A new feature in World of Warcraft is supposed to help, but it causes a lot of confusion. The light blue names are often annoying.
That it can sometimes be a bit toxic in MMORPGs is now old news. But in a world with “random groups” and connected realms, where you might only meet many players once and not remember them afterwards, it can be difficult to make connections. World of Warcraft wanted to change that with a feature called “Recent Allies.” However, it can be quite frustrating if you don’t know how to turn it off.
What is this feature? With patch 11.2.5, a new feature was implemented in World of Warcraft called “Recent Allies.” The feature is supposed to promote more social interaction and help you remember the players you might have recently played with in a dungeon or a raid.
Such characters with whom you have recently interacted can currently be recognized in the world because they have a “light blue” name – which previously was reserved for friends or current group and raid members.
The somewhat unpleasant catch: The feature can also be used to annoy people. Because in the friends list (key: O), there is a new tab for “Recent Allies.” There, all characters that you have recently encountered in this way are listed – both by name, as well as their online status and the location they are currently in within the game world. This may provide some with a bit too much insight that they may not want.
Light blue names everywhere in WoW – How to turn this off
How can you deactivate this? If you don’t want random people to permanently see what you are currently doing in the game or whether you are online, you need to set this manually.
This can be done through the main menu (Escape), then go to “Options,” then to “Contacts,” and then find the entry for “Location Visibility.” Select “Friends and Guild Members” here and close the menu again.
Note that you have to set this for each individual character if you don’t want to appear on other people’s “Recent Allies” list.
Especially annoying is the feature for those who use role-playing add-ons, such as “TotalRP3.” Because these add-ons communicate, unseen by players, via the whisper channel to share various information. However, the game registers this as “a conversation has taken place.”
When logging in next, you will then see light blue names of supposed friends and characters you allegedly interacted with everywhere – even though you may have only received their role-playing information. Soon most of us will probably create a new character anyway and will have to set these settings again, because a player shows why we will all soon only play Haranir.
