PC gamers are familiar with these kinds of "surveys," and there's often a choice to opt out. However, there's some buzz over Blizzard's upcoming plans to data mine World of Warcraft subscribers, for the usual "non-personal system specifications."

It's only a week long, but not everyone in the community is happy about it -- main complaint is the lack of an opt-out option. Harmless, most likely, but wouldn't you prefer having a choice, at least?

A Blizzard team member has announced on the World of Warcraft (WoW) forums they will be mining data from the game's players in the "very near future", for a one-week period; it seems this is not the first time, either. If you've not yet merged your WoW account with your Battle.net account, you'll see a message stating, "Submitting non-personal system information," while those that haven't won't see a message at all.

"Non-personal system specifications" are what's being mined, something like with Valve's digital distribution service Steam. Like that outfit, there will be no "opt-in."

Given it's just a week, we'd have no problem with it, provided it was opt-in; the information could be very useful to improve gameplay, network performance, etc. But a tiny note in the forums, and without any choice given to gamers makes us feel uneasy.

RabidChinaGirl via neoseeker.com »