Blizzard Nixes Plans to Require Real Names

[Yureina]

Well... looks like I may buy Starcraft II after all...

 

[Alfador_VII]

This whole affair could have been an absolute masterstroke by Blizzard's marketing department.

They put forward this radical " invasion of privacy" idea and get the story picked up by EVERY online news site, including main stream ones, like the BBC and the Washington Post. The stories all just happen to mention that Starcraft II is out on the 27th.

Then a little while later, they say they thought better of it, and back off on the RealID forum system.

The end result is they get a TON of advertising for Starcaft II, and World of Warcraft, which they simply couldn't have bought, all for the cost of two press releases.

Now THAT is evil genius!

 

[nick_knack]

I'm actually disappointed with this. I like the idea of being forced to use your real identity online, provided it's all safe and secure. I use my real identity, and it's a great idea to crack down on people who abuse the system and the forums. Fine, usernames are good too. But why not let Blizzard do something like The Escapist does, allowing usernames but having real names on profiles, except unlike here, making those real names compulsory? A bit of compromise might help sooth the wounded trolls on the Blizzard forums...

You haven't heard of Micah Whipple. He is a Blizzard admin who posted his real name in order to prove that the ReaID system wasn't so bad. Within hours, his Facebook account, mother's name, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives were all found. Since then, he's been getting harassed nonstop, so much that he deleted his Facebook profile and stopped picking up the phone.

Now granted, he has a pretty uncommon name, but the threat of RL harassment is one everybody should fear.

 

[asinann]

I'm actually disappointed with this. I like the idea of being forced to use your real identity online, provided it's all safe and secure. I use my real identity, and it's a great idea to crack down on people who abuse the system and the forums. Fine, usernames are good too. But why not let Blizzard do something like The Escapist does, allowing usernames but having real names on profiles, except unlike here, making those real names compulsory? A bit of compromise might help sooth the wounded trolls on the Blizzard forums...

That's just it, it CAN'T be safe and secure. Take my real name and Google it, there are 2 people in the world with the name. If you have my name it would take less than 2 minutes to get the same information as that community manager along with my most common forum handle.

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Fuck the Blizzard Forums. Honestly, that would've been a great idea. This decision practically supports John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad theory.

 

[Cody211282]

I'm actually disappointed with this. I like the idea of being forced to use your real identity online, provided it's all safe and secure. I use my real identity, and it's a great idea to crack down on people who abuse the system and the forums. Fine, usernames are good too. But why not let Blizzard do something like The Escapist does, allowing usernames but having real names on profiles, except unlike here, making those real names compulsory? A bit of compromise might help sooth the wounded trolls on the Blizzard forums...

You haven't heard of Micah Whipple. He is a Blizzard admin who posted his real name in order to prove that the ReaID system wasn't so bad. Within hours, his Facebook account, mother's name, addresses, phone numbers, and relatives were all found. Since then, he's been getting harassed nonstop, so much that he deleted his Facebook profile and stopped picking up the phone.

Now granted, he has a pretty uncommon name, but the threat of RL harassment is one everybody should fear.

What did he think would happen? That's like saying you can walk around Detroit with money falling out of your pockets and wont be shot.

I wish we'd have gotten a similar riot/reply to the LAN removal for Starcraft 2.

I'm pretty surprised about their reaction. I stand by the idea that Blizzard has enough punch to it's brand names that it can do pretty much whatever it likes and still make a killing. I don't like that kind of corruption, but there you have it.

you sorta did, and there are plenty of people who don't like the fact that they split the game into 3 parts, but then again if you mention that fanboys will try to chase you out of town.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I think it's a little less of Blizzard "listening to their fans", and more of seeing the village full of torches and pitchforks heading towards their Ivory Tower.

For a start, I know certain GMs/Mods employ low level alts for sniping purposes. And everyone needs a little anonymity at times.

 

[Icehearted]

I wish we'd have gotten a similar riot/reply to the LAN removal for Starcraft 2.

I'm pretty surprised about their reaction. I stand by the idea that Blizzard has enough punch to it's brand names that it can do pretty much whatever it likes and still make a killing. I don't like that kind of corruption, but there you have it.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

We've known Tom Chilton (Kalgan), Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), and Jeff Kaplan (Tigole)'s real names for years. And the community hates them. Don't you think they'd be targets of ire, first?

Individual members of the staff may have, and just judging by my twitter a lot of other games journos had positive opinions on it

As I screamed about a little bit in my signature, if you're already being paid to use your real name online, you really don't have any sort of right to comment upon this. Its prostitutes expressing their opinions of prostitution, homosexuals expressing their opinions of homosexuality, the religious expressing their opinions of religion, law enforcement expressing their opinions of crime, etc, etc, etc. Its a conflict of interests.

Its perfectly understandable why blizzard staff and games journalists are, at best, divided on this issue. They've already taken that plunge, gotten used to the various complications, and moved on. Everyone else, on the other hand, either doesn't understand the issue or they're opposed. Everyone else won't be reimbursed in any way, shape, or form for use of their names, therefor they have even less reason to be "for." Thus, this issue is extremely stupid. You're either opposed, in a conflict of interests, or missing information. Its just not possible for there to be any sort of middle ground.

Sadly, its not over yet. Like others have mentioned, this is 110% damage control, something like this doesn't go away once people are stupid enough to even field it as a viable course of action.

 

[Ne1butme]

snip again

Probably, but keep in mind World of Warcraft is about 3 million players in EU and ~3-4 in US. It's a little too big group for such experiments. Trying it first with a more controlled group of maybe up to 50-100k would be better idea.

You can see what happens to social community portals like Facebook these days. Germany suing them for quite valid reasons. Identity theft is not that uncommon as you think and you should be glad it is not one of your concerns. Had several of such cases in my country alone with the local community portals, and the number of users there is not even close to amount of people playing WoW.
To quote the god damned spider-man "With great power comes great responsibility". You can't really experiment with such mass of people and the amount of attention Blizzard has. Gaming has other problems than social interaction really, and Battle.net 2.0 already raises enough issues among the more concerned crowd even without the RealID deal.

I don't think Spiderman qualifies for the coveted 'god damned' status. The superstitious and cowardly lot have really never been afraid of Spiderman.

Now, the god damned Uncle Ben has a nice ring to it (and is the proper citation of the responsibility quote).

Back to your sample size. 50-100k is probably closer to the number of active participates in the Blizzard SC2 forums. That might have been a good place to start with. A new game, and newish community.

You're right, we should leave the WOW players out of this. They clearly can't handle the responsibilities of RealID.

 

[Xocrates]

Well. Blizzard actually listened to its customers for the first time in years.

Decades.

Ever.

I would say they listen to the community quite a bit, even the short time I've been in the SC2 beta made that evident. The problem is that the community is so huge and so at odds with itself that whenever they choose to act on it they'll always upset loads of people.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Fuck you, spellcheck, they don't deserve a capital letter.

For some reason that really made me laugh.

 

[John Funk]

We've known Tom Chilton (Kalgan), Greg Street (Ghostcrawler), and Jeff Kaplan (Tigole)'s real names for years. And the community hates them. Don't you think they'd be targets of ire, first?

Individual members of the staff may have, and just judging by my twitter a lot of other games journos had positive opinions on it

As I screamed about a little bit in my signature, if you're already being paid to use your real name online, you really don't have any sort of right to comment upon this. Its prostitutes expressing their opinions of prostitution, homosexuals expressing their opinions of homosexuality, the religious expressing their opinions of religion, law enforcement expressing their opinions of crime, etc, etc, etc. Its a conflict of interests.

Its perfectly understandable why blizzard staff and games journalists are, at best, divided on this issue. They've already taken that plunge, gotten used to the various complications, and moved on. Everyone else, on the other hand, either doesn't understand the issue or they're opposed. Everyone else won't be reimbursed in any way, shape, or form for use of their names, therefor they have even less reason to be "for." Thus, this issue is extremely stupid. You're either opposed, in a conflict of interests, or missing information. Its just not possible for there to be any sort of middle ground.

Sadly, its not over yet. Like others have mentioned, this is 110% damage control, something like this doesn't go away once people are stupid enough to even field it as a viable course of action.

I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume that everybody who is for it is either in a conflict of interest or missing information. That poisons any potential debate before it can even start. "Either you're against it, you're biased, or you're ignorant" isn't a very healthy starting point.

What about people who simply want increased accountability online? I've seen more than a few of them.

 

[Keava]

I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume that everybody who is for it is either in a conflict of interest or missing information. That poisons any potential debate before it can even start. "Either you're against it, you're biased, or you're ignorant" isn't a very healthy starting point.

What about people who simply want increased accountability online? I've seen more than a few of them.

Okay. Let me give you example. And please take it as a semi-joke ^^

Lets say we play on the same server (not possible since you are US and im EU, but hell, for the sake of example). You play your happy Forsaken Assassin called Boobinator2000 i play my sexy dwarf priest named IPopeU. Lets assume you suck and cant beat me, despite my gimped gear and pve oriented talent spec.
Now on forums you post as John Funk saying how priests are overpowered and rogues need a buff because you get killed all the time despite your supposed 2300 arena rating and best epixxx around, clearly IPopeU must be a haxor. How the hell am i supposed to know what is your character to even verify your claims? I don't remember every hordie that tries to gank me.

Another less gray-area example. Your Boobinator2000 didn't got any items on your last raid. To make things worse, your main rival in DPs stats got the new shiny epic dagger you always wanted as a kid. You got forums and again as John Funk call him a ninja or a cheater or just a noob. Now he knows only your in-game characters name, not your real one. How will your guild know that their happy fun-times Boobinator is actually evil troll John Funk?

Does it make you more accountable in any way ? Just because you give your name out? I can't see it. If you would be forced to display all your character names however, your guild would quickly see who the jerk was, and most likely kick you out and you would have hard time getting in raid again.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

I think it's a bit disingenuous to assume that everybody who is for it is either in a conflict of interest or missing information. That poisons any potential debate before it can even start. "Either you're against it, you're biased, or you're ignorant" isn't a very healthy starting point.

What about people who simply want increased accountability online? I've seen more than a few of them.

Since I've yet to see anyone elaborate on that, I have to ship them off to the 'ignorant' camp.

You look at something like 2ch, see nothing but sane, positive, imaginative posts, and wonder why can't that work "here," the take the name moot, make 4chan, and watch it slowly degenerate to represent all the absolute worst qualities of the internet while stealing all your money and ruining your life. You can preach cultural differences if you want, but if "accountability" never enters the minds of the people who post awesome shit anonymously on 2ch, why would it have any effect on the instances of trolling?

Not to mention, trolling itself is so completely undefinable theres simply no way of objectively knowing if a person even is a "troll." Suddenly and violently revealing most people are "that stupid" would blow a few minds, but the rest would simply hold tighter to the delusion that anyone who says anything they don't agree with is doing it on purpose to make them mad.

 

[Silver Patriot]

Pansies. This could have been a real experiment into the effects of removing anonymity and trying to stop the raging assholes who thrive on it and now we don't even get to see if it works or flops. Man up Blizzard.

So you would be ok if the Escapist did this then? "But there's no troll problem here!" Right you are, if Blizzard put half as much effort into moderation as most large and well-known forums do, there wouldn't have been this discussion to begin with.

Personally I just don't think something like that would work unless it was on a much bigger scale. A country wide or a world wide scale. Connecting your SSN or other high level personal information to your online life is the only way I see this working. It would have to be mandatory. Of cource this would completely destroy internet anomaly. I don't know how to feel about that.

Cracked.com 5 Reasons the Internet Could Die at Any Moment. [http://www.cracked.com/article_18453_5-reasons-internet-could-die-at-any-moment_p2.html] (read #1)

Everybody, that is, except for certain people who have spent all morning writing a column that is now completely invalidated.

Dammit.

Post it anyway. Worst case change a few tenses around. I would like to read it.

 

[ShadowKirby]

Know what's funny? At the end of the day, the group that ends up looking the most like a bunch of assholes are gamers. You cannot give your real name on a gaming forum because gamers are (potentially) going to dig up info on your life, find you, and rape/kill/ruin your life. Is our culture that fucking toxic that you cannot go around and drop even one piece of information on your life without the risk of attracting potential stalkers and unstable individuals.

 

[Sartan0]

There are other issues involving WoW as I understand it. Something to do with real account name information being exposed to add-ons already.

This is not over.

 

[Cody211282]

What about people who simply want increased accountability online? I've seen more than a few of them.

But is violating their privacy and personal security the best way to do it, why not just mod the forums like this place does?