Turning off Real ID

Most people know about Gevlon and his various projects. Well, he's chimed in on the whole Real ID fuss, with a typically Gevlon-flavored retort about the realistic, financial angle from Blizzard's perspective.

To be honest he's about a month late, since his points are more about the original chatting Real ID and the principles behind it and not the forum stuff that's got everyone up in arms this week. This isn't surprising...I imagine he hasn't been following it and just assumes Real ID = Real ID.

However! While talking to some guildies last night I commented how I heard/read that Real ID could be disabled in Parental Controls. I then spent a few minutes looking around the options in-game and couldn't find such an option. I use Real ID and don't really care anyways, so I stopped looking after that. I figured I just didn't see it - hell, it usually takes me 20 seconds just to find the option to enable/disable percentages. But one thing Gevlon's post DID teach me is where these Parental Controls are - in your actual Battle.net settings. His post has some helpful screenshots and step-by-step instructions on how to disable this service.

I realize most people who care about Real ID and wanted to disable it probably already knew this, but I didn't. I disagree with the much of the sentiment in Gevlon's post, but I have to admit that if I ever want to turn off Real ID (a definite possibility given this week's news) I'm glad I now know how.

EDIT: Turns out there's also a more detailed guide on opting out of Real ID on WoW.com.