Small intro
This is a topic that’s been sometimes brought up on other forums & as here. I’d like to raise it up again as a general concern over this matter. We all are aware how Blizzard tends to adapt WoW to modern trends via game mechanics, design and narrative or how it’s delivered. But the most important aspect of the game - social aspect, has been neglected for years.
We still can only use 10 slots for ranks in the guilds. Guild tabards have not been touched ever since vanilla. And communications via chats are ‘still there’. (Like, you can see people via a list who sit in trade chat or general chat).
However, there are two things that can be generally exploited to expose your alts. The easy way and the more tedious way.
Easy way:
PvP check aka Data Share is on.
Tedious way:
Pets comparison.
Easy way:
Surprisingly enough, from the amount of people that has whispered me before, not many are aware about Data Share feature. What’s even more annoying, is that it’s turned on by default and you’re not even being informed about it unless you go into your Bnet options and head to Privacy category.
This option provides API data of your characters (alts included). It can be used for good things such as allow mythic leaders or raid leaders or pvp leaders to check your stats or for nefarious ways (e.g harassment).
Solution: While you can manually turn it off, main issue here lies in the lack of awareness about it to begin with. When you launch your Bnet, let a 1-time pop up window with a notice that asks you about this option and if you want to enable it or disable it & imo this feature also should be disabled by default.
Tedious way:
I call it tedious, because it takes more time & effort unless you automatize it by writing a custom addon. However. You simply check character’s armory for pets and enter paranoid mode. “This person wants to join my guild? Need to check them and make sure it’s not a troublemaker/drama generator person, who’s pets I know.” basically.
Or you can use an addon (write it yourself) that creates a database and uses multiple ways to ‘scan’ characters. Either via world chats by sitting in capital cities or by hovering your mouse over ‘targets of interest’. Then these characters are checked via armory link, pets names are gathered and added into your database and you simply sort it out via whatever means.
Solution: It’s pretty much the same as with the first exploit. Let people either A) De-assign pets. (I honestly have no clue why we can’t do this) or B) Allow us to decide whenever we want to hide this information or not.
Given previous responses, I’ll answer a few statements pre-maturely.
S: But I’m playing the game and never had any issues.
A: Yes. And that’s fine. But you don’t have any issues until suddenly you do. And then it’s a headache.S: These can be used to determine if you want to filter bad people from joining your guild or avoid them.
A: Also true. But it’s a stick with both ends.
As some know, it doesn’t take much to begin harass someone and by using these methods, it only makes things easier. Others prefer to play their alts and keep them / yourself oocly, strictly separate. You don’t want to be bothered by others if you play on another alt. And the /ignore function is not a panacea against everything either. There are other workaround ways.
I’m more than sure that it doesn’t require a Master degree in order to implement a simply feature that simply informs you & allows you to decide if you want to share data about yourself or not.
Respect your privacy. Because it’s commodity is in shortage.
