Blizzard to remove the veil of anonymity

Thanks for posting.

And good riddance to this horrible idea. Blizzard recoups some points from this blunder.

It's a smart move, but is it in time, and will it make people believe they won't still be continuing with Real ID, and pushing similar unpopular Kotick driven changes in the future? I know a lot of people already canceled their accounts, and more than a few deleted their characters as well (I assume retrievable by GMs within a certain amount of time?)... Will they go back or has the trust been broken and the exposure eye opening?

I know I still have my doubts about wanting anything to do with them, even if it means playing SC2. But I'm stubborn.
EDIT: And possibly paranoid.

EDIT: The fine print:
Yeah, still not interested.

And why can't that be accomplished with a screenname like here? It is better and safer in *every* way. There still seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the problem is, and I fully expect to see more things like this from them that I don't like.

its Friday, Woo, made it before the weekend.

I don't think the idea is completely gone...

Nothing saying that it won't change again in six months.

The real cynic in me thinks that this was simply a way of getting free publicity.

I've worked in marketing before. You never commit to anything. If there was a rumor that my company's hamburgers contain the bubonic plague, my statement would be "We have confirmed that there is not the bubonic plague in our hamburgers at this time."

When you don't clarify that you mean "right this damn second", you could accidentally say something that might contradict yourself three years from now... and people will rip off their ears and scream about how this retcons you into being a liar.

In other words, that phrase doesn't bother men in the least.

Pretty much where I am.

This is enough that I feel comfortable sticking around for now.

What I'm hoping is they communicate with the community a little better/earlier before moving forward with anymore of their RealID plans.

In of itself I don't mind the facebook intergration, all I ask is for options, primarily the option to turn off the thing without being closed out from part of the game/service that I pay for.

I also am glad to see they are going to be using some better tools to help control the flaming and trolling that go on in their forums, hopefully that will lead to at least some improvement in the community over there.

Doesn't bother men in the least? I'm a man (at least in theory) and it bothers me...



Also, if I saw a burger joint say that it didn't have it "at this time", I still wouldn't eat there as to me, that says that they could add it whenever, so long as it's not at the point at which that statement was made.

Sorry, but the pessimist in me is saying that it's only a matter of time before it gets added back in.

Do not like the sound of this.

I stand by what I said. Real men aren't bothered at all. Real men already vented their frustration days ago be breaking down a redwood tree and using the sonic booming crack fall of the majestic plant to rend sheer the clothes from all beautiful women within a mile, proceeding then to make copious and plethora love to three while the rest prepare pancakes on a stove made of iron hand-bent, not welded. Real men are the Saxton Hale of California.

I, however, continue to troll irrelevant threads that have passed their prime.

I'm betting this is an appeasement so as not to disrupt the immediate sales and pre-orders of Cataclysm. As others have pointed out, RealID is still going to be used as a Facebook integration and in game for friends lists. It simply won't be used on the forums.

Seriously, DO NOT WANT.

I still will not be buying Starcraft II or Diablo III, no matter how good those games will probably be.

You forgot chugging a six pack o' rotgut whilst fisticuffing with a grizzly.

Cataclysm's still months away, and I did say maybe.

I can deal with RealID in-game, if they close the plugin loophole. They can't possibly integrate me with facebook because I have no facebook.

They /can/ still sell your information to them, and carry on with *all* the practices that motivated their forum change in the first place. None of that has changed...

Until you get an email at your RealID, in which Facebook says they noticed you didn't have one, so they made one for you, and here is your temporary password...

i now have next vacation has been planned ^...our secret

Hey, gimme a break already!

I mean, some of us were still venting our frustration. It was tough enough to find a ******* redwood out here, but I live in a congested area, so there're now a lot of naked beautiful women within a mile that I have to satisfy... and eat pancakes for... god, ohsomanypancakes. It's almost to the point that I can't find a moment to browse the boards on my phone (thank God for hands-free voice commands).

Adding Rotgut and a grizzly? Well, rotgut's a given- gotta wash down all those pancakes with something... but when started punchin at the bear in the midst of all... well.... it got a little confusing.

Long story short, I'm now using the aforementioned redwood to fend off an irate pancake-batter-covered drunk amazonian lynch mob and somewhere in the rockies there's a grizzly bear walkin kinda funny.

It probably has stuff to send bug data back since it is in beta. The issue becomes when you don't trust a company to only get what it should get.

Inflated subscriber numbers due to the fact that Asian customers don't pay a monthy subscription.

And it wouldn't have dipped that much due to the fact that in China, they are used to being dictated to by large entities and would have continued to play.

To be fair, as (I think) Kali pointed out -- Blizzard is no longer Blizzard. They are Activision/Blizzard. At the very top they are run by Bobby Kotick, a guy who doesn't give a flying fig about games. He cares about franchises that make millions of dollars per year and maximizing the profit of said franchises. He's leaving Blizzard (mostly) alone because he knows their games sell, but the management at Blizzard IS being marginalized and pushed aside for Kotick's agenda.

Do not trust a thing this man says.

And it's a shame, because Blizzard was one of the best names in gaming at one point. (This title might be shifting to BioWare at this point.)

NOTE: Norton Internet Security IS a virus.