I was here when all that happened. It was called RealID and was poised to be implemented on the forums to combat the trolls and clean this place up. The logic being that with your real identity attached to what you say, far more people are going to be courteous and respectful.
And no it isn’t modern…to this day you can add someone via their email or battle net ID…if you do it via email, it gives you their real name (or the name on the account rather). That is the baseline functionality and battle net ID’s came about very shortly after as the alternate. Like this all was in the same expansion.
My point being with the name thing though as I’m quite confident in there being many more people whose names are changing due to marriages and divorces than there are trans people changing their first name…and if Blizzard requires a full name match as part of their account verification process, allowing people to freely change 1 half of that but not the other half is just plain stupid design.
I also get why you’d not want to allow people to change the name freely since that would mean a hacked account would be much harder to reclaim. From that angle though, it makes far more sense to just not allow the name to be changed once verified unless one goes through whatever formal process exists to make changes to reflect new legal name changes.
This covers both the niche situation that is trans first name changes as well as the vast majority of actual cases where people are pairing off and/or splitting apart.
yeah, but, if a company keeps involuntarily outing a trans person, that trans person can potentially file a lawsuit for discrimination or harassment.
sure, but i have to wonder why they went the route of needing official government ID instead of just securing accounts. i dont need ID to change the name on my microsoft or google accounts. i get that wow players might value their accounts, but at the end of the day an intangible asset has no real value.
and on the securing accounts, 2FA should have been a hard requirement on every account when they added the tech to the game. thats my opinion as a professional security engineer.
Recently a big crypto currency guy lost millions after bragging on social media about his success.
The hackers used NFC to data mine his phone, that’s how things like apple pay work, they then found a weak customer service agent who changed a password for the hacker and BAM. All they had to do was login and move funds.
Acronym for ‘near feild communications’ when you use a device to swipe it uses this technology over bluetooth. It is hackable if you can get your capture device next to the device you want to eventuially hack.
I’m not a lawyer, but that seems like an awfully easy defense for Blizzard. The trans person willingly added or accepted the request and they also have the ability to immediately revoke that access at any moment without the other party having any say. If they don’t want their name revealed, don’t give it to people.
I also am not arguing that Blizzard’s implementation isn’t lackluster at best…it is what it is though and it must obviously be good enough for them since they have had ample time to change it. Heck to my knowledge they don’t even respect case sensitivity on passwords (they definitely didn’t use to in any event).
Glad to hear a GM was able to resolve this for you.
For the record, first names on accounts can now be changed by the player themselves without needing a GM/CS person to assist. Last names still require legal documentation to change.
Of course, Blizz does not allow account sales or sharing (with the exception of one minor child) so they do require proof with Govt Issued ID to regain access to old accounts. It is really important to keep your account info up to date if you get married, divorced, have a name change, etc.
you dont read very well do you, they had the proper stuff to get their account back, incompetent CS agents didnt do their job very well. reread what they wrote, they had their ID and submitted it, it took 3 tickets before they got a competent agent to fix their issue.
