I'm not a fan of this new Battlenet feature....

You know, if I wanted my battlenet to become Facebook, I would have linked it up to Facebook and Twitter. But I didn't. And now I feel like it's being shoved down my throat.


It's bad enough that Facebook spams me with people I should befriend because I have friends who are their friends but should battlenet be doing that as well?

4782 SUGGESTED FRIENDS??? That's bloody nuts.
It is unfortunate because my bnet friends get spammed with all my friends which blows out their list. And I must admit I look at the list and see names on it of people who aren't my friends that I could add - but perhaps there was a reason they didn't want to add me? And now we run into that whole Facebook thing where people get offended if you don't add them as a friend. Also, you can't hide anymore either!

Another thing I noticed is that suddenly people's real names are appearing next to their btags. I think this shows when you have realid enabled in your personal bnet settings. The default is to have it on and some people may not want to show their real names.

I guess the easy thing to do is to ignore it and not look at it. But that doesn't mean others aren't looking at it. How about ugly breakups and you're trying to avoid people and they find you again and harrass you? Or stalkers? Or people you just don't like?

The plus side is that it makes it very easy to Navispam people because I could find out someone's btag via their friends. However, though my intentions are benign, there could be others where they are not.

Admittedly last night we all spent time comparing friends of friends lists - or rather, Eurie, Crooked and Sev spent time looking at all the suggested people that were all on my friends list that they knew, trying to guess whom was whom. Sev commented even that the new battlenet feature was like 6 degrees of separation from Navi because my friends list is so large.

What I would rather have is an option to turn it off or hide the feature so people can't see my friends list. I don't MIND that Blizz has put this so that we can reach out to the broader community and make more friends, but sometimes too little privacy can cause even more headaches.



Comments

  1. I saw this feature yesterday...Didn't really look into it. I actually don't want it. Sometimes when i play wow I jumped to various servers to play and be alone for awhile, this new thing I dunno, I mean its great if you are looking for a certain friend and your other friend has on their list...but I would think that would be an invasion of privacy! Or so I thought. Admittedly I used my real name..but no point changing it now lol...been that way forever and I don't mind. I have a very short btag friends list, just the way I like it :D

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  2. Didn't they have that feature back towards the end of Cata and early Mists? I seem to recall a bit of a brouhaha over people discovering that they were suddenly visible to people they thought they'd blocked.

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    Replies
    1. THen they brought out btag right, instead of realid?

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    2. That might be the case. I'll freely admit that I put very very few people into the Friends list anyway --mainly Vidyala (From Draenor with Love) and a couple of other people who were based in NA-- so it never really did much.

      I suppose that Blizz has now gone full LinkedIn now...

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  3. you can turn it off. there are 2 settings in the bnet app under friends and chat.

    tick hide friends real id
    also untick show friend suggestions in the friends list.

    then the other options are in battlenet website
    account, settings, communication settings.
    there you can disable real id & show realid of friends of friends lists.

    i have real id on but all the friends of friends turned off.
    i guess im a bit weird in that i have always been pretty selective as to who i have on my friends list.

    my only real issue with the rollout of this option is that it should have been off by default & let people decide if they want it on or not.
    other than that, i dont mind. it all about adding another choice if people want to use it or not.
    more options are good imo.

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