New Real ID Party Available for Testing

When delving into the depths of Azeroth's darkest dungeons, it always helps to have some friends at your side... now you're able to issue a call to arms no matter what realm they play on. We're pleased to announce the new Real ID Party feature is now available for testing! This new feature will allow World of Warcraft players to invite their real-life Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.

To learn more about Real ID, please visit the Real ID web page ( http://us.battle.net/en/realid/ ) and read the FAQ. ( http://us.battle.net/en/realid/faq )

For more information about how the Real ID Party system works, check out the FAQ below.

Real ID Party Feature – Test Phase FAQ

Q: What is the Real ID Party feature?

A: Players can now invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a 5-player normal or Heroic dungeon group, regardless of what realm their friends are on. This system is designed to make it easier for real-life friends to play together.

Q: How do I invite Real ID friends to a Real ID party?

A: Inviting a Real ID friend to a Real ID Party is simple. Just open up your Friends list to see which Real ID friends are online. Click on the “Plus” button to send an invitation to a Real ID friend to join your group. You can continue to add Real ID friends to your party until the group is complete. If you cannot complete the group with Real ID friends, you are free to join the Dungeon Finder to fill in the missing roles.

Q: Does a player need to have Real ID enabled to accept a Real ID group invite?

A: Yes, a player must have Real ID enabled, and both players must be Real ID friends to accept or initiate Real ID party invitations.

Q: Can a party leader invite a mix of Real ID friends, character-level friends, guildmates, or random players to the same party?

A: A party leader can invite any combination of Real ID friends from any realm, guildmates from the same realm, or other characters from the same realm to the same party. If the party leader isn’t able to fill up the entire party, the Dungeon Finder can fill in the missing roles.

Q: Can I invite someone who is not a Real ID friend?

A: You can only invite members to a party if they are on your Real ID friends list or if they are on the same realm as you are.

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?

A: No, you can only invite your own Real ID friends to the party.

Q: How long will the testing period last?

A: We haven’t yet determined how long the testing period will last. We'll keep you updated on the status and inform you when the test period is going to end in the future.

Q: Will aspects of the Real ID Party system be premium-based?

A: We'll have information on this toward the end of the testing period.

07/14/2011 09:22 AMPosted by Goodbuy

Do we have to sign up somewhere to try it?

As long as you have Real ID activated on your account and have Real ID friends (online and available), it should be working for you.

07/14/2011 09:23 AMPosted by Emerzion

If you can do dungeons, why not also make it so you can do battlegrounds? If that was the case I'd be buying it in the future.

We're taking this one step at a time right now. But that doesn't mean this is outside the realm of possibility for the future. Let's see how this goes first though.

I am highly excited for this, but the word premium sets off HUGE alarm bells in my head.


Oh well, I'm happy to test it with a multitude of people as long as it is available.

I said this as a response on the blog and I'll post it here as well:

We greatly appreciate constructive feedback about this, but as we mention in the FAQ above we'll have information about a cost for premium services at a future point in time. For now, all anyone is able to do is "guess" at what this could mean. Let's focus on testing for now and avoid supposition about any sort of cost at this point in time. It's too easy for people to get involved in hearsay that is inaccurate or misleading.

We know people have concerns over this and get a bit itchy about the word "premium", but for now the answer we can give is the one in the FAQ. Your constructive feedback though is helpful in the testing of the feature and will help us make sure it's serving the community in the best possible way. What we want to avoid is people getting ahead of themselves and guessing at prices or spreading misinformation or rumor. We want this to be successful. We want the community to find value in it being available to them.

This is just one of several ways in which people can get together with their friends whether that includes them relocating realms and factions or not. It's simply an additional choice that will hopefully make your time in the game more enjoyable for you and your friends. It's not any more sinister than that.

I think people are just worried about precedent in regards to premium services as of late.

We are not unaware of the concern, but I believe too many people go too far toward the negative in regard to their reaction.

I don't think the dev team should take it the wrong way. The huge amount of criticism in regards to the eventual possibility of premium features just means that players REALLY want this feature, and that they would be greatly saddened to not have this as a base part of game functionality.

**NOTE, personal speculation and opinion ahead**

Regardless, I will happily test this feature out, enjoy it, and provide constructive criticism as long as I am able.

(Premium feature suggestion: cross-server capital city visits!)

This is all we can ask for right now. We just want people to try it. Tell us how it's working for them. Even telling us, "We love it, but I don't want additional costs" is valid constructive feedback. Anything beyond that is overreaction at this point in time and I'd like to avoid people getting too wrapped up in "worst case scenarios".

Also, additional feedback on what more you'd want from such a feature doesn't hurt as well. Like I said, we want this to be a valuable feature for people much like anything else we provide the community. But to do that, we need to have a dialogue versus an argument. :)

Q: Can a party leader invite a mix of Real ID friends, character-level friends, guildmates, or random players to the same party?

A: A party leader can invite any combination of Real ID friends from any realm, guildmates from the same realm, or other characters from the same realm to the same party. If the party leader isn’t able to fill up the entire party, the Dungeon Finder can fill in the missing roles.

Q: Can I invite someone who is not a Real ID friend?

A: You can only invite members to a party if they are on your Real ID friends list or if they are on the same realm as you are.

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?

A: No, you can only invite those who are Real ID friends with you directly to the party.

I have a question that wasn't really answered in any of the above quote. Say I've got a Real ID friend on another realm that I wanted to run with, and we both had a guildie/friend on our respective realms that we wanted to have join us, but weren't Real ID friends with anyone on the other realm. Could I invite my guildie/friend, invite my Real ID friend, and then transfer party leader to my Real ID friend to invite their guildie/friend?

OT: Neth, I loved the 'bit itchy' comment, there is no way that was by chance :P

(It was totally by chance. ;/ )

As for the other, I believe that you have to be Real ID friends with your friend's friend as well in order to add them to the group, but I haven't tried this out myself. I don't believe transferring leadership will get around that, but I could be wrong. If I find out otherwise, I'll edit or post here to clarify.

Please remember to post constructively if you have feedback. We will continue to moderate this topic as necessary to keep it so. Expect posts to be removed that go against the purpose of this thread and the discussion within it.

We've updated the FAQ slightly and further clarified the below answer:

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?

A: No, you can only invite your own Real ID friends to the party.

07/14/2011 12:07 PMPosted by Dreamspirit

Ok, so..how much is this going to cost? Because if it is not free, I sure am not doing it!

Q: Will aspects of the Real ID Party system be premium-based?

A: We'll have information on this toward the end of the testing period.

In other words, we have not announced an associated cost with this at this point in time and it's free for testing currently. Anything beyond this is merely conjecture on people's parts.

07/14/2011 12:20 PMPosted by Scrimy

Considering this thread is going to cap out with people complaining about the premium service portion of this, is there going to be a dedicated thread for posting actual (as in testing) feedback about the feature? I won't be able to try this out until I get home and would love to have a place to put my thoughts on the experience.

We'll do our best to keep a thread open whether it's via extending post caps or creating a thread just for specific feedback. This thread should be fine for now and I don't anticipate it being closed anytime soon.

Hey Neth, couple questions. Apologize if I double up on questions somewhere, but I noticed you hadn't answered these if they had been asked as I've been catching some posts here and there and the blue tracker on MMO.

We've updated the FAQ slightly and further clarified the below answer:

Q: Can I invite a friend of a Real ID friend?

A: No, you can only invite your own Real ID friends to the party.

On that note, how would it handle if you invited people from your realm, then passed group lead to a RealID friend on a different realm? Would you get some sort of error, or would people on your realm get kicked out, or will it be possible to do this?


Also, to take part in this once it goes live (if this is even decided yet either way) - Do both parties involved in grouping together have to have the premium feature? Or will only one? And if only one has it, do they have to be the one to invite? That's a little confusing, so let me give an example.

1. Person A & B both have the feature. They can invite each other.
2. Person A has the feature, he can invite Person B.
3. Person A has the feature, therefore he can join Person B's group.

Personally I'm hoping for number 3, but then again I think everyone can say that. As long as one of the people has paid for the feature, it will work on being able to be invited or being the inviter.

Anyway! That got long.

-Ebrithil

It should be restricted to you (as the party starter) as the primary Real ID holder and passing the group lead should not allow the other person to invite additional RID people of their own. That's my understanding of it and why we updated that question a bit to make it more clear. Now, should you find that it's working otherwise, I'd love to hear of it.

Essentially, you as the originator of the group have Real ID. You have friend A on one realm and friend B on another but you're RID friends with both (they would need to have RID enabled too), even if they don't know each other, you can invite them because YOU are RID friends with them both. You can then invite additional people from your own realm (if you don't have any other RID friends to fill it in with) and go into the dungeon, or you can choose to enter the Dungeon Finder and let it do the work of filling in the rest of the group.

This is my current understanding and it should be functioning this way.

07/14/2011 01:27 PMPosted by Killercaitie

We'll do our best to keep a thread open whether it's via extending post caps or creating a thread just for specific feedback. This thread should be fine for now and I don't anticipate it being closed anytime soon.

Could we please receive a response about if it will ever include cross-faction grouping? This issue is quite important to quite a few posters in this thread & not just myself.

This is as of yet to be determined, much like the requests for Real ID Party for Battlegrounds, Arenas or Raids. There are a lot of technical limitations to consider and try to work within. We'll keep everyone informed should any of these come to pass as something we plan to add as a part of the feature.

Neth, as of an hour ago, a guild member of mine is able to:

Invite a realid player on a different realm
Pass lead to said player
Said player invited a realid friend of their own from another server
Said player passed lead back to the original party creator (my guildmember)
Guild member then invited another person from my realm.
Guild member then left the party as he was out of time to play with it, and the group of the remaining 3 people que'd via the dungeon finder.

Thanks for this information. I appreciate it.

Neth, as of an hour ago, a guild member of mine is able to:

Invite a realid player on a different realm
Pass lead to said player
Said player invited a realid friend of their own from another server
Said player passed lead back to the original party creator (my guildmember)
Guild member then invited another person from my realm.
Guild member then left the party as he was out of time to play with it, and the group of the remaining 3 people que'd via the dungeon finder.

Thanks for this post :) I pretty much asked whether you could do this back on page four.

Indeed. We'll see if we may want to update the FAQ to let people know that this is possible. I appreciate that this was reported back into this thread. It helps.