Blizzard to remove the veil of anonymity

Uhm. WHY?

Seriously. They went and pulled a massive, PUBLIC cranio-rectal insertion maneuver.

They then got bitchsmacked by a very vocal portion of their userbase and lost a not-isignificant number of subscriptions over this.

They also got handed a large, slimy poop sandwich by several large media outlets about it too.

So, under threat of collapsing their paying playerbase, they caved.

Why exactly should they get kudos for this?

They shot themselves in the foot, then resolved not to do that again with their other foot. At least just yet...

That's NOT something deserving of an "attaboy".

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Well on the plus side they did the 180 before it went into Live and was a disaster. (Come on, work with me here.)

*cough*

Make of that what you will...

Before you rush anything: They've backpedaled.

According to an interview with the Battle.net project director a couple months ago, he said participating in RealID would be an optional feature. It sounds like some genius decided to expand it beyond it's original purpose of interfacing with social network sites and twist it into a mandatory tool for policing the WoW forums. I don't think that was the original intent at all. From the interview:

why?

they only changed course due to massive public backlash, and their mea culpa is full of enough half-***** lawyer speak to stop Clarence Darrow's corpse from spinning in its grave.

Not sure why we should congratulate them for stopping at the edge of the abyss- it was simple self preservation. And they're explicitly reserving the right to jump off the edge at some point in the future (presumably when the heat dies down), so, uh, yeah. Gratz?

I'm still done with them, personally. The fact that they had intended to do this at all is enough for me to not want to deal with them any more.

Never mind the fact that the RealID forums was supposed to be the first step in some kind of grand master plan, which I'm sure they haven't given up on :P

He/she knows. I think I would be too if I had a WoW account.

I think the original intent has yet to be realized, and it is something they will continue to push towards.

I'm not very familiar with the Xbox Live system, but I believe people use screen names, and retain their anonymity outside of direct dealings with Microsoft, yes? Forcing any cross game, cross server, or forum usage to reveal your real first and last names is a different beast.

I don't care, it's the principal of the matter. And besides, Bobby Kotick can still overrule Blizzard's CEO.

It depends. I have my real name in my Xbox Live profile but it's not required.

I am a little weary of Activision thinking Microsoft owes them any cut of the Xbox Live profits, though. No company other than maybe EA does more harm with needless DLC on Xbox Live right now than Activision.

I think they are also quite a bit razzled by the Rockband Network generating big bucks for EA while Guitar Hero song sales are less than spiffy by comparison.

Sooo... If they go through with this, then they are a horrible company for not listening to their playerbase and instituting a change that nobody likes.

If they don't, then they are a horrible company for "caving to their playerbase".

Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

Only if you put yourself in the situation.

Like if you rob a bank you are still the bad guy if you return the money after the cops surround your house and the news crews come out. Especially if your original intention was to keep the money.

And especially if you have plans to return and rob the bank again...

You can't honestly compare Blizzard wanting people to use their real names on a forum to robbing a bank.

They were damned the moment they decided this was a good idea. This is not something you can chalk up to a borderline grey-area mistake. This says something about their core attitude towards player privacy.

Backpedaling is just the difference between attempted robbery, and robbery. You shouldn't get accolades for being a failure at being a failure.

They are damned either way because the intent to do was still there.

My control over my personal privacy is more important to me than my money. Also, my bank deposits are insured by the FDIC.


To be clear, I don't oppose the use of real identities on the internet as an absolute. I participate in many mailing lists and public forums under my real name, and I am really googleable. But those are all voluntary choices, and for every one I opt into, there are many more I decide to avoid.

If Blizzard had made real names and identities mandatory from the start, I would have avoided the game like the plague but I wouldn't consider them an evil company for doing it. Its your choice to play WoW or not. And it still is. But when a company reverses their privacy stance and shows absolutely no sign whatsoever that this is a controversial decision or that it will have a negative impact on their customers, that tells me whoever made this decision really doesn't care about customer privacy at all. They are a legal-eagle that only cares about what the letter of the law lets them get away with, and not the values their customers might hold dear.


What angers me most when something like this happens is that its usually some ivory tower person that thinks they are personally untouchable. It never occurs to them that the only reason why people like them can get away with what they do is because there are a lot of other people that aren't willing to play the game with the same utter lack of ethics.

There are days I wish I had no ethics and no conscience. Or an evil twin.

I don't have a stake in this as a player, in fact im probably more well known for disliking wow for reasons that have been discussed already and dont need rehashing, so count the bias, but i see hyper's point, they did listen, but only after a cataclysmic (hu-hu) pr reaction. admittedly they COULD have blundered on and committed pr suicide, but this is a pyrric victory at best.
but again, i freely admit my bias. I was noting that this, going on around the time we should start advertising going rogue would have perhaps helped coh, as Kali has mentioned, the bad taste still is in players mouths, but maybe a full on pr suicide would have netted us more subscribers.

I still feel bad for the poor guy that put his name up, blizz better compensate that kind of loyalty now that he left...if his superiors didnt order it in the first place.

one last time, remember, i am biased as heck.

Except you would have STILL had controll over your name and identity, BY NOT POSTING ON THEIR FORUMS. Keep in mind, forums are no way essential to a game. Look at CoH/V: It's widely been known that only around 1% of the playerbase is active on the forums.

This is how I feel about it. I don't play WoW, but after this you couldn't pay me to play it. I can't stand the 'one happy internet' philosophy that so many corporations are trying to push (i.e. Google Buzz).

Remidi is my CoH name. I have a fandom name, a professional forum name, a writer forum name, a political blog name, and names for other games. And a few others for my assorted internet travels. None of them are connected to my real name, and I intend to keep it that way. If a company or forum demands my real name, then bye bye that corner of the internet.

Except that in principle, it wasn't a bad idea. Were there some legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed? Yes. But the idea itself wasn't a bad idea. And even if it WAS a truly bad idea, would you have prefer they just told their fanbase "[censored] it, quit your crying, and deal with it"? Or would you have prefered they listen, like they did?