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RealID Required to Access In-game Twitter Functionality

by - 9 years ago

In the advent of Patch 6.1’s release, some Twitter users noticed something weird about the Twitter integration, and reported it to Blizzard’s CS account. This was the response they got:

This is a really confusing design decision, because it ties a functionality designed explicitly to advertise your actual identity with a service that has largely let people stay as anonymous as they like. And yeah, the ability to tweet from in-game isn’t really a hill anyone should die on, but it doesn’t match Blizzard’s past responses to matters like the original (awful) RealID-on-the-forums implementation or the semi-anonymous compromise of BattleTags.

That’s really the part that’s THE MOST confusing about all of this: why does RID need to be enabled for Twitter to work? The way it’s implemented now, you already have to authenticate into Twitter and authorize WoW to post on your behalf, which is as much authentication as any other site going through the Twitter API requires. Why did Blizzard need to add the additional layer of RealID into the mix?

If the answer is “Blizzard wants folks to use RealID” then that doesn’t make sense. Part of Blizzard’s stand-down from the original RealID debacle was clarifying that RealID was meant to be a method for you to connect with people that you know and trust outside the context of the game. The implementation of BattleTags was meant to fill the gap of “people you want to stay connected with who aren’t in your guild/clan but whom you don’t know well enough to trust with your identity.” If that’s still the case, then it doesn’t make any sense to push RealID’s restriction of “people you trust” onto the Twitter integration, since Twitter is largely a forum for connecting with people you don’t necessarily know outside of Twitter.

If the answer is “it’s a technical limitation” then I’m honestly 100% fine with Blizzard saying so. My problem stems from there being no communication about this prior to users discovering that it was the case and Blizzard responding with the above tweet. If we’d known prior to Patch 6.1 that RID was going to be requirement, then that changes the interaction somewhat, because it would have started this conversation months ago and potentially impacted how the feature was implemented.

Having the restriction show up after the feature is live makes it feel like rather shady, because now that it’s already in the wild, Blizzard will likely be very resistant to altering the functionality in any major way for fear of breaking it for the players already using it. For the overlapping groups of people who don’t use RealID but DO use Twitter, that means they’ve been cheated out of a functionality meant to let them share more with the people they’re connected to, with no indication of why that restriction is in play.

At the end of the day, this looks like a completely arbitrary design choice and without greater clarity on why this choice was made, it’s doesn’t bode well for Blizzard allowing players to both maintain their privacy and put new and fun features to use.

We reached out to Blizzard for some clarification on this, and here’s what we learned:

So that sounds like the “technical limitation” response, which like I said before makes perfect sense.

To an extent, it still would have been nice for Blizzard to broadcast this a bit while the feature was in development, since that might have triggered them iterating on it more before the patch released. However, having the assurance that they’re not afraid to iterate on it means that anyone who feels disadvantaged by the system-as-implemented should make themselves heard.

We’ll keep you informed of any shifts going forward. Keep it locked.


posted in Warcraft Tags: , ,
JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


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