Real ID

This has become a pretty big issue for me, and may impact the way I interact with the World of Warcraft community as a whole. So, here we go.

If you are unfamiliar with the topic, the long and short of it is this: The Real ID system, in-game, allows you to chat with your friends across all Blizzard platforms. The draw back is that you must give them your battle.net e-mail to friend them, and they will see your registered name from your account from that point forward. You can change your battle.net e-mail, you CANNOT change your name on your account once it's been set. As such, it's recommended this is only used by close and personal friends - in that regard, it's a great system.

Real ID is, as of today, now announced to be implemented on the official Blizzard Forums. While the change won't be retroactive (thank goodness), posts on the Cataclysm and Starcraft II forums, and presumably Diablo III forums when we get there, will all display your Real ID name - your real first and last names.

Why in the world would any company make this decision?

I like Real ID in-game. I think it's great, and an optional way to keep in touch with friends you know very closely and trust. I have my own little network in game of me and my coworkers. Anyone who tries to add me that I do not recognize, I don't accept, and everything is hunky-dory.

I post on the forums anonymously. The character I post with does not even exist anymore. I don't want people on the forums to know me as me, I want them to know me as Eseten. I've done a lot to keep my personal life and the persona I use to post and write my World of Warcraft blogs very separate from each other. I value that privacy.

Yes, I have a facebook. It is VERY DIFFICULT to find me on there - even searching my name won't yield any results much of the time, and trust me when I say I have a very unique name. Keeping a social network under control is the user's job, and even Facebook has options to keep your info private. They do a terrible job of letting you know those options are there, but they are and it can keep you safe. This is coming from someone who HAS been stalked via Facebook - it taught me a lesson, and I've never forgotten it.

I have been an active member of the forum community for quite some time. The time I have spent on the forums is very memorable to me, and means a lot to me. I have made many friends, a few enemies, and some playful adversaries (Hi Zarhym, lol). The forums were there when I had nothing else socially, when I first moved out here to this strange and terrifying land of Southern California. I dare say I survived my move because of them, and for that, they have my debt.

But if this change with making your real name show up on the forums goes through, that is the end of Eseten on the forums. I will never post again - I couldn't. I've taken great measures to ensure separation of those entities, and Eseten IS a different person. Eseten is a lot of things I can never really be, but get the chance to try. Eseten is very important to me, and got me through a lot.

But I may have to say goodbye to that forever. I may have to leave a community that I love, that I voluntarily participate and support, and that I had hoped one day to be a real breathing part of.

Not sure I've ever used "slap in the face" before, but what I feel right now... sure does sting like it.

If you want to voice your concerns on this issue, please, please take the time to post on the official forums. I, and I believe a lot of people, would like to see this changed.

Please help me continue to be the Eseten you know and love.

I Miss Being Regular

...Try not to take that title in a bad way. XD

But really. I miss being regular in the sense of posting on this Blog. I miss being a regular on the forums. I miss being a regular raider.

At the same time, I'm the closest I've ever been to a "regular" person.

I won't get into my real life. That's not what this blog is for, and it never has been (and it never will be). But the long and short of it is that I have a pretty fulfilling everything right now. Job, living accommodations, significant other, friends, family, etc. That has never, ever been the case for me, and I guess I'm a little overwhelmed with the... eeriness of it.

I do not intend to let this blog die. It will live again. I don't know when that is. I've had a hard time being able to write what I want to due to outside forces that I cannot comment on (ooooOOOOOooOO). I have all kinds of ideas brimming, particularly WoW-related projects, but they're being purposely kept on the backburner.

I may add a link to the side for another project I intend to start on. It's something I'm keeping very anonymous. so if you know who I am, I ask you only refer to me as one of my avatars and never by my name. I'll link this blog to that one, for those who are interested in Eseten's other works.

In the mean time, let's talk about server status. I'm sure everyone's as frustrated with it as I am.

Due to my late schedule, my hours for play time have been rather restricted. I usually get home at midnight or one in the morning, and just want to play some WoW before I go to bed. I had plans for my priest, damnit!

Just the same, I'll reiterate what I put in this thread:

You guys can either continue complaining about the lag/disconnects/unstable servers that have been plaguing most of the realms this week.

Or you can complain that they are doing something about it.

You can't do both, you hypocritical gits. There's some things that can be fixed on the first shot. Others take time, and with the way computers work, sometimes require trial and error.

The number of people they have would not have changed the necessity to take down the realms multiple times. If you think they're spending their billions of dollars on nothing, you are woefully mistaken. Even the best hardware in the world can have hiccups, just like the best athlete in the world can catch a cold.

It sucks, I'm not going to lie. I work late, and the only time I really get to play is early in the morning. I'm going to go play another game for the time being instead of leveling my priest, like I had been planning on. If you feel you deserve compensation, post in the Suggestion forums - they'll be looking for posts like that when these things happen.

But coming to General and crying like a baby, while having unfortunately become an accepted practice here, doesn't actually solve anything.

Again, if you want to get something done about this, go to Suggestions. You won't receive a direct response, but you will be heard.

For those interested, the full thread can be seen here.

I'll continue to stand by this statement, not just because it's what I believe, but because it's what I have to. Ever actually READ the Terms of Service? Be honest, no you haven't.

Maintenance, no matter when it comes, is not something Blizzard owes you anything for. It's something you agree to every time you log in. It sucks now, that's for sure.

But I don't mind not getting to play one night, so long as the horrible lag that's plagued my server for the past two weeks is finally gone.

I understand that troubleshooting does not always work the first time. Having worked at a computer repair shop for several months, and a computer supply depot for a large university for a few years has given me enough insight on that. I also understand that the majority of WoW players won't understand this, and probably never will.

And you know what? I don't care, you're still stupid for bitching.

The WoW Community - Black & White

I think I set the timer on the current poll too long. >> Oops. I'll wait for it to run out before posting the results.

So, through the course of the day today, as I was doing my usual forum trolling, I noticed that things have been a little more... hostile as of late. Maybe it's just me, but does it seem like people are constantly up in arms a little more frequently than usual? Note, I did make this observation before the unofficial class changes popped up and got people all stir-crazy, but it seems like little things have been irritating people a lot more than they would normally.

Now, before you point it out to me, I know the WoW community isn't the happiest sunshine-y place in the world. A lot of people have compared it to the /b/ forum on 4Chan, with /b/ being only slightly lower. As someone who steers completely clear of 4Chan in a desperate attempt to preserve what little sanity I have left, I can't make the comparison myself. But, the longer I stay active on the forums, the more I see it changing.

It's a funny place. On any given day, it's either full of hilarious or helpful posters, or completely rude and inconsiderate posters. Sure, there's a little overlap here and there, but it seems like there's an hour in the early morning that decides what kind of day it's going to be: angry or funny or helpful or whatever.

Why are the forums so black and white when it comes to topics?

As I have said before in many threads, the reason I post is to try to be a part of the community, and the way I try to be a part is by being that weird person who tries to bring something funny to the table. Yeah, it doesn't always work - I have my off days too, ya know - but for the days it does, for the times I get people quoting me, or sigging me, or general acknowledgement that tells me I've effectively done what I'm there to do - well, it's worth it. I like the idea that I made someone smile behind their computer screen. I like the idea that they come to the forums, filter through the drek, and find something to laugh about.

Maybe I'm unique in that stance, I don't really know. You can rest assured I won't be changing anytime soon. I guess I just wish I didn't feel so alone - there's definitely a group of people I goof off with, many of which were mentioned in my Forum Trolling 101 post. And I thank those for playing along with my shenanigans - and even more so, I thank the Blues for not banning me yet. =P

I'm hoping today was just an off day and the forums will get back to their regular way soon - whatever that is. I guess I just got spoiled with the streak of good feelings that went on last week...

But is it so wrong of me to want a good thing to stay?

Forum Trolling 101

So, some things have been changed around a bit.

• New poll, please be sure to participate (since it seems not a lot of people have voted yet, I'll leave it up another week).
  
• You'll notice, if you don't have some sort of ad-blocker, that there are ads now. As a starving writer, I figured it couldn't hurt. If they're too much of a nuisance, let me know and they'll be removed. (To be honest, since I have ad-blockers, I can't even see them myself.) Since I can't actually see my own ads, let me know if there are any offensive or questionable ads popping up, and I'll get them blacklisted off. I don't really want to be advertising for gold-selling or anything like that. =X
• New name! Since I had to change my name when I moved to Gurubashi, Eseten has become my new online moniker. I will miss my old nickname of Pretty, but life in and out of the World of Warcraft goes on... I am now Eseten.

That should about cover it. Onto today's topic: A quick lesson in Forum Trolling.

Anyone who frequents the Official World of Warcraft General Forum probably knows me to some extent by now. I've gained somewhat of a reputation as a regular, though more often late at night than during the day. I'm probably not as recognizeable as the better-knowns, like Zmue, Rizz, or Stabby, but I like to think I'm somewhat infamous.

There's a lot of different kinds of trolls out there. There's friendly ones, outright rude ones, and then the ones who have multiple accounts due to frequent vacations. This is all a bit of a generalization, but that's more or less the gist of it.

Friendly trolls, like myself, tend not so much to be flamers and tend more towards the humorous or sarcastic posts. My toon, Eseten, has sort of developed his own personality as an insatiable flirt with a particular taste for female night elf druids. It was just sort of a random direction I took it in, and now it's become kind of part of my posting requirement: if there's a female night elf druid in the thread, I must let her know how sexy she is. Female blood elves of any kind are also acceptable.

Most friendly trolls have some kind of quirk like this. Waffletime likes her tauren, Sunila likes her male blood elves (we get along, if you couldn't tell), and Korozen likes... uhh... high heels. We specialize in derailing badly formed threads late at night, and running rampant with non-sensical roleplay. This infuriates some posters, and we revel in it. Since we usually post later in the evenings, we often don't get policed for our trollings. Slap on the hand at worst, or the deletion of a thread we didn't really care much about in the first place.

Rude trolls are the flamers. These are the people who enter threads for the sole purpose of telling you how much of a noob you are or how horrible your gear/arena rating/achievement points are. My theory is that most of them are either 20-somethings with no life or your typical 12 year old who's obsessed with his e-peen.

Friendly trolls often enjoy disguising themselves as rude trolls, but usually in the way of parody. In particular, I tend to become more of an insulting person whenever Zarhym, one of the Community Managers, posts. Ever since he altered my signature one evening, I have declared war on him. He's winning right now, but I'm still trying to master the art of being a bastard without getting myself banned. I never mean most of the things I say, it's more akin to picking on friends of yours. Granted, anonymous friends of yours, but friends nonetheless.

Vacationers are the worst of the bunch. They're the ones that do it for no other reason than shock value, and often get banned frequently for that purpose. This behavior confuses me. If you're doing it for attention and you get yourself banned in the process, then haven't you just defeated the purpose?

Some of the worst examples I've seen are the ones that simply don't give up after the first few bannings - there was a thread about a week ago where some kid challenged Eyonix to a fight at Blizzcon. What's funny was that he was trolled harder by the Community Managers than they were by him. 26 pages of hilarity later, the dumbass had three banned accounts. I actually suspect that the person who started another thread to try to continue it wasn't actually the OP, but someone who wanted to ride on the tail end of his glory. Needless to say, it failed miserably.

Admittedly, most forum trolls have to be full of themselves or desire attention to one level or another. Otherwise, why would we do it? I'm definitely one to admit when I'm being an attention whore (read: always), but at least I'm honest about it. I have my own quirks I've developed at this point that people on the forums know me for - if I were to abandon any of them, it wouldn't really be the same. If I didn't enter an Eyonix thread to hit on him, people ask why? If I don't sling a little mud Zarhym's way, people wonder if something's wrong with me. If I don't fetch Nethaera her coffee, she gets grumpy. And we can't have that, now can we?

The long and short of it is that the term "Forum Troll" means multiple things, especially in particular on the official WoW forums. At this point, it really just means a forum regular rather than an abrasive individual looking to cause trouble.

Though, I assure you, no matter how nice we may seem, trouble often follows behind. What can I say? You know I'm a stinker. ;)