Blizzard to remove the veil of anonymity

From their own guidelines:

I think what makes this more interesting is that Blizzard is, we must admit, generally a paragon for the MMO model. They know what they're doing and most other games draw from them to some degree.

With that burden of reputation, mistakes like this are greatly amplified in public perception. That is to say, we wouldn't care if Lineage did it. Not as much.

It's not like I ever hide who I really am. You can click to a number of links on any post to get my real name, pictures of me, where I work or have worked, and probably my home address and phone number if you're persisitant enough, etc (hell, if you Google me there are 1,760 sites containing things about me and the things I've done). I learned a long time ago that anonymity is only as good as the interest of others.

well, the numbers are one of the issues, even if a small percentage of their players uses the forums, they still will number in the high thousands at least. if paragon had tried something like this, it would still be a horrid idea, but there are maybe a few hundred forum regulars at most, if you stretch the definition of regulars, just like wow may not have a higher proportion of idiots, its population size means it will have a significantly larger raw number of them, the number of active posters makes this more of a worry. there are a lot more chances someone has that sweet spot of no social propriety and lots of technical skill to do significant real world damage to someone's career, family or even in fringe case personal safety.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

This is a horrid idea and not just for reasons already stated.

Say there is Celebrity X playing the game and they post regularly on the forums. Along comes this and they must now make a choice; a) Come out and say yes I'm a fan and play [instant mailbox full] or b) avoid them entirely from that point on taking away a portion of the game [in this case posting on the forums] that Celebrity X enjoys BECAUSE of the anominity.

I have a few author and voice actors as friends and while they're not high on the Hollywood [OMG it's you] chain I can tell you that a few of them are regular forum posters for the games they play. After seeing that news one of them Axed their WoW account. Great news though, they may pick up CoH. *smiles* WTG! WoW! I think you've found the straw that will cause a small exodus. I, for one, will not renew my account with the new expansion now.

well their announcement thread is close to 300 pages. And I'm guessing this will kill their boards utterly. Particularly given examples shown from Lineage where a guy literally stabbed another to death over a virtual sword, and the Myspace killing last year.

Didn't even read the thread. This is a reeeeeal bad idea.
Good luck on that, guys...eesh.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Uh, no. /jranger, Blizzard, /jranger

Hey Blizzard, way to ensure I never pay for another one of your games!


Such an awful idea on so many levels.
It wouldn't surprise me if they take a lawsuit on the basis of this retroactive nonsense.

well, i will probably still play d3, sure as heck am not going to be on their forums.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I agree that celebrities that play just got a whole lot more awkward.

We know from interviews and talk on their own shows that Felicia Day, most of the cast of G4's X-Play, and others play WoW. Most of them do so in a manner where they are anonymous so they aren't flooded with guild invites and spam and stalker-y tells.

Well, if they post on the forum, that will go out the window. I can just see the "Gank Felicia Day" threads starting.

The WoW official forums are, as one poster there points out, a wretched hive of scum and villainy - especially compared to CoH's well-regarded ones. Their ongoing debate/flamewar over this new policy ranges from its ostensible deterence of trolls to its ramifications for Internet privacy - to say nothing about the implications for roleplayers or potential harrassment for female gamers - but the whole ill-conceived affair sounds rife with unintended consequences. Inevitably a lot of gaming companies will be monitoring Blizzard's experiment to see whether they should adopt something similar. One hopes NCSoft will not be tempted to follow their lead.

Like a lot of people, I blame Facebook's pernicious influence as they integrate services with WoW. It's easy to imagine some fun-sucking suit at Activision looking at how much business Farmville was doing via a social networking platform and deciding they want a piece of that action. Facebook's fatuous policy of having members sign up under their real names is effectively unenforceable for the simple reason that no money ever changes hands. That is definitely not the case for Blizzard. They'd be better off looking at Facebook's mistakes, however, rather than trying to emulate its model. Unfortunately, it looks like they're already making those mistakes themselves - just like Facebook, they're finding out that add-ons open up security holes.

RealID is already in World of Warcraft and in Starcraft 2.

With that being said in WoW it is 100% optional. If you want to be real friends with someone you add them to your list and you can see and communicate with them in whatever game they are in. If you are friends with someone but don't want them to know who you are, you just add them to your normal friends list. I don't mind this idea because if you don't like it you can simply ignore it.

In Starcraft 2during phase 1 of the Beta (waiting to see if they change it in Phase 2 but I doubt it), RealID is 100% manditory. If you want to add someone to your friend's list then they MUST be RealID friends. No one playing the SC2 Beta liked this idea and the threads against it were gignormous. I didn't like that Blizzard set it up this way, but also did not mind it personally. I only played solo or with friends and my friends already knew my identity. However, from watching HDStarcraft and HuskyStarcraft I learned that it is a GIANT PITA for people if you are trying to set-up tournaments, etc. Because you're basically forced to give out your IRL information to not only the tournament organizers but also your opponents in the tourney. So overall, another bad mistake for Blizzard.

The forum thing just makes no sense whatsoever. I think its a terrible terrible idea to hand out personal information like that, especially since its the biggest MMO in the industry right now. This kind of press so close to launching 2 big games this year (Starcraft and Cataclysm) is only going to serve to hurt their business. But will it affect me personally? No, the only forums I bother to post in is this one. I read the WoW Forums occasionally but I've never posted there and never had any intention of posting there so it doesn't affect me. I also think anyone that is in the same boat as me (don't post there, never going to post there) that are getting up in arms and yelling "I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER BLIZZARD GAME" were just looking for an excuse to not buy one, because the change doesn't affect them either. However, for the people that do post there, they rightfully should be extremely angry about this and if Blizzard doesn't change their policy on it should ban together and make/find an official unofficial Blizzard forum and move there en mass.

Also I put the blame for it all squarely on Activision not Blizzard.

Actually, the ESRB may end up stepping in and removing some of their little bonuses from the forums and worst/best case scenario is that the ESRB could pull the rating or bump it to M (either way it'd probably be a death knell for their system)