I strongly believe that RealID was a bad idea with good intentions.
Blizzard insisted that they had the best of intentions with RealID. They wanted to quell the hijinx that their community had been known for. It's easy to understand why; just take a look at their forums. You regularly find people being taunted, trolled, and "stalked", with pseudonymous trolls posting everywhere their victim posts, making baseless claims and slandering them, and much worse undoubtedly comes through in private messages. Playing in World of Warcraft is no different; whether people make false claims on public chat, private message you threats, or spam the hell out of everybody, trolls exist everywhere just waiting to ruin the gaming experience that you pay good money for every month. Not only does this give Blizzard a bad reputation, but it seems likely to drive off at least a few paying customers.
So there theory went: take away their anonymity, and the trolls will be less willing to troll. At first glance that seems reasonable, but trolls aren't particularly reasonable. As many a troll will admit (even here on The Escapist), trolls don't care what other people think. Accountability doesn't exist without shame or other repercussions. Unless Blizzard plans on banning trolls (which they could have done without RealID), the thought that you might know the troll's name won't stop the troll, because he knows you are still powerless to do anything about him. Whether his name is Lee Jenkins or uberdude69, he's still free to annoy the hell out of you.
But that anonymity has other consequences. For the people who become victims, it provides a barrier between the game and the real world. Sure, the trolls can annoy their victims in-game, but if their victims quit, the victims are now free from any further trouble; the troll isn't going to follow them home and continue making trouble for them. But if their real names were available, that could quickly change. You could guess their email address, look up their phone number and address, even find out where they work and who their friends are. A name is a universal identifier that links all of the knowledge about us and it isn't easily changed.
The boundary between the real world and the virtual world goes both ways. In many places, or at least by many people, gaming is still seen as a waste of time, and particular games like WoW are often looked down upon. Would a potential employer deny you a job if he knew you had three level 80 characters in WoW? Would your school, or your family, or your friends think differently of you if they knew you played games, or if your avatar happened to be of the opposite gender? Would people in the game treat you differently if they knew your gender, race, or other real-life attributes?
Yes, some people use the anonymous, virtual world as an escape from reality, and some may even go so far as to lose themselves in that world, but most of us just want to keep our lives separate from our hobbies. Life should be lived on a need-to-know basis; our gaming friends don't need to know who we are in real life and our real life acquaintances don't need to know what we do in our games, in the same way that the public doesn't need to know what we do in our bedrooms.
Anything that makes it easier to associate these two worlds brings with it the consequence of allowing the negatives from both sides to spill over into the other. Whether it is bringing the in-game trolls to our doorsteps or it is bringing the real world prejudices into the game, there's a lot of harm that can come from this association.
From a cost-benefit standpoint, RealID would seem to cause more problems than it solves. I'm glad Blizzard listened to the community on this one.
Blizzard insisted that they had the best of intentions with RealID. They wanted to quell the hijinx that their community had been known for. It's easy to understand why; just take a look at their forums. You regularly find people being taunted, trolled, and "stalked", with pseudonymous trolls posting everywhere their victim posts, making baseless claims and slandering them, and much worse undoubtedly comes through in private messages. Playing in World of Warcraft is no different; whether people make false claims on public chat, private message you threats, or spam the hell out of everybody, trolls exist everywhere just waiting to ruin the gaming experience that you pay good money for every month. Not only does this give Blizzard a bad reputation, but it seems likely to drive off at least a few paying customers.
So there theory went: take away their anonymity, and the trolls will be less willing to troll. At first glance that seems reasonable, but trolls aren't particularly reasonable. As many a troll will admit (even here on The Escapist), trolls don't care what other people think. Accountability doesn't exist without shame or other repercussions. Unless Blizzard plans on banning trolls (which they could have done without RealID), the thought that you might know the troll's name won't stop the troll, because he knows you are still powerless to do anything about him. Whether his name is Lee Jenkins or uberdude69, he's still free to annoy the hell out of you.
But that anonymity has other consequences. For the people who become victims, it provides a barrier between the game and the real world. Sure, the trolls can annoy their victims in-game, but if their victims quit, the victims are now free from any further trouble; the troll isn't going to follow them home and continue making trouble for them. But if their real names were available, that could quickly change. You could guess their email address, look up their phone number and address, even find out where they work and who their friends are. A name is a universal identifier that links all of the knowledge about us and it isn't easily changed.
The boundary between the real world and the virtual world goes both ways. In many places, or at least by many people, gaming is still seen as a waste of time, and particular games like WoW are often looked down upon. Would a potential employer deny you a job if he knew you had three level 80 characters in WoW? Would your school, or your family, or your friends think differently of you if they knew you played games, or if your avatar happened to be of the opposite gender? Would people in the game treat you differently if they knew your gender, race, or other real-life attributes?
Yes, some people use the anonymous, virtual world as an escape from reality, and some may even go so far as to lose themselves in that world, but most of us just want to keep our lives separate from our hobbies. Life should be lived on a need-to-know basis; our gaming friends don't need to know who we are in real life and our real life acquaintances don't need to know what we do in our games, in the same way that the public doesn't need to know what we do in our bedrooms.
Anything that makes it easier to associate these two worlds brings with it the consequence of allowing the negatives from both sides to spill over into the other. Whether it is bringing the in-game trolls to our doorsteps or it is bringing the real world prejudices into the game, there's a lot of harm that can come from this association.
From a cost-benefit standpoint, RealID would seem to cause more problems than it solves. I'm glad Blizzard listened to the community on this one.
