This is bad. Please change it or at least warn people. Someone is already unhappy about it, and others would be if they knew.

hmm should try to get a friend key from one of the supposed girls of VO and then when it comes through as Frank Jimmy I can be like AHA!

Thanks. Yeah, real names shouldn't automatically be sent I suppose.

rather then get rid of completely, why not offer it as an option (default to no real name). Some of us invite RL friends.

Hmm, I dunno.

I think friend keys are supposed to be issued to friends, IE people you know. I don't mind exposing my real name or gender to people not playing the game yet. Believe it or not I have played a female in VO and it isn't that fun. I know in a lot of games female chars can save you a lot of pain, but VO isn't one of them. There is no Gender in this game, just pirates.

All are pirates, you just have not realised it yet.

[edit]

AH crap, I keep posing as ntli cos I don't like wearing my Alpha badge unless I wanna. Need to remember to sign out again after paying! << yodaofborg

I realized it. I would also like to add.

AHA!

Indeed, the friend key idea is a good one but it shouldn't involve the donator knowing the real name or email of the recipient.

Those should be known only to GS.

A person can have friends with whom he does not share his true identity. There may be very legitimate reasons for this. Just because a person is enough of a friend to want to play a game with them doesn't mean you trust them with knowing your identity. And it can be more complicated than just worrying about whether people who play the game know your name. It may be that you don't want people who you know outside the game to know who you are inside the game. Those people don't have to be the people you give a friend key to either. Once one person knows your name, all it takes is a slip of the fingers for them to spread that knowledge to others.

Indeed, the friend key idea is a good one but it shouldn't involve the donator knowing the real name or email of the recipient.

I don't think it does. I believe the issue is that the recipient also receives the real name of the key-sender.

Anyway, I didn't realize the friend-key system did this, and yes, we will address it.

pfft like i ever needed to know someones real name to find out who they were IRL or if they were a real female.

heh someone could discover i is really a plant : )

This account has been in someone else name since I made it, cos errm well, I got banned. So like made a new account, then it got removed in some *purge* that was done once in Alpha/Beta(I think) and I remade it with the same name sometime in gold cos I didn't want my every character to have an alpha badge.

I just used auto complete from my browser to fill in the form, so yeah. The account ended up with the old name. I just found out today that it is using this persons name still, because I sent out 2 friend keys, and one of them PM'ed me and called me by this persons first name. Lol, they thought I was female for like 5 minutes.

I'm not a girl, I just don't pay for this account anymore! Stupid Alpha badge always gives me away!

Errm no, it seems it changes the account info as you pay an account (as well as expose account name with friend keys) . Sorry for the double post, but I just payed for someone elses account via paypal (I do not think this is against eula) and his account updated to include all the details used on my Paypal account.

Including my name, my address and all. This is something you need to look into. Thankfully it was a person that I do not care about knowing this info, I am sometimes generous and maybe pay for accounts that cannot pay, and stuff, I feel this is good for Guild Software.

I have paid for many accounts in the past, and they never got sent this info before, let alone have their own account updated with my details, errm, WTF? Yeah, fix this please.

Well, how we handle accounts someone directly pays for, using their own private information, is a bit different from this friend-key problem.

We currently have no support for privately paying for someone else's account. That's something on the list, but it isn't implemented yet. This means that if you pay for a given account, we handle it like that is your account, including notification emails and the like.

We've only had our own PayPal implementation for a little while (under a year, still?), so you probably didn't use that previously. It inherently behaves a bit differently from the other systems.

Also, we've added a lot more notices due to user feedback and confusion. Stuff like credit card denials and things like that will be sent to the address of record on the account.

I totally support us adding a "pay for your friend's account" feature, but that isn't in place yet.