Activision Blizzard is starting to force their RealID onto players.

[lordlundar]

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/07/...gitate-players

In short, This week Activision Blizzard has announced plans to integrate their RealID program into their forums. Now while this doesn't seem like much, the RealID program requires a public posting of the person's real name into the forums whenever they make a post.

Now personally, I visit and write some articles in a multi-user blog called Bit-Mob, but that's relatively small and very well moderated with people looking for a polite place to talk and debate. A-B's forums are not nearly so well moderated and not anywhere unable to avoid scrutiny, and no where NEAR what most people would consider civilized. Already people at 4chan, AKA the net cesspool, are licking their lips to start stalking people. (which considering RealID is linked to facebook, wouldn't take much effort)

There's another aspect here. Any time there's an issue with a game and either the staff are unable to help or they need to gather data on it, they tell the user to post on the forums. Considering that there is no way to avoid your name up there if you post, a lot of technical help and support is just going to be lost.

[Evil Red Briggs]

Just one more way our internet privacy is being eroded away. Pity, I like playing WOW.

[AdminAssistant]

Oooooooh, that sucks, big time. I don't post on the Blizzard forums, heck I don't even like playing on a PvP server, but the benefit of the internet is anonymity. I wouldn't trust many WoW players with a sharp stick, much less my private information.

[Red Panda]

Its their forums and they don't make you post on them. Without anymity people tend to act more politly and if someone wants to get your personal info they can anyways.

[Rageaholic]

Ugh, this is just asking for trouble. Do they really think that people having their real names out there is going to stop the flaming and trolling? If anything, it's going to give the flamers and trolls more to use against the normal gamers. And that's not even going into the ammo preditors and other nutcases can use to find people.

I don't play WOW, but I'm now even less tempted to play with these new policies.

[Talon]

It's not just WOW that's affected. The upcoming Starcraft 2 and Battle.net forums are also affected. Youtube's Huskystarcraft does a good job of pointing out just how fucked up this idea is. Plus Blizzard employees who post on the forums will be affected. If I worked for Blizzard, I'd be thinking about quitting over this.

If Blizzard is serious about going ahead with this nonsense, I predict their forums will become a ghost town. But any number of private 3rd-party forums will be only too happy to fill the demand and cash in on the traffic-based ad revenue.

Hopefully Blizzard hasn't adopted the "too big to fail" attitude, and pulls its head out of its posterior.

[Nyoibo]

Its their forums and they don't make you post on them. Without anymity people tend to act more politly and if someone wants to get your personal info they can anyways.

Actually to an extent they do make you post on their forums, you want technical support, forums.

[Red Panda]

I'm sure most of that info can be found elsewhere, there are tons of WoW forums on the web and probably more will be made for those who don't want to reveal their name. Even if you post your tech questions, I highly doubt somebody will hunt you down for it.

[lordlundar]

I'm sure most of that info can be found elsewhere, there are tons of WoW forums on the web and probably more will be made for those who don't want to reveal their name. Even if you post your tech questions, I highly doubt somebody will hunt you down for it.

4chan would like to disagree with you on that. They're happily waiting for it to go live so they can browse the forums for people to stalk and harass.

Therein lies the biggest issue. Your name is being publicly posted without your direct permission and your only counter is to not use it, which, considering a number of technical people at blizzard will require you to post on the forums to help you out, just became problematic.

[lordlundar]

Looks like they rescinded, instead using a global handle as opposed to the user's real name.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...68987278&sid=1

[Rapscallion]

http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100707

Rapscallion

[Rageaholic]

Good to hear. That would have been a major epic fail if it had implemented that way. Glad they realized how stupid the idea was.

And LOL at that comic.