Poorly written article brah. Generally journalism is intended to have an un-biased opinion when you're trying to report pure facts.
You ever see those GIFs used to describe an over-handed method of solving a problem?
You know, the ones where a bus goes flying down the street at 60 miles an hour (the solution), slams into a car (innocent bystanders) and just barely misses the guy in the cross walk (the intended target.)?
RealID is kind of like that.
Briefly, grievances.
1) Before anything else, its the fact that they didn't ask, they told us. Yes, it's convenient to say, "Oh, just don't post!" but that is counter productive to a forum. Beyond that, its not hard to imagine that these key loggers whom already compromise everything else could just as easily spam the forums.
For this, I demand quite simply, an apology. It's grotesque, archaic and at best will discourage the most basic trolls.
2) They don't exactly have the right. Ok, so the simple fact is that kids play WoW. The only requirement to post on the forums is that you be older than 13. Not only does Blizzard have no right to release an iota of information on minors, but I strongly doubt anyone in any justice system, in any country would give the argument, "BUT WE HAD TO STOP THE TROLLS!" the time of day.
3) Collateral Damage is a *****. Some people have rare names. Most people don't have the luxury of being John Smith though. A fair number of people can discover they're the first result on a google search. From there it's not horribly hard to figure out the rest, and anyone who posts here probably has a fair idea that the internet is fucking creepy. Just a few months ago a guy in France got stabbed, and nearly killed (read: Knife came within an inch of his heart) over a single death in a counter-strike game. And beyond that? What about (insert any sex, race, religion, or sexual orientation) people who have to protect their identities?
But worse? Ok, suppose the creeper gets the wrong person?
4) The forums are more than just a means of discussion. The bug forums? Tech support forums? You mean to tell me you'd never post on either? In game if you get a bug that a GM can't resolve you'll never guess where they send you to! The forums.And bugs? They happen. Blizzard is literally shooting themselves in the foot with this one.
5) Reserving special rules for your employees that you won't extend to your customers is generally considered rude, inappropriate and even in some cases illegal. No, I'm not talking about an employee discount, don't be petty. Blizzard rather specifically says it's against the rules to give out personal information about anyone, employees included, yet see no issue making everyone give out their first and last name? Disgusting.
6) While it is perfectly reasonable to delay a response so that you word it very, very carefully, generally acting in the shadows deleting threads that raise concerns about it, and accusing people who raise valid concerns surrounding it of "fear mongering" is just plain disgusting. No, really. People who raised issue with the RealID changes to the forums have actually gotten banned on the basis of trolling. Blue responses from there have accused people of fear mongering. I don't care what Blizzard thinks about the internet, I know its a fucking creepy place. I browse 4chan for fuck's sake.
7) ....You know, I could go on. At this point I'm done with WoW, I canceled my account and I won't be coming back for Catacylsm. This whole RealID business flies in the face of what I was raised on for internet protocol and generally flies in the face of how I was raised. When you just take something it's plain rude. Trust is something you build over a long time, and can loose in a second. At the moment this really doesn't feel like the Blizzard who took me through Tristram straight to the bowels of hell and to Mt. Areat, through the Korprulu sector, and had me throw down against the Burning Legion. Blizzard needs to regain that trust that basically enabled me to buy their games on the name alone without having to research or look up reviews on the simple principal that I have yet to play a bad Blizzard game.
So, how about an apology, Blue?
