backseatdev

Just to summarize, Blizzard forums starting in August are planning to have the posters name be their full real name (First + Last), with an optional display of their character name beside it.

I gave myself some time to process this instead of snap judging it. I am still of the same opinion though, this seems like more of a joke announcement then anything real or objectively thought out.

Here are several thoughts I have had on this changes they are hoping to put in:

1) It will reduce posts drastically, which may include a reduction in trolling type posts.

1.1) This will reduce forum bloat, possibly keep people more constructive and require less forum moderation.

2) Trolls/Forum bullys may not be reduced much at all. In my opinion, these types of people would be more protective of their character names in the game then their real names. Unless the point is they should fear reprecussions in real life. In that case, you have to almost say, wtf.

3) Harassment and very serious personal breaches will go up by many times. Just yesterday I was talking to a guild member who in past games had people track down his information and start calling his work, one time with bomb threats, another time accusing him of sending threatening emails with his work account. It is not that this stuff is impossible to find out without it being displayed, but handing them to the information ensures they dont even need to work at it to do it.

4) Privacy concerned people will simply no longer post. This means that in a base of millions of people, they will not be asking little questions and such on the forums, instead using CSR’s and other direct contact methods that won’t put their name out there.

4.1) Privacy concerned people may not understand that how exactly their name gets released, and avoid the games attached to real id altogether, just to be safe.

5) For many, games are a fantasy experience. They act and roleplay in ways that is outside of how they would act irl. Men play female characters, females play males, married people flirt with others and it is all hidden behind a seperate online persona from their personal life.

6) A lot of people do not want their gaming lives attached to their real lives. Professionals in many industries may not want to have a google of their name come up with gaming posts and opinions. Job searchers nowadays WILL google your name and look into your social networking. Looking just from a forum perspective, I assume a lot of these adult/professional people are providing the bulk of the -useful- information on forums.

6.1) Kids may not want other kids to know what games they play or how often. Their online hidden lives are now fodder for bullies.

7) While I think both males and females will have a pretty big dislike for this, I think women will tend to dislike this even more for obvious reasons.

It will be interesting to see if it ends up going through. There are already reports that there are ways to hack peoples full names from the Real ID system. With all the hate I have read so far, it must put some pressure on Blizzard to re-think this. However, if one company could just blatently ignore everyone and just stay their own course, it would probably be Blizzard.

What would be interesting is if Blizzard posted the real name of the champion of this idea. This should give them a pretty good idea of what it could be like for others that are no longer anonymous in an anonymous fantasy world.