Bumming around the web this morning, it looks like there's reports of today being patch day. 3.3.5 is going live.
There's not much to this patch. The new Ruby Sanctum raid, and the Real ID system.
There was a lot of talk about the Real ID system when it was first announced, but now that it's here, who's planning on using it, and to what extent?
I know I'm excited about the prospect of being able to work on unguilded or Horde alts without being completely out of touch with the guild. It does mean that I'll never have a true "escape" character again...one I can just hop on and play when I want to WoW without the stress of being a guild officer. But to some extent, that's okay. I'm a little neurotic, and so "escape" characters often presented me with a different kind of stress. Instead of "omg, I don't want to deal with any of this today," it was "I'm totally shirking my responsibilities and that makes me a bad officer." Like I said...neurotic.
I do plan to limit the people on my Real ID friends list to mostly my fellow officers and a small handful of guild members (who probably could be officers if we ever decide we need more). People I know will respect the boundary implied by me not being on a character in the guild and only reach out to me if it's something important. Or at least respect a "no, I'm not really up for any heroics/raids right now" without hassle.
The big issue that comes out of this is what to say to the people who want to add me that don't fall into the above category. How do you reject a request without hurting feelings?
To some degree, I think it's unavoidable. Some people are going to be very excited to be able to keep in constant contact, and they're going to be let down. My plan is to find a kind way to say that I devote a lot of time to help leading our raids and the guild. To keep from getting burned out, I need to have some space. Finding kind ways to phrase things has never been one of my strong points, though...so we'll see how that goes.
Other than that...it's going to be a week until I get to try out the new raid. I've been on vacation since Friday and won't be back home until Monday night. So I won't be able to give my impressions of it until then. Haha. Forgot it was going to be a couple weeks until this got opened. Nevermind.
Warcraft is old (and so am I)
4 years ago
Posts
The problem, to me, isn't that you can select the handful of people you would trust to respect your privacy, but that whoever they've friended will be able to see you as well. Creepy. I can't imagine ever using the Real ID system until I have absolute control over every single person who can see my status directly.
ReplyDeleteI'm limiting it to what it's intended: Real Life friends. I may not even let the officers in my guild have my Real ID info.
ReplyDeleteIn my case that would consist of...my dad. I'm pretty much the only person among my RL friends that's a heavy gamer, Blizzard or otherwise. Although I've been an officer in my guild for almost 2 years now and consider my fellow officers to be friends. I've even been fortunate enough to meet them in real life on occasion.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a happy medium in there somewhere. It's going to take some time and adjusting to see what the best way to use it ends up being.
I agree. This is the one feature that I don't like about it. I feel somewhat better knowing that a number of my fellow officers are going to be employing the same general strategy as me with regards to who's going to be friended. But yeah...there is the possibility of people I haven't friended still being able to see when I'm online. For right now, I'm okay with that. Well, not okay. But I'm going to accept it until it becomes a real problem. If it does, then I'll decide what to do from there.
ReplyDeletePractice this with me. No. No. and No.
ReplyDeleteI plan to give my real ID to at least one person in the guild as a contact point. Someone I trust to not mess with me when I say "no, I really just need some time to myself right now," when they come to me with officery things while I'm on a hidey-alt :)
ReplyDeleteYou have a bit of time with the RS raid; they're holding off on opening it until they're sure the patches have stabilized across all the servers, including the EU ones that haven't been patched yet. Have fun with vacation, though!