning a duel is a requirement of the death knight starter quest line, and my character became Duel-icious on 2008-11-13.) She Toured the Fjord, got Bored in Borean, saw the Might of Dragonblight, and was just two quests shy of that Grizzly Shizzle at ding. She has caught 1,405 fish and “other things”; overall her skills languish at Cooking 206, Fishing 340, Herbalism 158, and Mining 169. She is still waiting for Artisan flying.

• Research hardware (joysticks, replacement grills)
• Mount LCD and Dell SX270 inside cabinet
• Get a bump key so I can open the damn door

I wanted to provide the following features:

1. Link to an item using just the item name, no URL required.
2. Automatically set the link color to match the item quality. (uncommon, rare, epic, etc.)

This is pretty easy to accomplish. I wrote the following code to cache item IDs and item quality, translating item names to Wowhead links with minimal network activity.

Create MySQL Table

First, create a new table to hold the item cache. I’ll call it wow_wowhead to fit my existing table naming scheme. If you choose a different name, make sure you update the $table variable in wowhead_bbcode() below.

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `wow_wowhead` (
  `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  `name` varchar(150) NOT NULL default '',
  `quality` tinyint(3) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  `updated` datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  `db` varchar(10) NOT NULL default 'www',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Modify phpBB

Append this code to the end of the $bbcode_tpl assignments in phpBB/includes/bbcode.php, prepare_bbcode_template():

$bbcode_tpl['wowhead'] = '\'' . $bbcode_tpl['wowhead'] . '\'';
$bbcode_tpl['wowhead'] = str_replace('{A_ATTR}', "'. wowhead_bbcode('\\1') .'", $bbcode_tpl['wowhead']);
$bbcode_tpl['wowhead'] = str_replace('{NAME}', "'. str_replace('\\\"', '\"', '\\1') .'", $bbcode_tpl['wowhead']);

Add this to the end of the $patterns[] and $replacements[] section in phpBB/includes/bbcode.php, bbencode_second_pass():

$patterns[] = "#\[wowhead\](.*?)\[/wowhead\]#ise";
$replacements[] = $bbcode_tpl['wowhead'];

And add this function to the end of phpBB/includes/bbcode.php, being sure to include it before PHP’s closing tag, the “?>”:

function wowhead_bbcode($name, $whdb = 'www')
{
	global $db;
	$name = html_entity_decode($name);
	$table = 'wow_wowhead';

	$sql = sprintf("SELECT * from $table WHERE name = '%s' AND db = '%s'", mysql_escape_string($name), $whdb);
	$result = $db->sql_query($sql);
	$item = $db->sql_fetchrow();

	if(!$item)
	{
		$item = array('name' => $name);

		$url = 'http://' . $whdb . '.wowhead.com/?item=' . urlencode($name) . '&xml';
		$c = curl_init($url);
		curl_setopt($c, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

		$xml_string = curl_exec($c);
		$xml = simplexml_load_string($xml_string);
		curl_close($c);

		list($quality) = $xml->xpath('/wowhead/item/quality');
		$item['quality'] = (int)$quality->attributes()->id;

		list($id) = $xml->xpath('/wowhead/item');
		$item['id'] = (int)$id->attributes()->id;

		$sql = sprintf("
			INSERT INTO $table (id, name, quality, updated, db)
			VALUES (%d, '%s', %d, NOW(), '%s')",
			$item['id'], mysql_escape_string($item['name']), $item['quality'], $whdb);
		$db->sql_query($sql);
	}

	return sprintf('href="http://%s.wowhead.com/?item=%d" class="q%d"', $whdb, $item['id'], $item['quality']);
}

Add the following to the bottom of your template’s bbcode.tpl:

<!-- BEGIN wowhead --><a {A_ATTR}>[{NAME}]</a><!-- END wowhead -->

Add the following to your template’s overall_footer.tpl just before the </body> closing tag:

<script src="http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script>

(If the flash of unstyled links bothers you, instead add it to overall_header.tpl just before the closing </head> tag.)

And that’s it. As a bonus, the wowhead_bbcode() function can be modified to work with other database objects or the vanilla PHP calls, if you need smarter tooltips for Mediawiki, WordPress, or any other PHP software.

Some miscellaneous points of interest:

• You are confined to the Death Knight starting area until you complete the initial quest line.
• You will replace all your green starter gear with blue gear by the time you finish. This can be a nice gauge of progress. (“Two items left, almost done!”)
• You will get an epic (100% speed increase) ground mount as a quest reward.
• You will always have access to the Runeforges in Ebon Hold through Death Gate. During specific quest line events, the Runeforges will not function. Don’t worry about it, they’ll be back.
• When you finish the last quest in your faction’s capital city, go to Outland. You should be level 58, and you’re going to destroy anything you come across in Hellfire Peninsula.
• Professions
  • You will get First Aid level 270 for free, with Heavy Runecloth Bandage as an orange skill.
  • You will have the Journeyman riding skill.
  • Everything else has to start from Level 1. Enjoy grinding skillups!
• You get all the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor flight paths for free.
• You start with 10 Black Mushrooms, and these cannot be purchased from vendors. Send them to other characters for Tastes Like Chicken and the ilk.

And finally, notes about specific quests:

Quest: Grand Theft Palomino

Bring the horse back to Salanar, then look for a button in your new vehicle action bar for turning in the horse.

Quest: Into the Realm of Shadows

The Dark Riders were hotly contested when I did this, but they do spawn in the town. I just hung out where I initially picked up my horse.

Quest: A Special Surprise

Dialog is a big part of this quest. When you enter the prison house, you’re looking for an NPC of your race. Listen to what he has to say. You’ll know when to head back to Plaguefist.

Quest: An End to All Things…

When you’re done destroying stuff, return to The Lich King and dismount using the “Leave Vehicle” button in your toolbar.

Quests: The Lich King’s Command and The Light of Dawn

During this quest you’ll see two NPC counters and a timer at the top of your screen. If the event is already in progress, or seems to have stopped, just hang out by Browman’s Mill (or maybe even further back, I’m not sure how big the completion radius is) and wait for it to reset. It really is epic, do yourself a favor and experience the whole thing.

Several of us grouped which turned out to be unnecessary, and another Death Knight showed up after all the dialog and got quest credit for the whole thing. Nice time saver, but wait for the reset if you care about lore.

That’s It

Have fun. I am.

• Fun. It’s a good translation to the handheld platform, no less fun than Guitar Hero III on my PS2.
• Portable. It fits nicely in my backpack or in the center console of the car.
• Decent sound. Not great, but much better than I expected. Maybe comparable to 64Kbps MP3s?
• Fast access to game play. Long startup and load times are a pet peeve of mine. In a single informal time trial, it took 37 seconds from turning on the DS to seeing the fret bar display in career mode. Not bad. Closing the handheld’s lid means the game is available instantaneously, any time. The PS2 wastes nearly two minutes of my time before I reach a song.
• Judy Nails. Mmm.

Cons:

• Limited track selection. Only 25 songs total.
• Small fret bar. The buttons would feel more comforatable if half an inch or so was added to the total width of the bar.

Overall, a great buy for a GH fan like myself. Great if you’re into branded accessories, too: picks, cases, and even a Guitar-Hero-branded Nintendo DS. Dang.

Gah.

Months ago Blizzard representatives confirmed a slight polygon increase in the Burning Crusade expansion. I hadn’t noticed any significant change, but I’ve recently come across several new styles of human NPCs. After two years with the same hairstyles and face textures, the differences are striking.

The textures have always given some variety to the players with hair being the most dramatic difference, but these new styles are a far cry from what we’ve grown accustomed to.

So, this raises the question: are the new styles restricted to NPCs, an attempt to differentiate players from non-players? Is Blizzard expanding player model choices, but hasn’t yet incorporated the changes into the character creation screen? Are they adding the salon people have been asking about for so long? I think we’ll find out soon.