I hadn’t intended to make another post here. I didn’t see a need.

It should be first established, if it wasn’t already known, that I am female. This is not something I openly advertise while I play (there’s a reason most of my toons are male!) – however it tends to become fairly obvious the first time I open my mouth on a ventrilo server. Still, beyond the harmless teenage boys who would shamelessly flirt, I never really had an issue. That is, until a few months ago.

At that point, I had issues on The Scryers with a male who lived ‘close’. We had determined previously during late night guild (and note I said guild, not private) chats that we both lived in the same region. I didn’t think much of it – while I’m a generally private person, I never saw an issue with people knowing approximately where I lived. The region is pretty large, and I’ve only ever given out my first name, if I go by anything beyond a character name. With that guild, they only knew me by my character name(s).

Regardless…this particular guy went from ‘seemingly nice guy’ to ‘scary asshole’ very quickly, for no apparent reason. I still don’t know what set him off that he became bound and determined to try and make my gaming life abject hell. Given that he did live in the same region and did know that I did as well, and had already determined how far it was from him…I needed to escape. I’ve dealt with stalkers before, I lost a livelihood and clients due to stalkers – it’s not an experience I’d wish on anyone, and sadly, it was something I knew how to resolve, and quickly. Server swapping and name changing gave me that necessary separation.

Fast forward though, to these last few days, when Blizzard has made it clear that Real ID and a lack of privacy is the wave of the future. I’m scared…no…terrified…of the potential ramifications had this been the case when I had my issues several months ago. While I’m not a WoW forum regular by any stretch, I had posted periodically…and since I have a very unusual spelling for part of my name, I have little doubts he would have been able to find out exactly where I lived. How do I know this? I’ve googled my name enough to know what’s out there on me – my twitter, my personal blog, my linkedin profile … things I have no issues with potential employers finding … but stalkers? No thank you. I don’t need some guy deciding that he’s going to make me pay because of something that happened in a game.

I have to wonder if Blizzard really and truly considered the ramifications of taking peoples privacy from them … if they considered the stalking they were opening up their player base to. I’d say female players, but I suspect that men, though less vocal, have also been the victims here. As on Facebook, I should have the option to determine who I want to see my information, and how much information they can see. I shouldn’t have to lose the option to chat with off-realm friends just to make myself invisible to everyone else.

Even before this Real ID deal, I had already decided not to renew this domain when it expired in December. I didn’t really have anything left to say, and I didn’t like leaving a page around to potentially be tracked through (I already had one seemingly nice guy ‘say hello’ in game, and it scared the crap out of me, thinking it might have been the jerk from TS).

So while I said goodbye on Twitter a month or so ago, this will be the final post in this blog. I hope people found this place useful while it lasted, and I wish any of my remaining readers the best.

-The DK formerly known as Grim

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