Blizzard Forums Make Real Names Mandatory

[tautologico]

Cyber bullying is not that widespread but blizzard just added a couple of millions to that statistics with just one move as for the trolls, we will keep on trolling. Someone butthurt tracking me down, fine with me. With this move blizzard will cause nothing but pain and hurt across the board while giving more trolls the means to further plague their victims.

14 year olds want to have fun? visit wow board and pluck out random names, especially Gurlz1111 and find them. takes you at most 10 minutes or costs you some meager amount of dollars on most occasions.

There are real names everywhere on the internet. People use their real names on blog posts and comments, Amazon reviews, personal webpages, etc. Why aren't these people being harassed/bullied/stalked ?

People are overreacting with all this, and I'm not even saying it as someone who approves the idea in the first place. It would be better to have other options (not for me though, I never posted in the forums). But suddenly it's as if every forum poster will be cyberstalked because their real names are shown.

Ghostcrawler's name is known for some time, and I never heard about anyone going to nerdrage to him in person.

 

[tautologico]

In terms of a "global friend" system, I found that City of Heroes had the best one, in my opinion. You had your character's name and you created a "Global ID", which was basically a second screenname. If any of your friends were on another character or another server, you'd be able to see that Global ID and the name of character they were playing.

Yes, indeed. Of course Blizzard (or the battle.net 2.0 team) knows this possibility, I don't understand why they are so hung up with real names.

 

[afaceforradio]

I was discussing this with some friends earlier today. It seems like an aggressively unnecessary new policy, and a really bad PR move.

That said, I don't understand why people are so upset about their real names being used. It just seems really weird to me that anonymity is that highly valued.

Can't people just put a fake name like John Smith instead of their real name and it still be valid?

Also CAD got it spot on. Nowt will change. Trolls are arseholes despite their names!

 

[Psychemaster]

Watching the backlash flow in on the WoW forums is pretty insane.

 

[Ekit]

Why can't they just use mods?

 

[ENKC]

And now for the obvious point that many people have no doubt already made. How are they going to ensure that you use your 'real name'? I am certain they'll have a flood of trolls attempting to sign up under joke names just to annoy the mods. Besides which, people could use genuine sounding names that are not their own.

 

[IxionIndustries]

In terms of a "global friend" system, I found that City of Heroes had the best one, in my opinion. You had your character's name and you created a "Global ID", which was basically a second screenname. If any of your friends were on another character or another server, you'd be able to see that Global ID and the name of character they were playing.

Yes, indeed. Of course Blizzard (or the battle.net 2.0 team) knows this possibility, I don't understand why they are so hung up with real names.

They gotta make sure your Faicbook profile is correct.

Yeah.. Like I said, this won't make a damn difference. The trolls will just make fake names, and be back in full force.

What difference was it gonna make in the first place? What, were they going to submit their real names to 4Chan if they acted up? Were they going to somehow get it to their wife and kids that their husband has been trollin'?

Seriously.. There's something more than forum shenanigans behind this.

 

[Meemaimoh]

Considering the stalkerish behaviour of some guys on WoW when they even suspect you're a female... ugh. I will never post there again if my real name needs to be used. I don't want some creep hunting me down on Facebook or something.

 

[Erie Isle RP inSL]

Ok well, this will be pretty fun to watch. The impact on trolling is debatable but even if it makes the forum troll-free, it comes at a cost. There's no free lunch.

 

[Kwatsu]

I just keep thinking of all those news reports of nutcases, the ones who track down their online opponents to do actual harm to them. If you had someone's real name, and, say, managed to connect it to a Facebook account, you may actually get trolls threatening people's families. Even if it's all talk, something like that could be pretty unnerving, especially to younger players. And what about cases of mistaken identity? There can't be many people on the internet with truly unique names.

I'm sure Blizzard has good reasons for making this decision but... I don't know. Considering how high emotions can run in online gaming, it seems like inviting unnecessary risk to me.

 

[ANeM]

There are real names everywhere on the internet. People use their real names on blog posts and comments, Amazon reviews, personal webpages, etc. Why aren't these people being harassed/bullied/stalked ?

Because rarely are they actually directly interacting with other people in any of those situations. Do you think the guy that designed the latest Elmo toy is going to engage in any sort of conversation with the amazon reviewers who said it was a shoddy piece of junk?

Blogs and comments are almost the same thing. Occasionally the blogger will spot something of interest and respond to it, rarely do you get instances where it develops into an actual dialog. You generally get Commenter1, Blogger, Commenter1, and then a string of other commenters.

Personal Webpages, well, there really isn't much place for conversation or dialog there. Its a personal webpage.

WoW is a very social game and a very grindy game. Succeeding usually involves a large amount of effort on your own behalf, along with pretty much constant interaction with a number of other players, a number of whom you may not know or even like. Emotions get high and people to stupid shit because they feel they got the short end of the stick. But now, instead of just saying that guy is a douchebag and putting them on ignore, leaving your guild or transferring servers. However, all three of these things have repercussion, they only hinder you more. You feel even more annoyed because you're even more behind and douchebag is doing GREAT.

Well, now you have a new option, one that might actually make you feel better for once. Now you can check your realm forums to find his real name, and go punch him in his stupid face.

Will a lot of people use that option? Maybe not. But now it is there, and with 11 million subscribers, you are going to have some crazies, and honestly I'd much rather they kept trolling at its current rate, than to have it drop a minuscule amount, only to have that amount be replaced with cases of actual violence.

 

[dochmbi]

This is a really unfair policy, because some people can still post anonymously due to their common names, while some who have completely unique names (like myself) can no longer remain anonymous.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

As much as I'd like to think that people value their basic freedoms, I doubt that many Blizzard customers are going to object to this. It definitely won't make a difference in etiquette, and in the face of instant gratification through playing a game, I doubt that many are going to consider the repercussions of a potential future employer using Google to research their identity.

Sorry to disappoint you, but many Blizzard customers think this is a horrible idea:

Battle.net Forums [http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041&sid=3000&pageNo=1] - currently 53 pages of negative responses

World of WarCraft Forums [http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1] - currently 994 pages or almost 20,000 posts of negative responses

TeamLiquid Forums [http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=134327] - currently 85 pages of negative responses

Also, here are the thoughts of HuskyStarCraft, a famous StarCraft II commentator:


Just to clarify, I am a big fan of Blizzard games and I have been immensely looking forward to StarCraft II for quite a while now. Yet, even I think this is one of the worst ideas ever concocted by Blizzard. In terms of how bad this idea is, it's far worse than even the horrible state of the current Battle.net

I cannot believe that they are saying this is a good idea with a straight face. Even if you ponder just a bit about it, you can think of practically hundreds of problems that can result from this. Identity theft, personal harassement, discrimination and the like. Not only that, Blizzard already solved the problem with flaming and trolling by tying the game to a single account, thus making it so that you risk losing your copy of the game through inappropriate behaviour. They do not need any further measures than that!

Oh sure, this will solve the problem with the forums...it will solve it by killing all activity on it, since people will be too scared for their privacy to post. But guess what? Since customer service is located on the forums, you have to post and reveal your real name. Otherwise, if you value your privacy and ever encounter a problem, you are essentially screwed. -_-

Seriously, words cannot being to describe how utterly outraged I am right now. After all the lack of features that the new Battle.net suffers from, this is just adding insult to injury. RealID was a good idea when you could choose who to share your name with...this isn't a choice, this is extortion. If this comes to pass, I might very well decide not to purchase this game...or at the very least, use a fake name as my RealID. That may be illegal, but I rather break the law and face the consenquences rather then exposing my identity for the whole wide world to see and abuse. And compared to females, minority members, non-heterosexuals etc., I am actually rather well off in comparison...

Also, before anyone accuses me of being a troll who is just looking for excuses to avoid punishment. I am a moderator on a SC2 website. Every forum I visit, I fully respect forum etiquette, never break the rules and I have never been subject to disciplinary actions by moderators either on the Escapist or anywhere else. I am sure Escapist moderators could make a background check and vouch for that fact.

 

[LawlessSquirrel]

This is a stupid idea. A very stupid idea. It won't stop the vast majority of trolls from trolling, and it'll just drive away the people that aren't comfortable with their real identities being cast out onto the internet.

Very much this. I've not been a part of their forums, but any desire I had to join is taken away by this. I'm certainly no troll, I try to avoid being dragged into flamewars, but I personally have a problem with my real identity being available to everyone who spots me online. I like to keep online online and offline offline; it's safer and more effective that way.

Not that it's stopping me from making an online persona to assign instead of a legit name...hmm, sounds just like a username when I think of it like that, only with some ethical issues abound.

 

[dochmbi]

Will a lot of people use that option? Maybe not. But now it is there, and with 11 million subscribers, you are going to have some crazies, and honestly I'd much rather they kept trolling at its current rate, than to have it drop a minuscule amount, only to have that amount be replaced with cases of actual violence.

Yeah, I suspect there will be at least a few WoW related stabbings or other violent incidents, then again it's not really statistically significant if a few people from 11 million get killed. Every day there's a much higher chance of being killed by random things.

 

[Danzaivar]

I've had two WoW accounts, the second one was under a false name and worked fine.

As long as they don't put your name as the name of the person who pays the subscription then there's ways around it...

 

[Kl4pp5tuhl]

Thinking ahead, in terms of finding a job, the company you apply for will Google your name...

...and then find how many hours you play StarCraft 2/WoW.


Future gamer discrimination headlines, anyone?

 

[Nazz3]

Thinking ahead, in terms of finding a job, the company you apply for will Google your name...

...and then find how many hours you play StarCraft 2/WoW.


Future gamer discrimination headlines, anyone?

Thats bad

I hope other forums will not follow

 

[Talvrae]

I was discussing this with some friends earlier today. It seems like an aggressively unnecessary new policy, and a really bad PR move.

That said, I don't understand why people are so upset about their real names being used. It just seems really weird to me that anonymity is that highly valued.

It's a question of security on internet. Annonimity mean confidentiality. Not for nothing that Facebook have function that hide your specifics info to thouse who are not your friends if you wish