If you want to use certain official World of Warcraft forums, you’re going to have to come out. That is, you’re going to have to make your real full name visible on forums. No, not your character name: your real name. No, it’s not a severely delayed April Fool’s joke. And no, Blizzard, the company behind the game, doesn’t seem to care that their players like to post on forums but also might have problems with stalkers or identity theft, and also occasionally seek gainful employment.
The reason for the change is good old-fashioned trolling. Oh, Internet. From the official announcement:
The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest
info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences
with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation
as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run
wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will
contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive
conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t
been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e.
Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our
forums as well.
On one blog (which we won’t link to) fans made their point by taking the real name of a Blizzard employee, revealed on the forums, and uncovering every bit of information they could about him, including his age, relatives’ names and ages, phone number, home address, and that he apparently lives with his mom.
The change will not affect posts that have already been made, on the “classic” forums. So at least there’s that.
Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to Forums [Battle.net]
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I think it’s fair. I wish the Hulu website did the same thing. It’s riddled with trolls. It’s a website that offers a great deal of streaming media that could be a thousands better if the trolls didn’t run rampant on the site.
Look Blizzard, I’m not afraid that people will stalk me IRL or online as a result that they know my real name. For me, that’s not the point.
The point for me is that I don’t want people to know who I am in real life JUST AS MUCH as I don’t want to know who they are. Maybe not everyone gets this, but as a roleplayer I primarily find the other PCs interesting, not the players themselves. For me, it kills the immersion to be reminded that I’m talking to Joe Schmoe instead of another druid (and probably vice-versa).
I’m not sure about how true it is, but my man (who also plays) said there exists a mod that exploits some kind of weakness from the RealID platform and will tell you who a person is just by clicking on them in-game. That’s the sort of thing I don’t want. If it were simply a matter of the forums showing my name when I post, I’ll just continue to not go there (I never did like it in there).
And the fun continues:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10543100.stm
“Mr Brand said that one Blizzard employee posted his real name on the forums, saying that there was no risk to users, and the experiment went drastically wrong.
“Within five minutes, users had got hold of his telephone number, home address, photographs of him and a ton of other information,” said Mr Brand
The post and topic has since been removed from the Blizzard forum.”
First: this is optional – Second: you have to give someone your email. Third: I generally don’t post on the forums but I see forum trolling all of the time, I only wish they could go back and reveal those who have posted prior to this update.