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In what has been a whirlwind of bad press, Blizzard’s Mike Morhaime made the announcement today that while Real-ID would be included in their new forum system, people would be able to post from their character names and not forced to post under their real name.
Hello everyone,
I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.
It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.
I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.
In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning. (source)
Mike Morhaime
CEO & Co-Founder
Blizzard Entertainment
This comes as a relief to many, as millions of gamers (and journalists, surprisingly) voiced their opinions of the new Real ID policy for forum posting, forcing players to use their real names. Social news sites such as Reddit had epic threads, discussing the effects of such actions, while the Wall Street Journal even had an article noting the fiasco.
It seems that for now, forum trolls and job-hunting gamers alike can safely remain anonymous on one of the largest and most prolific gaming forums on the web.
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They should have stuck to their guns on this one. A step backwards in the evolution of online gaming.
I believe there were three main points that troubled most of the detractors. The first one being a lack of privacy/animosity, including whether some felt their safety or livelihoods were threatened. Next being the increased difficulty of using the forums for ingame functions, i.e. to successfully recruit or search for a guild. Finally, many people were worried by the precedent it could have set. For example, say Blizzard/Activision mentioned the possibility of ingame advertising to its share holders. Imagine, as you prepare to fight the Lich King and just as you engage the encounter “The Lich King, brought to you by Coca-Cola,” flashes across your screen, or a vendor shop in Dalaran is renamed Wal-Mart.
*animosity should be anonymity
They made the right call on this, the ramifications could of been huge.
I don’t troll the forums, so that part doesn’t really bother me. I do worry for everyone else though. Blizzard did us right when they gave everyone their anonymity back.
I don’t like the fact that I can see the whole names or my friend’s friends and they can see mine. What if I am not in amicable terms with some of their friends? Some of them know me by my first name, which was ok (cause everyone has a name and mine is pretty common) but for them to be able to narrow down my last name from a list, pretty scary!!! And it’s not fair to exclude a friend because of this. I hope they skip that Friend of Friend thing… or at least give everyone an option to turn off other people’s view.