Character name can't be hidden.

The basic idea is that this will deter trolling, because everyone will use their legitimate names instead of the very obvious illegitimate names sprinkled throughout the forums. I don't see any legitimate reason to hide your identity, but this won't actually prevent it as long as the trolls have mules.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

I can see why you might be worried if people know your in game name. You're incredibly arrogant and your posts make no sense.

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I'm not worried, I just don't want to know you. You are free to deal with the rejection however you see fit.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

I'm not worried, I just don't want to know you. You are free to deal with the rejection however you see fit.

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Oh, I see, You're a troll. You're simply making responses that seem the most stupid in hopes you rouse a negative response from me. Oh, Well. I remember when you first began posting you weren't nearly this stupid. In fact i recall you were quite reasonable.

So my guess is the internet has gotten to you, and you no longer care what people think of you so you're attempting to make everyone hate you.

Its sad to see you go down this hard. Maybe you can get a blog spot with starcade? you both seem to have the same level of arrogance and meaningless hatred.

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Well, it was highly suspicious that only my BLM gears were stolen when I logged out on WHM, and my FFXIAH profile hadn't been updated to reflect that change the next moring and my toon had been moved. They didn't touch my SH +1 and such...it was all still in my mogsafe....with my other 6 HQ staves and such, which had been swiped. Didn't even take the Royal Cloak that was in my inventory, but they took my black cloak that was in the safe also. It had the appearence of them seeing specific gear they wanted and that's all they took. Whether they saw that before hand, or just when they logged on during the 6 hours I was logged off can be debated. Regardless....showing that info can simply lead to more problems than it may help. Thankfully, this sytem won't be going so far to show gears and such, but it might evolve into that eventually--who knows. I'm simply not confortable with having no say in showing any of my character's information. It's also why I contacted the admins and had them purge my info from the data base after I unlinked from the LS site. Eventually, old data got restored when the site had a meltdown and they had to extract old data to recover it so it has ancient stats showing.

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If someone got on your account to take your stuff they likely would have stolen all they could. I can't explain your situation, but i severely doubt it was because they saw your gear on FFXIAH.

That is what is so odd about it... they took over 3mill of stuff out of the safe, but left almost 2 mill behind, some of which was on my character...though it wasn't equipped. And purging my data was a recommendation from SE. They even had me clear my friends list as well. Security software didn't catch any adware/spyware crud on my game system either--it was only caught on my laptop, which is what I used to log into the SE LS sight and hit all the other FFXI stuff. So if they trapped my sign-in info, that is where they likely got it from-my laptop. Which is another reason I don't like having to use my game credentials to access these forums. Maybe they were only looking for specific gear in general, or maybe they already knew that I had a specific set of gears and that's all they took. Who knows.

But this is distracting from the real debate/issue with this move. They are already forcing us to use game credentials to log-in, creating a potential attack vector, and then they are going to force us to publish information identifying our in-game persona. This has the potential to create problems for some users and we should be given the ability to opt out.

There are very few positives and negatives for this move. I too do not understand why they are doing it.

Only that I think after it happens we'll eventually get over it :(

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

I remember when you first began posting

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You have no idea, and that isn't just trolling. The information flows because I automatically assume that no one has any clue what they are talking about.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

You have no idea, and that isn't just trolling. The information flows because I automatically assume that no one has any clue what they are talking about.

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On these forums*

What you said really does sound like something he-who-shall-not-be-named does. I assume a certain level of intelligence from the people i talk too (Which is why i assume a lot).

That being said, Letting other people effect your life is never a wise solution, especially when it directly impacts your ability to socially interact with others, online or off.

You're only hurting yourself in that endeavor.

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Originally Posted by RAIST

That is what is so odd about it... they took over 3mill of stuff out of the safe, but left almost 2 mill behind, some of which was on my character...though it wasn't equipped. And purging my data was a recommendation from SE. They even had me clear my friends list as well. Security software didn't catch any adware/spyware crud on my game system either--it was only caught on my laptop, which is what I used to log into the SE LS sight and hit all the other FFXI stuff. So if they trapped my sign-in info, that is where they likely got it from-my laptop. Which is another reason I don't like having to use my game credentials to access these forums. Maybe they were only looking for specific gear in general, or maybe they already knew that I had a specific set of gears and that's all they took. Who knows.

But this is distracting from the real debate/issue with this move. They are already forcing us to use game credentials to log-in, creating a potential attack vector, and then they are going to force us to publish information identifying our in-game persona. This has the potential to create problems for some users and we should be given the ability to opt out.

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Why exactly is this such a big issue with you? no one used ffxiah or this site or any other to rob you or anything to that extent. No one nowadays would bother looking to steal old gear such as you listed. Nor did anything you listed stolen equal to anything close to 1m gil. So im really confused =/

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this is distracting from the real debate/issue with this move. They are already forcing us to use game credentials to log-in, creating a potential attack vector, and then they are going to force us to publish information identifying our in-game persona. This has the potential to create problems for some users and we should be given the ability to opt out.

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1234567890

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Originally Posted by RAIST

Well, it was highly suspicious that only my BLM gears were stolen when I logged out on WHM, and my FFXIAH profile hadn't been updated to reflect that change the next moring and my toon had been moved. They didn't touch my SH +1 and such...it was all still in my mogsafe....with my other 6 HQ staves and such, which had been swiped. Didn't even take the Royal Cloak that was in my inventory, but they took my black cloak that was in the safe also. It had the appearence of them seeing specific gear they wanted and that's all they took. Whether they saw that before hand, or just when they logged on during the 6 hours I was logged off can be debated. Regardless....showing that info can simply lead to more problems than it may help. Thankfully, this sytem won't be going so far to show gears and such, but it might evolve into that eventually--who knows. I'm simply not confortable with having no say in showing any of my character's information. It's also why I contacted the admins and had them purge my info from the data base after I unlinked from the LS site. Eventually, old data got restored when the site had a meltdown and they had to extract old data to recover it so it has ancient stats showing.

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An odd story, but I myself would assume the cause was something you picked up from being on such pages as FFXIAH.

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Originally Posted by Karbuncle

On these forums*

What you said really does sound like something he-who-shall-not-be-named does. I assume a certain level of intelligence from the people i talk too (Which is why i assume a lot).

That being said, Letting other people effect your life is never a wise solution, especially when it directly impacts your ability to socially interact with others, online or off.

You're only hurting yourself in that endeavor.

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You grossly overestimate the impact 6 y.o. arguments have on someone who ignored them when they were generated.

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Originally Posted by Winrie

Why exactly is this such a big issue with you? no one used ffxiah or this site or any other to rob you or anything to that extent. No one nowadays would bother looking to steal old gear such as you listed. Nor did anything you listed stolen equal to anything close to 1m gil. So im really confused =/

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Since you asked, this was a long time ago, a while before tokens were even announced...when a set of HQ staves alone cost a couple million, upwards of 500k for certain ones and they were considered a bargain. It wasn't uncommon to fork out 600K+ just for an acceptable body piece, more for the HQ version. A lot of people got attacked, and it usually resulted in everything being swiped, but for some reason I only had the items specific to one job swiped, and it was the only gear showing on both FFXI and the LS site at the time. SE hinted at the fact that it may have had something to do with my gear being on the sites, and wanted the names of people I added to my friend list recently so they could investigate them, then advised that I clean up my friend list and get my data pulled from the sites.

The suspicious nature of that incident is what has prompted me to be a little more protective of my information, so I shared the story is all. Others have alluded to the fact they have been stalked and such--this kind of fits with that side, it just gives some specific details is all.

[conspiracy]I'd be suspicious of anyone who doesn't remember life before tokens, Raist.[/conspiracy] ;)

I'm absolutely opposed to this. I'm a diehard advocate of privacy and anonymity in all facets of the internet, and forcing people to reveal information they want to keep private is never acceptable. If people want to share such information, that's their right, but requiring it for everyone is intolerable. If this goes through as stated then the 27th will be my last log in here.

This is the Internet. You lose your rights to privacy the moment you place one bit of information on it. Every site has a Terms of Service and if you violate that in any regard they have all the right in the world to take the necessary steps of punishment.

Your FFXI character is not yours, it is not your private property, it is not meant to be your private property. Anyone stupid enough to allow critical information to be displayed freely on FFXI is subject to the consequential occurrences that may take place, and I have no pity for them.

You are renting a character from Square Enix, and by posting on these forums you agree to everything they set. If they say you have to link your forum account to at least one character on your account, then you have to do that and are obligated to do so if you intend to continue playing, and posting on these forums. Even if you don't like it, even if you think it's not secure, you need to because SE is making you do so. And they're not violating anything except maybe this new thing called "human rights"; but who pays attention to those anyway?

With that said, I would highly advise a "Privacy" toggle for what information is displayed. Otherwise the QQ will never end.

None of this has anything to do what-so-ever with any private information.

Yes, but people are still sitting here complaining about the issue nonetheless. When it really is no big deal.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

Everyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to put their home address on an index card and affix it to every dollar they give to a homeless person.

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lol...

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Originally Posted by Tsukino_Kaji

None of this has anything to do what-so-ever with any private information.

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Hence what I said earlier about people blatantly having something to hide.

Maybe people from Quetzalcoatl are just more jaded than others in this regard, since we had a server forum for a long time, on which people were actually required to identify their character names.

You know what the only fallout was?

When someone was retarded, we knew who was retarded, and could thus avoid them in-game because... well... they were retarded.

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With that said, I would highly advise a "Privacy" toggle for what information is displayed. Otherwise the QQ will never end.

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nono, you don't seem to understand because you fail to see anything from another persons point of view. You see, just because something fails to bother you does not ring true for everyone else.

To some this is an unnecessary change they don't want to be forced to do, as such they will simply not be forced to do it and stop posting after that date. This assuming they make you use the highest character on the account. As such there will be no "QQ" after the date.

The issue here is if it upsets people and serves no purpose why are any of you arguing for it? Stop trying to bash on people that are saying they are against it just because you don't care one way or the other, if that's the case why post? You aren't a lackey for Square and this isn't your personal crusade for something you want.

These forums already stop a large portion of the playerbase posting here because of the stupid login system, this is just another thing to turn away more posters. For a forum made to link with the playerbase they are sure doing a good job and alienating a large portion of them.

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Originally Posted by Runespider

Not everyone is the same, I know many posters enjoy being linked to their posts on a forum but that's not everyone. Some people just want to be able to play the game in peace but yet still have a place to express their opinions.

Remember that post a while back about fixing 100pdt pets and all the mouth breathers saying they were going to bother the person that made the topic? Sure it's only a game but many of us play the game as a source of relaxation and want to just play the game without having to worry about being bothered, good or bad from posts made on a forum.

For people that like the link and that already make it obvious who they are for the "fame?" or something this is a non-issue, for people that just want to state their opinions and have their game time totally seperate it will stop them posting. Unless you think that group of people have nothing worthwhile to contribute to this forum and them stopping posting is no loss?

The main thing I don't get is just what the point of it is, if it's purely being done to stop trolls they don't understand trolls at all. The worst ones revel in the fame of it and usually use their ingame name to post with in the first place anyway...hell they probably troll port jeuno as bad as they do here.

What I can see happening is this being applied to eu/us players and jp being exempt, many of them go bat crazy if you as much as examine them still let alone this.

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This is Exactly how I "FEEL" actually...
I do not wish people to know my main char name on forums because I do not wish people from these forums to bother me. I just wish to express my opinions and feelings towards the current stats and still be able to play the game in one peace.

Your example about the "fixing 100pdt pets and all the mouth breathers saying they were going to bother the person that made the topic" is one of the main reasons I would NOT like this feature to be made. I may make posts that a lot of people may like and I may make post that some will not like and I do not wish people in game to know my in game name and judge me based on my opinion and expression towards these forums as a gamer in general. I just wish to game in 1 peace while I am able to post here.

I'm not the type of player who wishes everyone to know who I am because I do not like the idea of people trying to stalk me or others for what ever reason there may be or for no reason at all.

That is just how I am.
This needs to be optional in my opinion.

I may discontinue posting on these forums if I feel uncomfortable but only time well tell from here on out.

Yes, wanting to control what information about yourself is released into the general public is clearly the hallmark of nefarious intention. Self determination is evil and corporations should should feel free to do what they like with your information, will ye nil ye.

Will this stop trolling? It won't.
Will this open posters to the possibilities of brand new levels of harassment? It will.
That harassment won't develop for everyone, and might not develop for anyone, but it's still a risk without reward.

In fact, this can't stop trolling unless it opens you to harassment. That is the very meaning of the so called accountability this will bring: don't troll lest you be hassled in game, for the club of the mob hangs over your every post. If it's not affecting you in game, how can it stop trolling? The two effects are interdependent, claiming you can have one without the other simply fails as an argument.

So all are to be stripped naked and thrown into the crowd, and we hope only the deserving will be kicked in the nuts... Yeah, right.

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Originally Posted by Dallas

Everyone who thinks this is a good idea needs to put their home address on an index card and affix it to every dollar they give to a homeless person.

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This is one of the most ridiculous leaps of logic I have read in quite some time. Thank you for the laugh.

Ultimately, this information belongs to SE - and if they feel that, overall, the experience is enriched by its implementation then they will put it in place. If a significant number of players leave en masse because of it, then they will hopefully get the message that they were incorrect. It is all a numbers game, really. If it does not affect 97%, negatively impacts 1%, but 2% like it, then the 1% loses.

Has SE stated "why" this is? There have been a lot of assertions regarding the reasoning - and I have not seen an offcial statement by SE explaining such; not saying it doesn't exist, I am just curious if these assertions are more than conjecture.

Personally, I am in the hypothetical 97% (or whatever % you want to arbitrarily assign to those who don't care), but I understand that others could feel differently.

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And they're not violating anything except maybe this new thing called "human rights"; but who pays attention to those anyway?

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I seriously hope this was sarcasm - the rest of your post was so reasonable...

I personally have nothing to hide, I could care less if people know who I am in game, most of the people who know me know I'm a bit off my rocker, I tend to think outside of the box, pay attention to details a lot of others wouldn't, and I do expect some will disagree with many of my posts, I try then to see their side and keep the arguments civil

@ Runespider: The issue I want to know is why people are upset over information (that isn't even theirs by law) being displayed on a forum. If it's that big of an issue, start a petition or something for SE to implement a "Profile:Private" feature. There's no sense in arguing against it here, honestly. They're going to do what they want to do with what is rightfully theirs, whether you like it or not.
p.s. I've only ever logged into the forums once, and it never gave me any troubles.

@Arlan: The chances of someone actually stalking you based on what you post on these forums is really low. You have more risk going outside and being stalked than you do posting on the internet. That is of course assuming you're not instigating anybody or acting questionable on the forums. If you're a regular, average person... no one would have interest in you.

That's how I view it. I understand your position and I wish I could be empathetic, but I just don't think in that regard really. I don't care if people know about my pixels. I would like to draw the line at any RL info, which I know for a fact can't be easy to ascertain from information gained from an official forum site. But pixel information? People /telling you on the forums? Who cares if they don't agree with you? /blacklist and move on, and /blacklist again. No human has the attention span to repeatedly recreate characters just to annoy someone else. Same thing in RL applies on the Internet, except it's a lot easier: ignore those who don't like you, and only pay any attention to those who care about you.

"There are four kinds of people in this world: people who like you for the right reasons, people who like you for the wrong reasons, people who dislike you for the wrong reasons, and people who dislike you for the right reasons. The last category is the one you should worry about."

@Annahya: Yes, that was sarcasm, lol.

Pretty much everyone who these boards consider a "Flamer" or "Troll" posts with their real in-game name anyways. Not because anyone's "proud of flaming", but because people believe in accountability. People have always been more than welcome to have me put my money where my mouth is, personally. I'm the only Greatguardian on any server (FFXIAH returns Cerberus and Bahamut only because I was keylogged sometime in '08). This doesn't really change anything for me.

I'm more interested in seeing who people like Dallas and Hordecore are.

yeah that is the screwy part, it seems the "Flamer" or the "Troll" wants you to know who they are as if they are daring you to come argue with them in the game or something

yeah many of them believe in accountability but I think some of them are really hoping people will come argue with them in the game

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

Pretty much everyone who these boards consider a "Flamer" or "Troll" posts with their real in-game name anyways. Not because anyone's "proud of flaming", but because people believe in accountability. People have always been more than welcome to have me put my money where my mouth is, personally. I'm the only Greatguardian on any server (FFXIAH returns Cerberus and Bahamut only because I was keylogged sometime in '08). This doesn't really change anything for me.

I'm more interested in seeing who people like Dallas and Hordecore are.

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Originally Posted by wildsprite

yeah that is the screwy part, it seems the "Flamer" or the "Troll" wants you to know who they are as if they are daring you to come argue with them in the game or something

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Pardon? Not at all. I could care less about arguing with people. But if I'm going to make some outrageous claim like "I know what I'm doing", or "I can do this, it is not hard", I know that I am held accountable for those claims.

I am not irresponsible enough to run around saying "lol getting Empyreans and AF3+2 is sooper easy u r all gimps w/o them" and then hide my profile because I'm wearing full Aurore. That is the hallmark of lack of accountability.

Edit: Better example. I'm not irresponsible or juvenile enough to call every Summoner on these forums Gimp and then refuse to post any of my gear or publicize my identity.

When the time comes, you should totaly list your smn lvl.

67? Because anyone with half a brain couldn't look me up on FFXIAH and see that? What about it? People have to actually have the job leveled to know how it works now?

News to me.

Protip: I've dualboxed on 90SMNs multiple times for all that it matters.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

Pardon? Not at all. I could care less about arguing with people. But if I'm going to make some outrageous claim like "I know what I'm doing", or "I can do this, it is not hard", I know that I am held accountable for those claims.

I am not irresponsible enough to run around saying "lol getting Empyreans and AF3+2 is sooper easy u r all gimps w/o them" and then hide my profile because I'm wearing full Aurore. That is the hallmark of lack of accountability.

Edit: Better example. I'm not irresponsible or juvenile enough to call every Summoner on these forums Gimp and then refuse to post any of my gear or publicize my identity.

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oh no I wasn't referring to you directly, I believe you are one of the ones who believe in accountability

and lol my SMN gear is gimp as hell but I still do fairly decent at the job....I really wanna upgrade my callers set but cant do that without help :/

Others brought up being stalked, but anyone who's been on the receiving end of that can likely respect having a greater control of what information about themselves, be it real or that of digital avatar, is out there when it comes to offering peace of mind.

Sadly, I lost a friend to the game when she chanced upon meeting the wrong guy. They kind of hit it off at first, but he got clingy. She eventually blew him off, but he'd have nothing of it. Such began a smear campaign of personal harassment from him, his mules (often deleted and recreated), and whatever buddies he could cajole into giving her crap. He had search comments set up, which at the time, I guess wasn't a bannable offense when including a player's name. He'd go to whatever zone she was in as a higher level job and thin out the EXP camps she and her party was participating in (Highest she got was to 58) and occasionally MPKing if it was an option. She'd called the GM on him multiple times. Hell, I even called for her after trying to moderate and him being snappy at me, but all we got was the canned response to just blacklist him. Eventually she just lost the will to log in, and soon after canceled. I tried to get her back after it seemed like he quit, but the damage had been done.

As is, I've received the occasional unsolicited trash talk on my old server simply because I'm one of those kooks who feel RDM + Melee shouldn't be a solo toy. Some might sit here saying they have nothing to hide, people should grow a thicker skin, or whatever, but I see it more as a preventative measure for keeping those with lesser restraint and morals from gaining an avenue to attack people from. I'll never rule out the possibility of accounts themselves being at risk, as such could create a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a blog, linkshell forum, or wherever that someone more tech savvy might be able to extract such info from less secure sources. Could've been a simple old PM to a friend, "Hey, I'm going out of town. Could you log me in for Dynamis if X drops? blahblah" It's happened, and lords no phbb and such has vulnerabilities.

Overall, I'm fine with the mandatory linking of a character for further forum use, but said character's information should have the option of being blocked to all but administrators. And if people can emulate this effect just by picking a mule, there's no point not to.

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Originally Posted by Seriha

Others brought up being stalked, but anyone who's been on the receiving end of that can likely respect having a greater control of what information about themselves, be it real or that of digital avatar, is out there when it comes to offering peace of mind.

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None of this has anything to do with any information about yourself.

I don't understand the arguing about this.

The bad points of forced account linking: Quite a lot of people don't like it.

The good points of forced account linking: is?

You can say it doesn't matter or they are only virtual details that belong to square and that's all fine but ultimately if the positives are non-existent and the negatives are upsetting people why would anyone argue for it?

Positive #1: Knowing what server Hordecore is on.

Positive #2: Accountability. Even if people side-step it with mules. Better than nothing.

Positive #3: No more sock TearValerin BS.

unfortunately you will always have people argue for something even if it is ultimately negative, I'm not for or against it, but I do understand the negatives and think SE should rethink this idea, ultimately though we all know they wont, they feel it is the best for their system and will till it comes back to bite em in the behind

Honestly, I don't really see what the big deal is. In-game harassment over forum posts? Yeah. It happens. But not to/from who you think it does. If anything that I've actually seen happen personally, the BG posters here get a lot more random flak from people than anything else since we already post with our in-game names.

But in the end, who cares? Blacklist is awesome. Aside from that, what real life info is going to be garnered from your in-game name anyways? If you have something set up that poorly in the first place, fix it now because anyone on your server or in your linkshell could be paying you a visit already if that's what worries you.

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Originally Posted by Greatguardian

Aside from that, what real life info is going to be garnered from your in-game name anyways?

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Most people don't deserve to know our fake lives either.

how about those who don't have a mule, and aren't comfortable with publishing their info (for whatever reason)? We should have the option whether to display job levels and such, just like with every other forum out there. I usually use the same name (or a variation of it) simply so people who know me can find me when I move to something new.

We already have the capability to show all the information about ourselves we want with our signatures, and most are not showing any of it. What I'm more concerned about is where it will lead. Just how much info will they be forcing us to post eventually?

Personally, I'd like the following information to be displayed:

1. Job levels.
2. Craft levels.
3. Mission status.
4. Quest status.

Make it easier to find people for grouping for certain missions/quests, and for crafting purposes. A lot more convenient than just sitting in Port Jeuno for an hour hitting the same macro (if you're smart) or space bar + up arrow, enter... :/

This is assuming of course SE is smart and creates a search feature for these profiles fitting the criteria. But I doubt that will happen. I'm still for this because it does create accountability. Like I said before, I would say nothing on here that I wouldn't say on FFXI. Vice-versa applies too.

To the poster with a stalked friend, it's unfortunate to hear of your loss due to a stupid retard. But that was an entirely different thing - and I won't begin to speculate - but forum posts and relationship troubles are two entirely different things.

All against this need to remember what they were taught in kindergarten. I'm sorry that you've had all this time to forget of liability whilst using the Internet. But it was bound to happen - and it's going to happen on a much grander scale one day, I can assure you.

Speaking of which.