Real ID? No kidding.

Everyone's talking about this Real ID thing, or so it seems. and everyone is either loving it, or hating it, or both. no i think most people are doing both. they love it and hate it all at the same time.

I do too.

Why do i love it? because it gives me the ability to chat with some friends on different servers. that's great you know. my buddy list will no longer be character-specific. some of the things that i hated about having many alts is that my friend, Immortelle, needed to be added to every single alt on her server. with real id, i dont have to do that anymore. i can free up some space for more buddies. like i use them all. but that is what i like about it.

I like that i can see my friend log in and out on different characters. this lets me know that they have nothing better to do than to log on, discover there's nothing to do, then log onto another character, discover the same thing, and log on again to another character. its amusing. but at the same time, it allows me to know that i can keep a constant conversation with them whether they decide to do heroics or mine or do AH stuff.

I can pull their whispers out of the chat box and into a floatable box, if i wanted to. i can also minimize the floating text box if i need more screen space to play. if they do send me a new message, their box will glow. i like all of these neat features.

What i dont love about this Real ID thing is that it is, in fact, showing my real name. Yes, i did sign up for wow using my real name. and unlike some of my friends, i did not capitalize anything. lol. but that's not the issue. the issue is that, i dont want my real name out there at all. maybe my first name? sure. but my last name too? that doesnt jive too well with me. i really would rather have a main "avatar" name or main toon name instead.

What i also do not like about this is the fact that i do see my friends on ALL of their alts. and i believe i will probably see them on all of their other blizzard games too, whenever the functionality becomes available. There are times where i am sure they do not want to be bothered, as there are plenty of times where i just want to be left alone. there is one character i let my daughter play, a level 1 hunter. she takes her swimming around sunstrider isle. no one really needs to know that my daughter is playing this character at the moment.

What if i go on my AH alt and do some AH stuffs? my Real ID friends will know who it is and what im doing. What if i wanted to level an alt on a different server? what if i just want to remain anonymous in this internet? i really never got close to many people in wow because i figured this is a game, and so lets keep our relationships at a game-only level. although some people have already added me to facebook, i would like to keep most of my friends in wow strictly IN wow. and some even strictly within one character's realm of friends. seriously. there are some people who only know me on a single character and do not know my alts.

What else? i do not like how other real id people will be able to know who my other real id peoples are. they're my friends. not my friends' friends. they dont need to know who my other friends are unless we party together, or are in the same guild, or within the same social network somewhere out there.

What i'd like to propose is that Real ID take a step back and actually give us some filters. filter the friends based on levels i guess. depending on level, we'd like to be able to limit the access of who sees what, whether it be our real names, our alts, our friends, or our pictures. heck, why not give us a section to include our bio, our relationship status and our sexual orientation. you might as well know, right? no you do not. i'd like to be able to chat with friends on different servers. but i'd like to limit my "status" somehow.

Filter Overall options: Real name or generic name. Pick a name for your friends to see.
Filter Overall options: Wow only. one day, we'll be playing different games and this will be helpful.

Friend Filter 1: Will see no Friends of Friends.
Friend Filter 2: Can only see same realm only (kinda defeats the purpose of real id, but it can be tweaked).
Friend Filter 3: Friends cannot see. (good for those alts i get on where i'd like to be left alone)

Those are the basic filters i'd like to see.


Hopefully Bliz will get some feedback on this and change a few things. the way Real ID is right now, it gives away way too much information and im not comfortable with that.