By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2010 at 7:08 pm.
Big news for Battle.net users, and possible important implications for net privacy as a whole, via this posting from Blizzard:
anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.
More thoughts below.
On the one hand, I can see the value of real names, and I’ve been on forums where they are mandatory. It’s mature, and possibly healthy for net use as a whole. But it does eat into net privacy, particularly that distancing of personal identity that we’ve all enjoyed for a long time with games. I certainly enjoyed not being Jim Rossignol from PC Gamer And Rock, Paper, Shotgun for most of the time I played Eve, for example (people not always comfortable with journalists, etc). Other people might find themselves attracting unwanted attention for quite different reasons. There are plenty of reasons why having your real name available to people you played videogames with might not be safe, or appropriate.
Nevertheless Blizzard seem certain it is in their interest, and that of the players. for their forums to feature real names. It seems that the move is an attempt to improve the atmosphere on the Battle.net forums, and to create a more mature “social network” feel to the service.
The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.
Perhaps it will do that, but I can imagine situations (as mentioned above) where it would discourage posting for one reason or another. It could well simply create more shadow forums alongside it where privacy is supported.
So what do you think, readers? Real names on RPS comments? (I jest. OR DO I? No, I am joking. Maybe.)
06/07/2010 at 19:11 Freud says:
Good thing I changed my surname to xBackstabberxSWE then.
06/07/2010 at 19:17 Freud says:
On another note, it is of course a stupid move. All it will do is reduce willingness to use the forums over there. Some of us don’t use Facebook because we enjoy the separation of real life and our online activity.
Anyways, this will get changed when a retarded kid with a non-generic name will get harassed for things he writes on the forum and someone mail orders tonnes of latex products in his name.
07/07/2010 at 09:28 Ovno says:
Damn right, watch me register with my screen name as my real name, suddenly your new policy is useless….
06/07/2010 at 19:14 Zaphid says:
Thank god battle.net forums are largely redundant, unless they add stuff like “make 5 posts to receive an in-game pet”, people can ignore them. Still, I’m not comfortable with tying my name to my gaming identity, I play games to escape from RL, not to drag all that baggage with me.
07/07/2010 at 11:13 battles_atlas says:
That’s the thing – there is no danger that the internet as a whole is going to go down this route. People who think that the days of anonymity on the net are limited are failing to grasp that the internet isn’t the same as the physical world. In the physical world there are very real barriers between your work and (possibly several) private personas. They take place in different places with different people.
Such barriers don’t exist online without alter-egos. A prospective employer can’t google the drunken bollocks you were talking in the pub two nights ago, but if you did the same on a forum in your own name they certainly could. Does anyone really think politicians and business elites earning multi-millions a year would endorse a model that allowed the rest of us to see that they are just as stupid, offensive, and partial to videos of penguins wanking as the rest of us are? Society would have to become honest. Never gonna happen.
07/07/2010 at 15:43 warth0g says:
please post link to the penguins wanking video
07/07/2010 at 23:42 DJ Phantoon says:
Penguin in this case means elderly overweight white male.
06/07/2010 at 19:15 pkt-zer0 says:
Linking your real name to your in-game username is optional. So it seems you still get to keep your privacy in games, just not on the forums.
I think this is a pretty good idea, overall, but we’ll see.
06/07/2010 at 19:15 Fargmot says:
Forcing people to use real names to increase intelligent discussion makes sense to me. I mean, look at how well it works on Facebook.
06/07/2010 at 19:21 Mad Doc MacRae says:
+1
06/07/2010 at 19:22 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Or perhaps I should say
Mad Doc MacRae likes this
06/07/2010 at 19:36 Bozzley says:
You have to sign up to Facebook to see content though. You don’t have to sign up to see the WoW forums (dunno about the Starcraft 2 forums). Some people might not want anyone being able to Google their name and see they play WoW by default. Of course, as Jim noted, they could always use another forum.
06/07/2010 at 20:55 Drexer says:
I’ll be keeping an eye on this. I can’t say I definitely agree with it, but I wish to see how trying to improve the forums this way will affect the trolls and the more annoying members by putting them into the same conditions as real life where they have to own up to what they say(more or less).
I do agree that animosity is an important part of the internet, but calling it ‘sacred’ is pretty much regarded with the same indifference as most other things that are called ‘sacred’ by the general populace.
06/07/2010 at 22:38 kyrieee says:
No you don’t
http://youropenbook.org/
08/07/2010 at 07:40 Kommissar Nicko says:
@Drexer:
Surely you mean anonymity? Because everyone knows that more than anonymity, animosity is the holiest of holies on the internets.
06/07/2010 at 19:15 robrob says:
This is my real name.
06/07/2010 at 19:16 HexagonalBolts says:
Osama’s bricking it
07/07/2010 at 02:19 James T says:
I’m mourning the death of Downfall videos.
06/07/2010 at 19:17 Vinraith says:
And they’re going to enforce this how, exactly? How do they know what your real name is?
06/07/2010 at 19:17 Kieron Gillen says:
Credit card?
(As in, your account is linked to a credit card. Use the name on your billing. And, yes, that opens up other issues.)
KG
06/07/2010 at 19:23 Vinraith says:
@Kieron
That works for adults who pay for their own accounts, which is only a specific subset of their user base. What about minors? What about people that have someone else pay for their account (gift recipients, for example)? Why wouldn’t anyone that wanted to occlude their identity simply claim to be one of these two categories, even if they weren’t?
The whole thing strikes me as unenforceable and consequently meaningless. Someone mentioned Facebook above and is exactly right, not only does using one’s real name not stop people from acting like idiots, it also doesn’t stop people from signing up under a false name anyway.
06/07/2010 at 19:26 Kieron Gillen says:
Vinraith: Yeah – the issues I was talking about.
It’s an interesting one. In my experience, forums with a hard REAL NAMES ONLY are always better behaved than the general free-for-all. It’s not even if they have to be people’s actual real names – having people actually have names which sound like human beings alters the way people act. But the only places which really have tried this are relatively small scale*.
KG
*Relatively being the key word. The Warren Ellis Forum had the rule and was actually pretty massive… but it’s not Blizzard’s forums.
06/07/2010 at 19:29 Vinraith says:
@Kieron
Interesting. As mentioned, my only experience with “real name” driven internet discussion is Facebook, which certainly looks like the same old mess to me. This business on battle.net should be worth watching, if only as a psychological experiment.
06/07/2010 at 19:29 Arc says:
I’ve heard it said elsewhere that presumably, if you don’t use your real name, it will be almost impossible to recover your account if it gets hacked.
06/07/2010 at 19:41 Serenegoose says:
Yeah, eh… if they used the name on my card, I would cancel my account there and then, what with the bank I’m with apparently not accepting statutory declarations of change of name as evidence that I changed my name. However, they don’t seem to – someone else payed for my game until recently, with their card, and when I talk to people on warcraft it uses -my- name, and not theirs. I’m not sure what I think of it, it seems completely unnecessary.
06/07/2010 at 21:37 skalpadda says:
Another major thing I see is that WoW is rated 12 (and 11 in some countries I believe), in which case the account will probably be in the name of the parents if they pay for it. Would you want people googling your name to find your kids’ inane comments about WoW written in your name?
Also, should names of underaged people be posted on the internet in any case? I mean I’m sure it’s not a legal issue for Blizzard as the parent who signs for the account is entirely responsible for it, but it seems dubious as most children won’t bother reading (and many won’t understand) the terms and conditions and parents won’t be able to stop them without constantly monitoring their kids when they’re on their computers.
06/07/2010 at 23:46 Sonic Goo says:
It’s the name you entered in the ‘your name here’ field. Not the one on your credit card (let’s not start any false rumours here). Though I imagine people who filled in asdfasdafdf aseffeadf or A.Hitler might have some problems. (As mentioned, you often need to prove you’re the person on the account to get a compromised account back.)
07/07/2010 at 00:44 Eamo says:
There must be someone out there with a real name that violates the naming policy. Wonder what will happen to the “Jesus Power”s and the “Christian Gaywood”s of the world. Having their account banned with the reason “Real name violates Blizzard naming policy” has to be on the cards for a few people at least.
07/07/2010 at 01:43 Psychopomp says:
RealID just uses the name you registered your account under, that is all.
07/07/2010 at 02:23 dethgar says:
You already have to provide proof of identification when trying to get a stolen account back. They require you sign and certify a legal document and provide a copy of your photo ID. I tried it with my old WoW account and just gave up when they asked for all that info. I had already provided them with information about the credit card used when I signed up for the account, and answered the secret question(to no avail, since the registered email had been changed). Soon they’ll want a copy of your birth certificate and a phylactery of blood just to log in.
Also, don’t forget the ever looming grin of Kotick. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
07/07/2010 at 14:51 phuzz says:
I was teasing my WoW playing flatmate about this, and apparently Blizzard don’t have his name correctly (he is registered using our other flatmate’s surname), not sure why this is.
Personally I don’t care, my name is pretty un-googleable, ahh the benifits of being a smith
06/07/2010 at 19:17 Anonymous Coward says:
And will they do to prevent entering false names?
Certainly they won’t be able to check the identity of everybody?!
kind regards
John Doe
06/07/2010 at 19:19 DeckerZero says:
Hey Dimpleweed I’m gonna kick your ass when I see you in school man, I knew it was you who camped me in gnomeregan you dirty !”#&&#”.
- Yours Truly,
Your Friendly Neighborhood Jock
06/07/2010 at 19:25 DeckerZero says:
And the next day some poor guy named John Dimpleweed will get his ass kicked by a jock, he never even touched WoW, but for a coincidence, he was unlucky to share his name with another fella who indeed did play WoW.
Breaks my heart.
06/07/2010 at 23:48 Sonic Goo says:
Not if mr. Dimpleweed turns out to be some tattood ex-con muscledude. :)
06/07/2010 at 19:28 Cross says:
All the more reason to detest those suckers at Blizzard.
06/07/2010 at 19:30 Jim Rossignol from PC Gamer says:
How will they ensure people tell them their REAL real names, do you have to send a copy of your ID card to Blizzerd? If they want to make the conversations more mature they could achieve that with better mods too.
I certainly don’t want to use my real name in the forums i participate. Once i’m rich and famous, my political opponents would surely use it against me.
06/07/2010 at 19:32 Heliocentric says:
ISWYDT
06/07/2010 at 21:23 Rikard Peterson says:
The point is that it should make you behave in a way that you wouldn’t have to be ashamed of.
07/07/2010 at 02:23 Clippit says:
But where’s the fun in that? Might as well go outside.
06/07/2010 at 19:30 Ian says:
Using Real Id in-game does this too. Real Id is otherwise quite spiffy, but some people are irked byu it a) sharing real names rather than an lias or name of a specific in-game character, b) that you need to give folks your e-mail address and c) that there’s no way to set yourself as “Offline”.
Ultimately for me it sorta falls into the you-don’t-have-to-use it bracket, but at the same time it turns people away from it when the whole point is surely to get more people using it and keeping in touch across Blizzard games, etc.?
06/07/2010 at 19:31 Heliocentric says:
I thought if you were under 13 people can’t ask for this stuff? No tech support for tweens?
06/07/2010 at 19:32 john says:
In order to be a success with the ladies (that don’t look like they live under a bridge) it is normally necessary to conceal yout passion for computer games, thus the thought of someone googling me and having my ravings about the dps to build time ratio of a firebat being imba is frankly terrifying.
One of the best things about the internet is the way it has helped to promote free speech without the constraints of conformity, and additionally, given the preponderance of complete and utter fruit loops who play Starcraft, what are Blizzard going to do when someone is able to track down the other party a forum feud and ends up beheading them or something?
06/07/2010 at 19:38 Alaric says:
In order to be a success with the ladies … it is normally necessary to conceal yout passion for computer games…
Please, please tell me this is a joke. Because if it isn’t… if you really believe that…
/sigh
You know, I’m not the bleeding heart type, but I am shedding a tear for you as we speak. =(
06/07/2010 at 19:54 Warskull says:
@Alaric: There’s truth to what he’s saying. Early impressions are a big deal and you don’t necessarily want a discussion of Paladin arena tactics or optimal raid composition to be one of the first things people find about you when they Google. It may give people a one dimensional view of you. People tend to stereotype gamers.
06/07/2010 at 20:07 Guus says:
Would it be odd if I said I don’t want people to google me for info at any moment? Just the idea makes me raise an eyebrow.
06/07/2010 at 20:08 Alaric says:
In that case I would be a unique exception, which I obviously do not believe that I am.
If you google my name, the first page will display a link to my blog at the Adrenaline Vault, a link to one of my reviews at there, a link to my site (where I talk about games a lot,) a link to my Twitter account which I set up to let people know when my gaming articles are published, my ‘review’ of Betrayal at Krondor over at GoG.com, an ATI vs. nVidia thread on Facebook that I posted in, and finally another Facebook thread where I am defending net neutrality.
According to your logic, I should still be a virgin. =))))))
06/07/2010 at 20:30 Adam Bloom says:
If your lady is googling you during a period of first impressions, she’s probably not the type to be instantly turned off by nerdiness.
Just a thought.
06/07/2010 at 20:37 Xercies says:
@Adam
you just said what i was going to say lol.
But yeah i would be a bit weirded out if my potential partner was googling my name to get juicy secrets. to be honest i wouldn’t trust them…they can ask can they not. Some things i wouldn’t mind saying for example.
06/07/2010 at 20:58 Starky says:
Not so true anymore – everyone, even the most tech un-savvy people can goodle, or facebook you (if you have some of your profile public).
They are mainstream.
Not everyone on the other hand appreciated geekery of WoW levels – Hell, I did my best not to reveal I was a massive geek to my current GF until at least the 4th or 5th date.
Hell, we had sex before I admitted that I was a gaming/movie/tech nerd – and that is the way it SHOULD be, hehe.
06/07/2010 at 21:10 Lilliput King says:
Just saying, there are quite a lot of people with my name, and it isn’t even a very good name.
it only goes some of the way to identifying you in this day and age.
06/07/2010 at 22:10 Azhrarn says:
The odd thing with that is, that were someone to google me, they’d find a ton of hits about someone about 20 years older, in the same field of work as myself, with an awful lot of articles to his name and a teaching position at one of the leading universities in our country.
In other words, utterly useless. The first entry actually about me is 4 pages in. =D
06/07/2010 at 23:44 Hidden_7 says:
Googling people has always seemed pretty unproductive to me. I would hate to think that anyone I’ve met has ever googled me in an attempt to learn more. They’d end up finding a twitter page of someone who’s not me, but has the same name, who I happen to find pretty reprehensible. So… that’d be a shame to be judged on that.
07/07/2010 at 10:28 Tei says:
“Not everyone on the other hand appreciated geekery of WoW levels – Hell, I did my best not to reveal I was a massive geek to my current GF until at least the 4th or 5th date.
Hell, we had sex before I admitted that I was a gaming/movie/tech nerd – and that is the way it SHOULD be, hehe.”
Another reason, is that now we know Starky had sex with his GF before the 4th date. Is called inference, wen with data A and B, we can infere data C. Maybe not everyone want to share with the world C, but is easy to infere from A and B.
Is worse. You can share A with the world, and a friend can share B… TADA!!. the world knows C.
07/07/2010 at 18:50 DrazharLn says:
I wouldn’t belittle the power of google to find out about specific people. Using only a username and email account a friend and I were able to find (correctly) more information that your average schmuk displays on facebook:
Full Name
Address
Vote in last US election
Employment history and profession
There was some other stuff, but I forget what exactly.
08/07/2010 at 00:16 DJ Phantoon says:
“Not everyone on the other hand appreciated geekery of WoW levels – Hell, I did my best not to reveal I was a massive geek to my current GF until at least the 4th or 5th date.
Hell, we had sex before I admitted that I was a gaming/movie/tech nerd – and that is the way it SHOULD be, hehe.”
Wait. I’m gonna oversimplify. You think lying in the beginning of a relationship is a good thing? Basically, for sex?
I guess I’m not young enough to appreciate this sort of thinking anymore.
06/07/2010 at 19:32 Razz says:
I’ve been a WoW player pretty much since the start, and I can say with little doubt that this idea is getting probably the biggest backlash Blizzard’s ever gotten. Which is saying something, as the vocal minority for WoW gets pretty frickin’ vocal when they don’t like something. The official forums thread on the US site alone got over 2000 posts in 2 hours. That’s one post every 3 or 4 seconds, man.
I can’t see them going through with this, honestly. It’s just too big of a deal for players. Also it’s really fucking stupid, although I personally don’t mind that much as I never post on the forums anyway.
06/07/2010 at 20:44 Malibu Stacey says:
That might be impressive if WoW only had 20,000 subscribers. With 10 million or so subscribers, not so much.
06/07/2010 at 20:50 Starky says:
News is only just starting to trickle into awareness (for example this article was my first knowledge of it) – I suspect this may wake up that sleeping beast that all corporations, political groups and organizations fear to anger…
The silent majority.
Once Blizzard open this can of invasion of privacy worms, they’re just opening themselves up for a shitstorm.
06/07/2010 at 19:33 Freud says:
There have been a few cases where people have been killed over in-game MMO disputes. Imagine the PR nightmare for Blizzard if in the future they are the ones that helped a killer find his victim.
06/07/2010 at 19:34 Alaric says:
Yes, this will reduce people’s desire to post, but you know what? That’s a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, the hordes of drooling imbeciles who live on WoW forums will be thinned at least a little bit. Maybe some scumbag will think twice about posting his racist rant, or some other bullshit, if he knows that his real name is going to be attached to it.
Sure it’s not perfect, and people will still post all sorts of rubbish, but maybe just a little less.
And as to privacy, which is in fact important, I have the following to say. Those who wish to remain completely anonymous, a decision I both understand and respect, will simply avoid Blizzard forums, just as they avoid Facebook right now.
Alaric Teplitsky.
06/07/2010 at 19:36 Stijn says:
Or put up a plausible, yet fake name? I’m not sure how they’d enforce using your real real name, unless you link it to a credit card or something, but that’d create a lot of issues as mentioned above.
06/07/2010 at 22:47 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
When you are concerned about your privacy, using Facebook is still fine, because you can choose who can view your content. That’s a little bit more difficult on a forum.
06/07/2010 at 23:15 Alaric says:
@RC, that’s true, but on the flip side, Facebook has actual information about you. This forum would only have your name. Quite literally so. Unless, that is, you post your private info there, which you probably shouldn’t do regardless of whether you are using your real name or not.
06/07/2010 at 19:37 Mac says:
Will you get banned if you have names like the following:
- I used to work with a uy called Alan Dick … his parents must have had a right laugh when they thought about him using that name – Mr A Dick
- Cockermouth
- Twathe
Can you imagine recieving a notice that your real name is against their naming policy, therefore you need to change it.
06/07/2010 at 19:38 Mac says:
uy=guy
07/07/2010 at 00:49 Eamo says:
I owe Mr Mac an apology. I seem to have made a reply above asking the exact same question without realising it had already been brought up. Give “delete” button plox.
06/07/2010 at 19:37 Something Weird says:
Another good reason to avoid Blizzard like a plague. Really, they declined like never after joining Activision. R.I.P. Blizzard & Gaming.
07/07/2010 at 18:19 minipixel says:
Blizz has always been like that. I’m surprised nobody remembers the email sniffing fiasco from 1998, done by Blizzard on Starcraft players.
06/07/2010 at 19:38 Tei says:
Bad idea.
What is on the internets, stay on the internets.
What if a minor make a political/religious/game stament ( like “I like Bioshock, Is kind of a good game”) the dude will be forced to live with that comment his whole life.
So, is a HORRIBLE, BAD, IDEA, to use your real name on the internet. Even using a nickname is not good enough.
So this like like Blizzard forcing people to publish his credit card number, and choosing his password in paypall as a number of 3 digits.
IS. VERY. STUPID.
06/07/2010 at 19:39 Flint says:
If it has even a chance to improve the cesspool of idiocy that the official WoW forums are, bring it on.
07/07/2010 at 00:41 The Dark One says:
We should revive Hitler and have him oversea the expunging of all undesirable posters.
06/07/2010 at 19:40 measurements says:
I thought it was a risky move when they made battlenet changes so that your sign in was your email address. My old username for my wow account (nothing like the characters names) was completely unknown and I never typed it in so it was pretty safe on the ol’ account hijacking scene. Suddenly it’s my email address. Seems like giving account stealy types a boost up, as does profligating your full name about the place.
And yet, if you’re playing wow and think that there’s something worth loosing in your account (other than the monetary value of a lich king enabled account which is around the thirty quid mark, I guess) then you should probably chill out. And get one of them code dongle thingums.
I think you can achieve a better forum atmosphere with this change but you could probably do the same with some strict moderating for a bit. Delete nonsense posts, prune all empty statements. Come down hard on idiots and let persistant abusers barely get the chance to be persistant.
tl;dr (so glad to be typing on a keyboard instead of a shitty blackberry) What about account safety, forums could just be moderated better/harsher.
06/07/2010 at 19:46 Bart Stewart says:
It’s interesting that a number of the objections so far have criticized using real names on the grounds that it won’t elevate the content of discussions. But that’s a straw man; it’s not something that requesting the use of real names is intended to achieve. The point is to be able to reliably associate comments with a real person, not to encourage more scholarly conversation but to discourage the juvenile, hyper-emotive flameage that prevents people from even trying to have a friendly exchange of different thoughts.
I don’t know how well it will work. I suspect that, to be effective, other Official Gaming Forums will also have to move to a “real names” policy. And that seems unlikely.
Still, instead of preemptively looking for reasons why Blizzard’s experiment must (somehow) fail, why not give it a chance and let’s see how well it works to improve the signal-to-noise ratio? As long as no one is forced to post (and thus reveal their real name), it’s worth trying.
06/07/2010 at 21:03 jalf says:
What? The objections raised are that “putting your name out there where everyone can see it can lead to all sorts of nastiness”.
Up until your post, no one even *mentioned* that “it won’t elevate the content of discussions”. Sorry, you were talking about straw man arguments? ;)
06/07/2010 at 19:47 ruaidhri says:
oddly enough, I used to post very regularly on the old PC Gamer UK forums under my real name. it sort of bothered me years later after I sobered up and got a proper job that I did it, but at the time it didn’t at all. although I was constantly drunk and indiscreet, using my real name did temper some of the more ridiculously extreme thing that I might be tempted to type. For me it was a positive calming influence.
disclaimer – it never did anything to improve my ability to spell, or say anything of actual merit. And still doesn’t.
06/07/2010 at 19:49 Antsy says:
It throw’s a spanner in the workings of Penny Arcade’s Internet Behaviour Equation and is therefore a great thing. Those forum’s swing madly from reasonable and informing to cesspit at the best of times.
06/07/2010 at 19:52 ChampionHyena says:
Hell.
No.
06/07/2010 at 19:52 TheSombreroKid says:
lol Activision aren’t too smart, are they?
06/07/2010 at 19:53 Clovis says:
I don’t see how the name thing will improve the forums, except that you can have only one account that can easily be banned/suspended. Is that the idea? But, of course, you don’ t have to use your real name, you just have to have the account tied to the credit card.
06/07/2010 at 19:54 Merus says:
This is apparently inspired by South Korea; it’s de rigeur for internet services (like Battle.net) to require real names.
Most people use the same nickname everywhere. Surprise! It’s not much harder to harvest your identity from your nickname than from your real name.
06/07/2010 at 19:55 William Main says:
I can’t see anything massively wrong with this. If anything it may decrease the smacktalk that comes from anonymity via usernames.
:P
06/07/2010 at 19:55 Zogtee says:
The idea that real names will create more civilized forums seems flimsy to me (Anon 4ever). I’ve been on all sorts of forums over the years and the only thing that helps is strict moderation. I wish forums would introduce a system where, if you break the rules, you are banned for a week. Do it again and you are banned for two weeks. Do it again and you are banned for a month. An so on. Trust me, people would calm the fuck down very quickly.
06/07/2010 at 20:09 Freud says:
A forum that is related to WoW is http://elitistjerks.com/forums.php Elitist Jerks, which is a forum that is dedicated to discussing WoW from a theoretical perspective (as in how to maximize your dps or how to beat bosses). They have a zero tolerance for idiocy, whining and bad grammar. They warn and ban for any offenses.
This of course makes it a bad forum for goofing about but a good forum for discussing WoW from a theoretical perspective. It works but I suspect it also requires more work than your normal forum moderation staff would want to put in.
06/07/2010 at 20:34 Zogtee says:
Maybe that would a good idea? A couple of sub-forums with rock-hard moderation to keep things civil and a couple of goofy forums with loose moderation (or none at all), where people could let rip on each other.
06/07/2010 at 19:57 Kester says:
While I like the idea of people being accountable for what they write – as Kieron says above, it does improve behaviour – I am not impressed with using your real name. It causes a particular problem for people with unusual names: I have a first name/surname combination that I know is unique in the UK, and quite possibly in the world. I went through a period of actually using my real full name when signing up for forums and similar, figuring it was a grown-up and responsible thing to do, only to discover that whatever forums you post on then swamp all other search hits for you on the internet. With a lot of employers doing quick internet searches for candidates, I really didn’t want them to read a bunch of posts I’d made about various hobbies, even though none of them were controversial. I’d much rather have searches for my name turn up professional activities than hobbies, as it creates a much better impression. I certainly wouldn’t want them to turn up posts on the battle.net forums, which are generally pretty awful.
I would be fine with, and even support, Blizzard giving people a single account ID which cannot be changed. But any forum enforcing real names has ideas above its station and I would stay away from that place forever.
06/07/2010 at 21:11 jalf says:
What he said.
As far as I know, I don’t have anything particularly controversial posted on the internet, but I don’t necessarily want it all to be pooled together. I don’t want anyone to know *everything* about me just from a quick Google search. My comments on RPS, to take an example at random, aren’t really relevant to a potential employer or a girlfriend, are they? I know I used to post some rather cringe-worthy newbie posts on gamedev.net that I don’t think a gamedev studio needs to see if I apply for a job with them. ;)
And I don’t even have crazy stalker ex-girlfriends, or a nazi boss who spies on my private life, nor do I have any disputes with crazed WoW fanatics who might just take it personally if I do anything to spite them. But a lot of people do. Such people have a fairly good reason to treasure their privacy.
06/07/2010 at 22:59 Cooper says:
I have a similar situation with a (probably) unique name. You google me, you find my otherwise near non-existent web presence. Only me.
I’ll reiterate my point from my other post. Some people have unique names, other less common names, some very common names.
A “real name only” policy enforces a hierarchy of anonymity, which is never a good thing in any social interaction.
06/07/2010 at 19:57 Urthman says:
Sounds like a great way to find some ladies who are into video games and offer them the pleasure of my company! What could go wrong?
06/07/2010 at 20:01 Kester says:
Oh God. D:
I hadn’t even considered this aspect.
07/07/2010 at 03:38 2ds says:
Yeah this is the first thing that came to mind for me, I think if I was a girl and I wanted to play WOW, I’d probably prefer to do it without people knowing me real name, and stalking me on facebook, it will happen.
06/07/2010 at 19:58 Sagan says:
If they somehow manage to enforce this I won’t be posting there. It isn’t very hard to link this name to my real name, but I know for a fact that there are multiple people out there calling themselves “Sagan,” and I like that you can’t be sure whether it was really me who posted something stupid.
Also very relevant and only a couple of weeks old:
Http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2535
06/07/2010 at 20:09 Sagan says:
Meh no-one is going to copy+paste that so here it is again as a link:
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=2535
It’s a story about stalking because someone found out the real name of a woman in WoW.
06/07/2010 at 20:21 Alaric says:
Oh please. This proves what exactly?
That there are stalkers? We knew that already. Plenty of people get stalked (or killed) without ever having played WoW or posting on any forums, or creating a Facebook account. Does playing WoW increase a woman’s chances to get stalked? I’d like to see some data in support of that please.
06/07/2010 at 21:44 jalf says:
@Alaric: I’d have thought it was obvious: it proves that if you’re being stalked, there’s a big advantage to not having to put your real name on the internet.
It simply proves that there are people with very valid reasons to hide behind usernames online.
06/07/2010 at 21:59 Alaric says:
I don’t buy that.
If a person is already being stalked, posting “OMG nerf DKs!” under their real name, will not make them more stalked, nor will it give the stalker any new information about them.
If a person is not being stalked, then by how much does having their name listed on a WoW forum, increase their chances of getting stalked? I don’t know, but am willing to bet it is not statistically significant.
06/07/2010 at 22:23 Sagan says:
@ Alaric:
By linking this I didn’t want to say that people will get stalked because they put their names online. I simply wanted to say that there are a lot of assholes online who you don’t want to know your name. And this story proves that there are valid reasons for that beyond simple paranoia.
I know that problems like those reported in the story are rare, and even after using your real name online they will continue to be rare, but they are one reason why you wouldn’t want to use real names.
06/07/2010 at 23:22 Alaric says:
All right, I agree, there are legitimate reasons for not wanting your name and personal information all over the Internet. But in this case it’s just your name. Unless you post some information that identifies you, it’s just as anonymous as any online nickname.
I bet there is a woman out there who’s name is Jane Offenbach. I totally dreamt it up just now, but with six billion people in the world there’s gotta be at least one. As of this moment her name is now online. Let’s say you are a dangerous psychotic stalker, and you now have her name. What exactly does that entail?
Also, posting on WoW forums has always been strictly voluntary. If anyone is genuinely worried about this stuff, they have an option to not post at all, thus keeping their complete and utter anonymity.
06/07/2010 at 19:58 wedge says:
Horrible Idea. If people want to use their real names, go nuts. Do not force it
06/07/2010 at 20:03 TheSombreroKid says:
It amazes me at how many people here don’t understand, or care about, the importance of equal disclosure (everyone knowing equally as much about each other) on the internet, which internet anonymity was used to enforce. Having your identity openly visible on the internet puts you at a disadvantage.
The possability of childish bickering didn’t affect freedom of speach laws and it shouldn’t affect internet anonimity, the right to anonimity is the only way freedom of speach can be enforced on the internet.
06/07/2010 at 22:17 Tei says:
It only takes a call at 3:00pm with “You brother Sam has a accident, and we need blood of type 2+1 quick, and maybe some skin transfer, please come to hospital XYZ”. The burglar will wait for you to abandon your home really worried, fucking scared, and wen you return, your whole home will be destroyed by the burglar.
06/07/2010 at 20:03 Hypatian says:
I was already worried about RealID, because I have a bunch of people from the http://www.gamerswithjobs.com community who I’d love to be “cross-game friends” with (i.e. like Steam), but who I don’t feel comfortable giving my real life name to. I divide the world into family who game (they know my name and phone number), personal friends who game (they know my name and my phone number), online friends who game with me in many games (they *might* know my name, but I don’t go out of my way to give it to them, and they certainly don’t know my phone number), and online friends who were okay in one game but I don’t want them following me around to other games (innumerable, know me only by my handle).
Not being able to “cross-game friend” someone without giving out my real name was already something that upset me: here’s this lovely feature that I don’t want to use. But I figured Blizzard would see the light before or shortly after release and change that. Now, it looks like they’re going the other way instead.
I don’t know whether this will result in relatively fewer forum trolls or relatively fewer intelligent forum posters. But, I think it’s safe to say that it will result in many fewer posters of both varieties.
06/07/2010 at 20:05 rocketman71 says:
Yet another reason not to buy from Blizzard.
Official tournament forums, pro competition, etc?. Ok, perhaps there. Regular forums?. No, thanks.
Wasn’t going to buy anyway, so no big loss, and I can’t think Blizz’s reputation can sink any lower by now, so…
06/07/2010 at 20:06 Volomon says:
Someone will end up getting hurt and killed. MMOs can be quite vicious especially on the more competitive circles. When someone gets PVPed to death and or harassed in game they will find you. The name just makes it that much easier way to easy in fact. Because they’ll eventually hunt down your email, your ip, you address, your phone number, who your mother is, who your father is, where you work. I’ve seen this done with nothing more than a picture of a person, everything from IP address to where see goes and what she eats. Imagine giving the same individual your name.
I see nothing but disaster. At best this will end up on national news, at worst someone is going to pay the price. I just hope no one gets molested or raped in this social experiment.
06/07/2010 at 20:06 Gorgeras says:
Can I just point out that prior to my own banning, I attributed the bad atmosphere of WoW and Blizzard forums down to those most responsible for them: the blues. Three times I had managed to successfully appeal against suspensions and bans on grounds relating to inappropriate and abusive conduct by blues and their extreme tolerance of ‘the malignant militia’ who trolled every thread critical of Blizzard. They didn’t distinguish between flames, whines and even the most gentle and slight criticism. They were always there pushing the boundaries further back and then when the OP inevitably snaps, a blue closes the thread and that OP isn’t seen for a week.
It’s a similar story with WoW’s RP servers: all the ‘RP nazis’(a pejorative that was tolerated for nearly a year whilst just plain old ‘nazi’ was not) were characterised as wanting a stronger RP policy. We didn’t: what we wanted was for the existing rules to actually be enforced. They never were. If players tried policing the servers themselves through rather passive ostracism and ridicule of the non-RPers that saturated the servers because they were ‘more mature’, something akin to saying you love the countryside but when you go there you leave your rubbish, the GMs quickly clamped down *on the roleplayers*.
Blizzard got the communities they deserved and even pro-actively encouraged; now they’re whining and their fix is to introduce an unpopular and intrusive gimmick.
06/07/2010 at 20:28 Zogtee says:
I was in WoW from the beginning, from beta and into the game proper, when it was released and I was also on their forums from the beginning. I stayed for about two years, quit, and then rejoined a couple of years later.
The moderation on the WoW forums was almost non-existent those first years. People would flame, troll, and insult each other all over the place and no one seemed to care. On my second tour in Azeroth, things had improved marginally, but there was still a lot things going on that I would have slammed down on without hesitation. When it comes to the WoW forums, they have themselves to blame and maybe that’s what they’re trying to avoid with SC2.
/me lives out my dream of being a mod
BTW, will I have to create an account with Battle.net, if all I want to do is play SC2 single player? Because that may very well put me off buying it or maybe I will look for other solutions.
06/07/2010 at 21:20 neolith says:
Yes, you will need a Battle.net account to play singleplayer.
06/07/2010 at 20:08 Hypatian says:
Posting again to add: It’s interesting and worth noting that a number of WoW forum community volunteers have publicly come out against this (I’d search up a link, but the WoW forum thread off the announcement where I saw them saying this is… way too big to search. I only saw it because it came up at the same time I was commenting to add my two cents to the thread.)
Their feeling is that their position of recognition within the community makes them bigger targets for the net.kooks that are out there, and they want no part of that. (This is speaking of unpaid volunteers that Blizz has recognized and marked as “VIP”s so that other people will recognize their posts as trustworthy. In general: well informed, well spoken, and prolific posters. As far as I know, they have no powers of any sort, although moderators might move a little faster if they see one of these guys report forum abuse.)
06/07/2010 at 20:25 Duoae says:
@Hypatian.
I also dislike this form of “highlighting” in general. It smacks of favouritism and popularism. Same as on Kotaku. Plenty of people who gain “Stars” post as much crap as everyone else…. and plenty of people who do not have stars make consistently thoughtful comments.
The best systems do not glorify good behaviour but condemn bad behaviour.
06/07/2010 at 20:44 Starky says:
I think you’ll find that the best systems do BOTH.
06/07/2010 at 20:51 Duoae says:
@Starky…. so, you’re confident that every good user is rewarded? That’s not been my experience in those systems.
06/07/2010 at 21:07 Starky says:
Bad implementation of a good concept is not the fault of the concept.
Study after study has shown that when it comes to the question of carrot and stick, the answer is carrot AND stick.
I used to run a fairly large gaming forum (and anime forum, and a roleplaying forum (Whitewolf mainly, V:tM and such) and a couple of others that all ran into at least 1000+ regular users – around 4-10k posts a day.
So yes I’m sure that with good top down community management the correct method to keep a online community polite, and mature is a system of reward and punishment.
For example, on a forum I used to run for my clan/guild/community (200+ members, 20 or so servers, CS, CS:S, Natural Selection, Battlefield 2 and more…) we used to punish people with temp bans to the servers, but reward them with VIP server perks (reserved spot, mini-bonuses – like free amour in CS, so on).
And it was pretty damn good while it lasted.
06/07/2010 at 21:15 Duoae says:
@Starky,
I think that while in theory and in the right environment it can be a good idea….. in practice the rate of positive feedback and poor moderation and bias per person will effectively nullify this theory.
For example, being a good citizen is not rewarded in any way other than being a good citizen. I don’t get any perks for not robbing that guy who lives on the corner in some estate somewhere – nor should i. I feel that the same should be true for online communities…. otherwise you’re likely to end up with an imbalance where people are ‘overlooked’ when they should be given the positives or, and even worse, corruption or favouritism gives some of those good citizens more than the other good citizens. I’ve found that it’s much rarer for bad behaviour to be overlooked or deferred than good behaviour. Again, just because you had experience of one situation where it worked well does not mean that translates to the rest of the environment. GWJ and RPS are examples of self-selection to a certain extent (as was perhaps your former CS community) but the logic behind how they are run does not necessarily extend to the rest of the internet because of these inconsistencies…
06/07/2010 at 21:26 Starky says:
But people ARE rewarded for being good citizens, and I’d argue that simply not being a bad citizen doesn’t make you a good one – just average.
Community awards, employee awards, recognition awards and news articles, charity functions held in honour of, so on ans so forth – the list of rewards for good citizens (those who make an effort to do good things for their community above and beyond simply “not doing bad”) is s long and varied one. Sometimes tangible rewards can be had, but most of the time it is simply emotional validation, or respect.
So on you don’t get perks for simply not being an asshole/criminal/rule breaker – but people who make an effort to improve the quality of any community earn rewards, and in real life they are rewarded too (though not as much as they should be imo).
It’s not black and white, but a scale and most people sit firmly in the middle and earn no reward or punishment – the goal of any community leader should be to encourage more people into the side of the scale that has people actively participating in efforts to improve the community, and minimize those who would do things that harm it.
06/07/2010 at 22:06 Duoae says:
@ Starky,
Again, all those rewards only reward one person of many. The reward isn’t the factor that is making these people behave in that way. It doesn’t need to exist… and it’s very existence overlooks and effectively demeans the efforts of many people who do similar things but are never recognised for them. You can’t even begin to try and argue that the situation is fair.
06/07/2010 at 20:15 spinks says:
Pity the person who has the same name as a convicted murderer or paedophile.
06/07/2010 at 20:45 Uhm says:
Ahh, but a convicted murderer that knows your name.
08/07/2010 at 01:31 DJ Phantoon says:
Sucks to be this guy, huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_R._McVeigh
06/07/2010 at 20:22 Duoae says:
Hmmm. Opens the door for :
- harassment outside of the forums and also possibly into real life in the form of:
*physical attacks
*defamation
*racial and sexual harassment
*psychological harassment
I’m not a fan of this or any sort of forced un-privacy policies. Your identity is one of the most important things about you and making it public and vulnerable in a situation were crazy anti-social people can (and do) become psychotic towards other people (which has resulted in attacks and killings) is not a good thing.
The sexual and racial harassment needs little comment…. there’s little enough reason for most women or people with a racial background to “out” themselves on the internet and, last time i checked, Activision-Blizzard do not moderate or control the whole of the internet or real life…. at least not yet. I’m sure it’s on there 10 year plan somewhere.
Psychological harassment is a little harder to define but can range from prank calls to actively destroying someone’s life through little invasions.
Imagine some random person turning up at your house Jim Rossignol of The Willows, 13 Heartcrest Lane, Wiltshire, SN8 5WA….. People in the public eye choose to open their lives up to these dangers (i don’t for an instant argue that they look for or deserve them) but normal people do not.
06/07/2010 at 21:08 Duoae says:
Another thing i just thought about….
What about people with the same name? It’s not as if people are all unique sets of 18 alpha-numeric codes.
How do you tell the difference between Bill Smith and Bill Smith? How would they allow for this?
06/07/2010 at 20:26 Daniel Rivas says:
I like using my real name on the internet. It keeps me civil.
I try not to post something I’d be ashamed of if I said it in real life. It just about works.
06/07/2010 at 20:39 Duoae says:
Does that say more about you or about people who can post in a civilised manner without such a requirement?
Also, what do you think of this being forced on users?
06/07/2010 at 21:26 Daniel Rivas says:
Hmm. Well, I can play nice in anonymity, but I do prefer talking in an environment where people use standard names. As Kieron points out above, it doesn’t even have to be their real names.
I’m not too fussed with Blizzard forcing people to do this, but then I don’t use their forums, and I’m not familiar with what they’re used for. If it’s tech support, I think I see it as a good thing. However, there’s obviously concerns that people will shy away from that, which is troubling. I think the best solution is for Blizzard to make it very clear that there won’t be repercussions for using a fake name. That obviously relies on this being the case, of course.
The availability of anonymity is extremely important to me, though. Speaking in hypotheticals, if use of real names became enforced by law in some way, I’d obviously be against that. If use of real names on the internet became much more the norm, I dunno, I’d maybe be against that too, pleasant or not.
Note: You really don’t get too much anonymity if you have a distinctive username, especially if you, say, have a Twitter account using said username, which either provides a real name there and then, or at some point links to a facebook account or to friends with a facebook account.
07/07/2010 at 03:39 Feanor says:
I bet your real name is really Terry McGee or something.
07/07/2010 at 09:23 Daniel Rivas says:
Damn it, Faenor. I guess you found my Facebook.
:(
06/07/2010 at 20:32 Styngent says:
In my experience I tend to find that the maturity avaliable in a forum is directly linked to its subject matter. I think publishing “real names” is a bit of misdirection. I imagine the vast majority of WoW users would feel more threatened if their account status was brought into question over their social activity. If your in game identity is linked to your forum account and blizzard truly want to encourage a more responable and mature attitude they could simply threaten with something tangible to the game users rather than the rather wishy washy idea that someone may be held to account in real life somewhere down the line.
Of course you’d need to visit the old ethics – profit scale first.
06/07/2010 at 20:35 Joe Maley says:
http://www.joemanna.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/HLIC/d9f52e0469398513ad24e5b0935ffa61.jpg
This is awesome. I love accountability.
This could easily turn current online gaming into civil online gaming, because we could finally put names to trolls.
08/07/2010 at 01:34 DJ Phantoon says:
Except that it will weed out the bad/dumb trolls.
The smart ones will just get smarter.
06/07/2010 at 20:36 Starky says:
Another potential PR nightmare from this will be the 20-30% or so of their player base who are female yet choose to leave that fact anonymous – like several female players I used to know – most of whom only revealed that fact to me after a few weeks of being in my guild. Which I’d like to think was a good reflection on how I acted, and expected other guild mates to act with the female players, that being, not like drooling 15 year old nerds.
Still, I can imagine if real names become public (especially if it becomes searchable on something like the armoury) lots of people would quit.
I no longer lay WoW, but am planning on getting Starcraft 2 – I’m no that bother about people knowing my real name – after all anyone who wanted to find it out probably could…
Still bad move by Blizzard I think.
They’ll also get some MASSIVE, massive bad PR the first time someone uses their forums to track another player and hurt/abuse them in some way.
Which will happen, I can see it now, Blizzard forum flame war turns into real life assault…
06/07/2010 at 20:38 Kandon Arc says:
Given how games like WoW are percieved in the popular media, is it really something you want a potential employer to know about you? I can easily see an employer looking at 2 identically qualified candidates and picking the one that doesn’t play WoW.
06/07/2010 at 20:41 Kandon Arc says:
Also, it’s kind of scary when reality follows satire: http://www.thenoobcomic.com/index.php?pos=378
06/07/2010 at 21:07 Zogtee says:
I really do not want that. Employers are already searching the net to find out more about the people they’re looking to hire. If they see someone spending a lot of time playing games online, that may well screw you out of a job.
One more thing, does Blizz intend to moderate in-game talk as well? You might behave on the forums, but if you can say what you want in-game and you know if the people you’re playing with are women, or black, or whatever, then… yeah.
06/07/2010 at 20:40 Seras says:
I can think of a few examples of why this is a horrible horrible idea:
-french CS player that got stalked and stabbed.
-general harassment of female players no longer able to hide their gender.
06/07/2010 at 20:41 Uhm says:
On the plus side, women can put a name to their fantasy murder victim.
06/07/2010 at 20:41 Xercies says:
Really really bad idea, the anominity from the internet is scred i have to say. you get some bad apples but of course you do in everything, just because i have a nickname doesn’t mean i automatically become a dickwad as the general theory suggests. i try to act like i would in real life…
This can cause so many things
Harrassment if your a woman- this is an obvious one since i can tell you some people in wow if they knew there were woman on board would become drooling idiots.
But racism as well..your name can tip someone off to which nationality they are so you could get racism because they are african or chinese or anything else.
06/07/2010 at 20:51 Cael says:
Trolls will now be a quick google search away from finding and posting real life information about people on the wow forums. Pretty genius idea.
06/07/2010 at 20:52 Starky says:
I remember when the armoury first started and that became the troll tool of choice… this is like that but much, much worse.
06/07/2010 at 20:51 Starky says:
Oh, and the real reason for this is clearly facebook, and Blizzard wanting to link their system with it in order to rake in the money…
06/07/2010 at 21:06 Kester says:
I don’t even understand what on Earth the Facebook integration is supposed to achieve in the first place. Does anyone really want their friends to know every time they play Starcraft?
06/07/2010 at 21:32 Starky says:
No, but blizzard want your non-starcraft playing friends to know when you are playing starcraft, and then maybe, just maybe get some additional customers from that.
John Smith won a starcraft game
John Smith gained an achievement in starcraft
So on so forth, and some people are going to wonder what it is and how they can play… social viral marketing, cheap and frighteningly effective.
Or as I like to call it…
Word of spam.
Where you get your customers to word of mouth spam your message for you.
07/07/2010 at 04:11 Psychopomp says:
All Facebook integration does is scan your account for other friends who play Starcraft…
Not to mention that it’s optional, and not tied into RealID at all.
07/07/2010 at 09:53 Jacques says:
They can use Facebook Connect for that without needing people to use their real names.
06/07/2010 at 20:56 no says:
This is an awful idea. I wont be posting at all, then. The last thing I want is my employer or future employers or family or friends knowing that I play StarCraft (or anything else) a lot. Or worse, for searches on my name to result in half of the first page being taken up with videogame commentary.
07/07/2010 at 00:54 Sonic Goo says:
Does playing games really carry that much of a social stigma? “Oh, we don’t want to hire him, he plays CoD!”
06/07/2010 at 21:00 Turrican says:
To be honest it sounds like they need to improve their moderation rather than their privacy policy, as this sounds like a nightmare.
I moderate for a couple of lesser known PC games and we do it with a very thorough set of rules, organised teamspeak and head moderators with 10 years experience. Perhaps the size of Blizzard’s forums or the historic lax moderation that has been alluded to in this comments thread makes it more difficult for them though, I don’t know.
06/07/2010 at 21:12 duncanthrax says:
People use their real name on Facebook? Hahahahaha. The fools!
07/07/2010 at 01:53 Jake says:
A couple do at least, I think
06/07/2010 at 21:12 Arathain says:
A terrible idea. Really awful. I value my anonymity greatly and not because it protects me from the consequences of my own idiocy. I really want to keep my offline home life as private as possible, for my own safety and for mental space, and I echo concerns above about the possibility of racism, sexism and the potential for crime and other harmful harassment.
Anyway, in my experience a civil forum comes from strong moderation, where everyone understands the rules because the rules are enforced. You can’t tell me Blizzard aren’t able to hire sufficient mods to police their own forums.
06/07/2010 at 21:13 wat says:
That’s vastly optimistic.
It won’t throw a spanner in anything. The only thing it will add is the potential for idiots to not only behave like assholes in front of your online identity but only to be an asshole to you IRL. See: 4chan.
06/07/2010 at 21:15 Kandon Arc says:
Interesting aside, this policy seems to be in violation of the Battle.net code of conduct:
“Distribution of Real-Life Personal Information
This category includes:
* Releasing any real-life information about other players or Blizzard Entertainment employees
If a player is found to have participated in such actions, he/she will:
* Be permanently banned from the Battle.net forums”
06/07/2010 at 21:28 neolith says:
And yet another reason to never buy any Blizzard game again…
06/07/2010 at 21:43 three says:
Well, guess I’ll be voting with my dollars on this one.
http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/9425/donef.png
06/07/2010 at 21:46 sendmark says:
I can understand the need to cut trolling, as it was absolutely ridiculous even by general internet standards. However there are lots of solutions they could have done here, allowing just the one account name for posting for instance. This is overkill or smacks of an excuse for a cynical potential link to facebook as some people have suggested.
Glad I got out of playing WoW a while ago, things like this just validate that decision more and more.
06/07/2010 at 21:48 Grey_Ghost says:
Glad I never played WoW (shocking isn’t it?), but now I’m not really looking forward to StarCraft II anymore. I guess it depends on how it’s implemented. I think I’d be perfectly fine with not buying any Blizzard games in the future.
06/07/2010 at 21:50 Lipwig says:
Just think, Blizzard are making this decision off the tiny handful of moderated and involved forums that are a part of the huge, seething whole. If anyone actually read the realm or battle-group forums they’d probably just shut the lot down.
All the important people post on Elitist Jerks anyway.
06/07/2010 at 21:52 Jochen Scheisse says:
There is a reason for this: A cult has formed out of one of the smaller clans of the Maelstrom realm. Human sacrifice has given them knowledge of the things beyond. We can only hope the authorities get the name information quickly, before they doom us all.
06/07/2010 at 22:06 Firndeloth says:
When you have thousands and thousands of users, using their real names doesn’t make them more accountable. While it does open people with unusual names, or who have accidentally left clues to their identity in posts up to harassment and such, it doesn’t really change how accountable users are for their posts. In small communities, knowing someone’s name means something. If one of my co-workers posts something inflammatory on a forum I use, they suddenly become directly accountable for their statements and how those statements affect me and my relationship with them. But when someone who lives on the other side of the globe posts insensitive or inflammatory words on the internet, it doesn’t matter if I know them as superfreak2650 or Jason Shimmers; all I have is a user name. Sure I can dig up more information on certain people based on what they write, what information is on their profile, and how common their name is. But for the majority of users, the inclusion of a name changes none of the practical distance between them and their statements.
On the other hand, it may well have psychological effects that mitigate inappropriate behavior. Yet as has been pointed out, Facebook certainly doesn’t see any less obnoxious or inappropriate behavior than other corners of the internet, and has its fair share of stalking, harassment and bullying. Facebook even has users directly connected to people they know, which should make them more directly accountable for their actions before friends, family, classmates, and coworkers. And yet it does not, in many cases. This could be because the sorts of people who troll and harass others on forums are the same minority that harass and heckle people in their non-digital existences. Of course the internet and anonymity in particular expands their capacity and willingness to perform such actions … but I am fairly certain most of the Internet’s undesirables are already predisposed to be infuriating, rude, and incendiary before logging in to their Blizzard forum accounts and Facebook page. In which case, attaching their name to their actions will do little, if anything.
06/07/2010 at 22:10 subversus says:
I want this to be as a general rule for all forums and comment sections in intertwebz
06/07/2010 at 22:12 subversus says:
*a general rule
06/07/2010 at 22:18 Firndeloth says:
But ignoring the complications of actually assuring someone is using their real name, do you really think it would improve internet culture enough to mitigate the damage it causes for people who are harassed, bullied, or worse due to their statements on the Internet? The trouble is, it will always be easier to attack people or make poor decisions when you are separated by a stream of bits. It is always easier to shout out insensitive or stupid things from within a crowd. It is always easier to burn and kill as a mob. The internet has a similar effect to being part of a mob. It makes us more intelligent, more creative (open source software), yet also more easily manipulated and angered. It makes us more cruel and more rash. Attaching real names to this environment, already the primary vector for identity theft and quickly becoming the primary vector for junior high and high school bullying, seems as though it would do far more harm than good. If it would even do any good at all. Not even on the sidewalk are strangers able to directly attach our name or contact information to our statements. Why should the internet allow strangers to do this?
06/07/2010 at 22:20 Rath says:
I don’t like this idea. I have resisted all forms of “social networking” precisely because I don’t want people to be able to find out any personal information about me unless I’m the one who decides to give it to them. I realise the Blizzard forums are pretty much just a help tool, but I will now be a lot more resistant to using them, so my in-game experience may suffer as a result.
06/07/2010 at 22:35 TDM says:
They could always use the removal of anonymity as a punishment, although I get the feeling that could be even worse and would require better work from the Blues anyway.
06/07/2010 at 22:38 7 Seas says:
Besides the issue of female gamers no longer having anonymity, I don’t understand what they are going to do to deal with the fact that names are not unique. I mean, There are lots of Bob Gonzalez out there, what happens if one of them is an asshole on the forums. Does that mean that people will think all of them are assholes? Seems like it would have to be tied to some other name that is unique so people don’t get confused between all the people with the same name.
I’m suer they’ve thought of this, so I’m curious to see what they’ve done about it.
06/07/2010 at 22:39 Tasloi says:
Bad idea to say the least. Particularly for women & minors. I have a female friend who plays wow who out of the blue had some guildmate show up at her door one day. You might think well be more careful with who you give info out to but this guy got the info via via so not even directly. The potential for abuse with this info being out in the open is virtually limitless.
I wonder if this is all on the up & up when it comes to privacy regulations and the like in the EU. Anonymity is one of those things you don’t really miss until it’s gone.
06/07/2010 at 22:52 Cooper says:
My web presence is negligible, minor, petty.
Yet I have what I think is a near-unique name.
You google for my name, and that tiny, negligble web presence is what you get. I could not hide behind “Oh, that’s not me, it must be someone else with the same name” line, as, well, that’s highly unlikely.
I don’t like the idea of someone else with a more common name (who I cannot google pinpoint in return) being able to bring what they find from googling about me ‘to the table’ in a web discussion.
A “Real name only” system simply removes the anonymity from some people entirely, from others moderately and from many not at all, thus creating a hierarchy of anonymity, which is no good thing in any social interaction.
06/07/2010 at 23:06 Cooper says:
I should also probably add that that minor, negligble web presence includes all my office contact details. This is something I would not want in the hands of an internet troll from the Blizzard forums.
06/07/2010 at 22:58 Teliach says:
This must be some awfull joke, how does anyone thing this is a good idea.
I Play wow, i’m guild leader of a raiding guild and I use the WoW forums alot for recruitment, especially yhe looking for alliance and realm forums. I have zero desire of showing my real name to everyone on the face of the planet with access to google, do remember that you dont even need to be logged to see wow forums with all those real life names posted there and then you can just check the armory and you have the playign habits of anyone.
This is so bad, i see no upside in this, will only bring crzy problems. Just hope the european Union shuts down this invasion of privacy hard.
07/07/2010 at 01:28 Psychopomp says:
You are, of course, aware that there are probably hundreds of people out there who have the same name as you, right? Unless you have a name like “MIkhail Jumperhogger,” simply googling someones name is absolutely worthless.
07/07/2010 at 02:53 Vinraith says:
@Psychopomp
You are, of course, aware that there are probably hundreds of people out there who have the same name as you, right?
Yes, but in your particular case there’s only one that lives in your home town. Within ten seconds of googling the name you listed below I turned up enough information to find you in real life. Maybe you’re fine with that, I’m certainly not.
07/07/2010 at 02:56 Vodkarn says:
I am actually the only person in the world with my name. And even if I wasn’t, it isn’t that hard to start narrowing down.
I fear for what will happen to poor women who have stalkers in real life, who manage to find them in their internet escapes.
Of course, what do you care, only a moron would want to keep their names private. Right? What possible legitimate reason could anyone have to not tell the world who they are?
07/07/2010 at 04:31 Psychopomp says:
@Vin
Oh, yes, I’m fairly certain I’m the only one in my hometown; and, no it doesn’t really bother me that someone can find where I, in particular, live with relative ease. The incredibly rare crazy internet man isn’t going to be stopped by the fact that he can’t just google my name and hometown. The thing is though, you can’t ascertain someone’s hometown from just their name.
@Vodkarn
I hadn’t thought about the trouble this can potentially give women, admittedly. However, I’m not exactly certain a small thing like not having your name displayed will stop the crazies. It would help, but it’s not going to stop them.
I guess what I’m trying to say is “You people are really optimistic.”
07/07/2010 at 07:24 Tei says:
“You are, of course, aware that there are probably hundreds of people out there who have the same name as you, right? Unless you have a name like “MIkhail Jumperhogger,” simply googling someones name is absolutely worthless”
No, is not. Using a real name, and other detail, often you get another 1 byte of information. So you have now 3 bytes. Using these 3 bytes, you can collect 8 more bytes, so you now have 11 bytes.
Some back and for can be needed, if you make wrong gueses, but is really easy, trust me. I have done that, as a joke thing, a few times, and once to know about a spam company.
The harder people, is the people with not internet life, these people is almost invisible.
But If you have the real name, then is much easier and quickier, since the real name is often published in official documents. There are some governement mandates that force to publish some documents on the internet. ..
Internet + Google is way too powerfull. Adding your real name, make too simple to use that power. And is only going to be worst (read: Google will get better, and will be more and more info about you on the internet )
06/07/2010 at 22:58 STICKY BAWMB. IN THE WHEELS says:
Blizzard forums are fill of idiocy anyways. You’re better off not going there.
Although it makes me kinda sad. Internet anonymity is something I really, really value. It shouldn’t be taken away like that.
06/07/2010 at 23:05 Teliach says:
Blizzard forums also include the Technical support forums that many peopel that don’t use the other forums go. They also include the recruitment forums that not filled with idiocy and are used by many people.
Also in game support will many times redirect you to the tech support forums, and unless you want to reveal your real name to everyone to see, guess you are out of luck
06/07/2010 at 23:07 Dingo says:
Imho, it is not necessary. For example the Bethesda (Mod) forums are very well behaved. Been there for years and havent seen much trolling or flaming. A very mature crowd with common interests over there. If Blizzard has problems in their (moderated) forums it speaks for the the crowd playing their games if you ask me…
06/07/2010 at 23:17 7rigger says:
I’ve met a guy called Craig Mycock. Imagine if he set up an account?
Imagine if his wife did? Her name is Patricia…
This is not a joke, these people exist. How would Blizzard deal with them?
06/07/2010 at 23:19 7rigger says:
Meant as a reply to Mac on page 1. :(
Fail.
06/07/2010 at 23:23 Zogtee says:
Blizzard forums actually filters out names like that, at least they did when I was there. I was in a discussion and brought up the wonderful Michael Moorcock and his Eternal Champion stories, but when I saw my post, that offending name had been censored. :D
06/07/2010 at 23:20 Shazbut says:
What if you’re famous?
No, this is absolute madness
06/07/2010 at 23:26 Zogtee says:
George W. Bush, the famous orc hunter from Azeroth.
07/07/2010 at 00:39 Antsy says:
Oh come on…he rolled Night Elf chick.
07/07/2010 at 09:42 Zogtee says:
Now that I’ve thought about, I’m pretty sure George would have gone for a heroic lolladin, with a night elf chick as an alt, just for the added benefit of seeing her do the sexay dance, when ol’ George is in the mood.
But seriously, the OP makes a good point. It is very likely that people like Felicia Day, Wil Wheaton, Jerry and Mike from Penny Arcade, Kris Straub, Scott Kurtz, etc, would want to play these games. Felicia plays WoW already, but I think Jerry and Mike quit a while ago. Being able to single these guys out in a game would make them targets for both hordes of fans and a fair share of hostilities. Madness, I tell you.
But I’m sure Blizz has thought about this and have more to say on the topic, and I’m really curious to hear it…
06/07/2010 at 23:38 SomeGuy says:
This looks so like “how to acsess the internet in 2025″ – http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-06-24-n15.html its not even funny. I would rather keep my internet and real life separate, some people do merge from the two, but i want to limit that as there is some weird people out there. I also quite like my on-line identity with most of my usernames being Some Guy or a variation of the word frog.
06/07/2010 at 23:43 GirlGamer says:
Echoing what many others have said, this is a terrible idea.
When I played WoW, I would almost exclusively play male characters (my main was a male Tauren) and would absolutely avoid speaking on vent unless it was on guild vent or private servers run by friends. When I did play around on female alt characters the sheer amount of idiocy those characters received was almost amazing…and that was without any real evidence that I was actually female.
I wasn’t one of the annoying stereotyped attention seeking female gamers, I just played the game and met people that I remain friends with years later. During my time in WoW I was in three different raiding guilds, one of which was #1 on the server and served as an officer or class leader in all three. All three also had around a ~30% female roster, and maybe three total were of the “attention seeking troublemaker” variety.
I would often assist with guild recruitment on the recruitment forums and general PR on the realm forums.
So something like this is nothing short of horrifying to someone that has very much experienced the harassment. I’ve been stalked (though he didn’t get very far, thankfully), I’ve been harassed in game for everything from my phone number to trying to get me alone in a vent channel. And this is all without knowing my name or having a real avenue to find me outside of WoW (except stalker-guy, he got my name from a well-meaning friend who felt awful later).
To be clear, 90% of the male players I interacted with in WoW were nothing short of cool and pleasant to talk to. But 10% of the millions of people visiting the WoW forums every day is not a group you want to create targets for. And this isn’t even getting into some of the privacy concerns that affect both genders or some of the uglier areas of the internet that would come crawling out from under their rocks looking for trouble specifically because of this new “feature.”
Just an awful, awful idea by Blizzard.
07/07/2010 at 00:10 GrassyGnoll says:
I don’t usually create female characters but i did so on City of Heroes and regularly had to point out I was a male player, though the inquiries tended to be polite but I can imagine this could be really worrying in some circumstances.
07/07/2010 at 07:18 Tei says:
Probably you get a 1% of the access attemps a real woman get. Somehow people figure out a character is a woman.
07/07/2010 at 00:07 GrassyGnoll says:
I haven’t played WoW for a while but I’m uncomfortable with the idea of real names on the forums. I was on a PvP server and I remember things got hot under the collar on the forums with the ganking, gank squads and generally “hilarity” of PvP. It doesn’t take a great deal so create trouble for somebody or impinge on their real life. My work is in Care and I don’t want to think of the issues that be raised by somebody with an issue with me because even an unsubstantiated claim would be commented on. Even worse if somebody who doesn’t even play WoW got hassled because of mistaken identity.
07/07/2010 at 00:19 drewski says:
This idea is awesome. There are genuinely no downsides.
Sincerely
Simon “McLovin” Bolivar
07/07/2010 at 01:21 Psychopomp says:
I agree.
With love,
Ian Allen
07/07/2010 at 00:30 Rhontos says:
“I just want to emphasize the hell out of this post — I recently accepted a position at a company after interviewing with them not two weeks ago, and during the interview my experience with gaming came up (I list a game on my resume since I won a Microsoft contest for coding it) and he very quickly established how much he looked down on video games and gamers in general.
I only managed to salvage by lying and claiming I had been put on a game project involuntarily and had absolutely no interest in games at all. Luckily he bought it and so we spent some time discussing how pathetic video gamers are. Then I got the job, went home, and gamed all night as penance.”
This isn’t me, it was taken from the discussion on reddit.
07/07/2010 at 01:20 Psychopomp says:
Oh no, someone on the internet will know my real name, and be able to do jack all with it.
Whatever shall I do?
07/07/2010 at 02:13 Firndeloth says:
Aside from the potential for online stalking, real-life stalking, harassment on social networking sites, and various other actions ranging from annoying to mildly frightening. It depends on how common your name is, how much you do online, and what else you connect to that forum or your game account mistakenly or with blatant foolishness.
07/07/2010 at 09:21 Dawngreeter says:
You can look forward to your future job interviewer asking why you post so much on WoW forums and how can you be expected to perform a real, serious job when such is the case.
07/07/2010 at 01:31 Radiant says:
A lot of people who play wow are now going to post under their mum’s name.
#creditcard
07/07/2010 at 01:38 Radiant says:
And I’m including the over 30′s here too.
07/07/2010 at 02:13 Jake says:
I am not very keen on having my name on WoW forums as it is a unique name and tied to my business, but I agree with the sentiment that something should be done about the pathetic state of a large forum like that. In 5 years of WoW I never posted there once. The forums are full of ‘flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness’ but this is not the only solution to that: just moderate them more harshly. The WoW forums are barely moderated.
The real name idea is likely a money making scheme, linking to Facebook and social media etc, while moderation is an expense.
Elitist Jerks – another WoW forum – works OK, and surely Blizzard could hire some better moderators than the sometimes ridiculous EJ ones with all their money.
I’d like to believe this was an attempt to create a mature environment, but that just doesn’t ring true. They could have had a mature environment years ago if they cared to do so.
07/07/2010 at 02:28 Vodkarn says:
“Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment”
…because everyone will be terrified that Johnny New York will find that guy (Steve Johnson of 345 Main st.) who said he was wrong, and then shoot him?
Yeah, I think it’ll get real damn civil in there.
07/07/2010 at 05:15 Anthony says:
Yeah, this is going to be just fantastic for women players.
07/07/2010 at 09:18 Dawngreeter says:
Blizzard’s official position might be that there are no womenz on teh intarwebz.
07/07/2010 at 05:17 Carolina says:
I see many concerns about people in real life, like employers or acquaintances, knowing about your gaming alter-ego. It’s understandable, but I’m actually more annoyed by the opposite: I don’t want everyone I know in my gaming world knowing about my work or acquaintances in real life.
For example, I graduated as a Surgeon’s Assistant, but worked most of my adult life as a model, hostess, dancer and other PR-related jobs. I’ve even took part in some beach contests and TV ads, which of course are easily found in YouTube. Somehow I don’t see anyone taking my opinion seriously in a forum after seeing me shaking my ass in in a Reef Contest video. In fact, that was the very reason I stopped playing WoW after a year or so, when I made the mistake of sharing some personal details with my ingame friends.
And it isn’t about personal responsibility online, since even though you can try to delete every single thing that you uploaded and canceling every account in every social network, what can you do when the images and videos —with their respective filenames, alt text or descriptions that include your name— were uploaded by others? Not to mention the dreadful Google Cache storing everything even after you managed to delete it.
I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of any celebrity, not to mention well-known politicians or their direct relatives. Imagine posting about aggro, crowd control and DPS if your name is, let’s say, Malia or Sasha Obama.
I realize that you can come up with a fake name to register your account; besides the fact that I’m not entirely comfortable with paying for Miss Fakity McFake’s subscription, it’s not what Blizzard suggests, or what they’re advocating for. I’m critizicing the idea, not talking about how to circumvent it.
07/07/2010 at 05:32 pipman300 says:
my real name is rusty shackleford. for realz
07/07/2010 at 06:45 Son_of_Montfort says:
This is really going to make those WoW session awkward when Danny {Asterax the Elf} sees that surprisingly “friendly” Shandra’s real name is Steve {Shandra}.
Actually, I really think this could lead to unpleasant things for some people, particularly for the women that play WoW. Are they going to require that you log in to be able to READ the forum (currently you have to have an account to post, but anyone can read the forums). If not, creepy people can just read the forums, get to know people’s real names, and “perv” on them ingame. Of course, WoW is also know for being a target for “crime syndicate/gold farmers/con schemes.” Now suddenly these shady individuals have access to everyone’s real names? Yeah, I want Chinese gold farmers to know my real name… totally safe… right? Wouldn’t this also mean that the WoW forums suddenly become much more attractive to Nigerian “Princess” schemers and the like, particularly if you don’t have to sign in to read the forum?
I don’t know… an open access location with real names required. At least Facebook has privacy controls to block out unwanted guests.
SoM
07/07/2010 at 06:48 Nefaroth says:
I am the only nefaroth on the internet
07/07/2010 at 07:33 new-rosettastone says:
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07/07/2010 at 08:37 Freud says:
In a slightly naive gesture of loyalty towards his employer, a community manager posted his real name and hilarity ensued.
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function
07/07/2010 at 08:38 Tei says:
I hate that Gabe (Penny Arcade) comic where a theory is raised that anonimity + internet = trolling. Because is false. I have participated in very civil forums, where a moderation was not needed, and a troll or a idiot was a surprise and a novelty.
You get a bad forum, with bad posters. If you have bad posters, you *need* moderation. Most formus have a mix of good and bad people, so need moderation. But this don’t mean all forums need moderation.
That webcomic post from Gabe has done more to to harm the cause of freedom, than most islam terrorism attacks. Every time I see that comic taken to the discussion, I double facepalm.
07/07/2010 at 12:30 Calabi says:
@ Tei,
Exactly their whole thing is based off an assumption.
The problem is the abstractness of the internet. The being one step removed from the situation.
People post death threats, on the internet with there real name, and dont realise that its a bad idea, because there’s no one around them saying, “dood, thats a bad idea”.
This will stop nothing, but will probably make the it that little bit more personal.
07/07/2010 at 08:53 Real Horrorshow says:
My name is Jaymes Winn. I live in Gardnerville, NV. I’m 25. I’m a white male with brown hair and brown eyes.
It’s not a big deal, guys.
07/07/2010 at 09:07 Tei says:
http://kotaku.com/5550609/man-spends-six-months-plotting-murder-of-counter+strike-rival
07/07/2010 at 10:05 Zogtee says:
Well, if you’re okay, then I guess it’s safe for all of us. Glad you cleared that up! Phew!
07/07/2010 at 10:33 Duoae says:
@Real Horrorshow: Haha, i forget what it’s called but you just unwittingly put yourself into the most privileged category in the world. No wonder you don’t see what’s wrong with it if you’ve never had a bad problem experience.
Hmmm… Okay to explain why you’re privileged:
Westerner – therefore fairly rich and well-off in comparison to people in other countries.
White – well off and have no persecution or discrimination
Male – historically the leading sex and so no persecution or discrimination
25 – Perfect age group where, statistically, your money is highest with minimum responsibilities.
Brown hair and eyes – no persecution due to ‘standardised’ features. e.g red head or blonde.
There’s a reason why companies market their products at the ‘flush’ 18-30 male white person. I’m probably wrong but i’d also say that you have no family you are responsible for because i can’t imagine any parent choosing to potentially harm their offspring through unintentionally bringing attention to themselves without knowing who their opponents might be. I feel sorry for that Blizzard employee who put his name up on the forums because he, his family and other people with the same name are going to be harassed…. and it was all completely avoidable and obvious if he and Blizzard had thought about it.
I know it can be a hard idea to grasp and i certainly didn’t get it when made aware of these things because i never treat people badly because of how they look or sound…. but there are a lot of people out there who do and removing one or more of the barriers that protect these people from harassment is not a good thing.
08/07/2010 at 02:24 Real Horrorshow says:
If someone is a psycho they’re going to track you down no matter what. I also know the full names of all the guys who write articles for this blog, and about 50,000 actors, politicians, local police, etc.
Someone knowing your name isn’t instantly putting yourself in extreme risk of getting stalked and raped or having your identity stolen. If that was the case I could just make up a name, which someone surely has, and then steal their identity.
People these days are just too paranoid. Congrats, victims of media conditioning. I bet you think crime is on the rise, too? And that terrorism is actually a danger to you. And that every adult male who looks in a child’s direction is a potential murdering rapist kidnapper.
07/07/2010 at 09:16 Dawngreeter says:
This can’t hold up. I mean, obviously, I can’t see the future. But if they don’t withdraw this really daft feature, I’m betting within a month some fan made forum will become a default replacement for most of the people.
Also, I now no longer want to buy StarCraft II.
07/07/2010 at 09:47 ohwhy says:
Why is this even necessary?
Forum accounts are linked to Battle.net accounts, just have forum bans associated with account bans.
If someone gravely missbehaves, that’s no more WoW / Starcraft 2 for him/her for 12 hours / a week / forever. As the Battle.net account also has billing info, that also prevents people from picking up another $10 WoW copy and re-reqister with that (well, at least as much as forcing real names did).
I think that this is more about Blizzard not wanting to actively moderate their forums, relying on real names instead. Too bad this will only make harassment even worse, it’ll only be transfered from the forums to the rest of the world. Oh well, maybe that’s what Blizzard wanted.
07/07/2010 at 10:11 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I don’t agree with this. Then again, I don’t really like the way they’re looking to Battle.net (and their games) as being part of the whole Facebook-type thing.
For one, I feel far more comfortable using aliases. Regardless of any safety issues, I just act more naturally using an alias (I’m diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome.. this may be related). Second, I don’t believe for a second that using real names will prevent harassment, trolling and other sorts of nonsense on their forums. It may diminish, sure, but kids and annoying people will still be the same. Thirdly, there can be real implications to giving out your real name (and e-mailaddress) to people. Given the quantity of Blizzard’s userbase, I’m not convinced ‘all is fine’. Enough accounts are being hacked as is, for one.
Well, I won’t be playing WoW for much longer anyway and my interest in their other games has diminished sufficiently that I’m probably not getting them even before considering RealID.
07/07/2010 at 10:17 Apricot says:
I find it interesting that parents and internet safety adverts on the TV have been telling people not to use their real name on the internet for years and now they’re being forced to use their real name.
07/07/2010 at 10:52 Teliach says:
The information they ask on tech support forums in addition to your name can be problematic.
I’m aware that there are other people with my name, now like I said as a leader of a Raid guild, there are several instances of people holding grudges, especially if they are removed from the guild, and ths can happen for a multitude of reasons, and is not really that rare to be spammed with insults from those people in whispers, trade chat, etc. Couple that with they knowing my name and the last thing i want is for some kid that I kicked from the guild because he was behaving like a jerk to start harassing me in real life.
Most people in the guild know at least some information about you, your country, if you study or work, etc, is not real hard to find out mroe about you once you start to add up everything.
07/07/2010 at 11:39 Carra says:
Fora getting a lot of troll comments? Hire a few moderators. I don’t see the need for this Real ID to “solve” the problem.
And I sure hope this won’t lead to using real names in your armory etc. I’d rather not have my boss know how much time I spent with WoW or that I stayed up till 1 am last night to play SC2.
07/07/2010 at 19:46 Klaus says:
lol
“Boss: Maybe you could work a little harder if you weren’t up all night raiding and arguing about nerfed classes.”
07/07/2010 at 12:34 Cat says:
This is a terrible idea – it will not clean up the forums, it will just punish the average poster yet trolls will live on. Its like DRM – punishing the purchasers of said software while pirates just pirate it without the DRM.
Trolls will either pay for an additional account OR simply fake their name on their main account and carry on Trolling as they obviously don’t care about losing their account (being banned) anyway so it won’t hurt them lying about their real name.
While NOW Trolls will be able to Troll people while using the person they’re Trolling’s Real Name, to make the Trolling more “powerful”.
Blizzard are really surprising me with some of their terrible ideas of late.
07/07/2010 at 13:10 bonjovi says:
So, I have to change my name on my account to something weird and start paying for wow using prepaid cards.
07/07/2010 at 13:18 Andrew Farrell says:
In the time it’s taken me to read this, the other thread on the blizzard forums has gone from 990 to 1005 pages – that’s 20 comments per page, there.
07/07/2010 at 13:45 Cat says:
Also see what happened to a CM trying to backup Blizz’s decision by giving out his real name:
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function
07/07/2010 at 14:10 FredFoobar says:
This is part of the problem – people think you will have the option to do remain anonymous, but the current policy is that your real name WILL be used. Your only “opt-out” is to not use the forums. Likewise, you cannot change your real name on your battle.net account from a web interface. If your name changes for any reason, you need to contact Blizzard customer support by phone to change it.
The problems with this are pretty much uncountable – somebody with the same name as you behaving badly; you happen to have an easily trackable name; you happen to have a funny name (Harry Weiner, or Michael Bolton); you happen to be a girl IRL and have ‘fans’ in the game; etc. etc.
07/07/2010 at 14:42 DSX says:
And in related news, China is attempting to make NCSOFT player identity “gender correct” – you can not make opposite gender characters. Your real life gender must be confirmed when you purchase an account. Not sure if that’s more draconian then forcing real names in a forum, but it’s kinda close.
07/07/2010 at 14:52 bwion says:
It’s all largely academic to me, as I don’t play WoW, have no interest in Starcraft II, and often (but not always) use my real name online anyway, but the funniest thing about all this, to me, is that Blizzard seemed to genuinely believe (or such was their official position) that no one would mind.
There’s no surer way to provoke a widespread internet freakout than to create a perceived (or legitimate) threat to peoples’ privacy. None.
07/07/2010 at 15:13 Cat says:
Especially when the threat to privacy seems to be from a company that honestly thought this was fine… “Forcing you to use your real name online is fine… also i’d like to ask, why don’t you trust our judgement”
DUHHH.
Its like your local fire-man coming to give a speach at your childrens school, showing up with his hair on fire from smoking a ciggy outside. “Hi, trust us to make the right judgements on your fire safety”.
07/07/2010 at 15:08 John Peat says:
I have to say I find this idea that you have a ‘right’ to anonymity to be hilarious.
I honestly believe people behave like pricks on the Internet because of anonymity – if they thought a nasty comment could result in someone ringing them or “popping around for a chat” they’d behave better/think twice before being rude/nasty/idiotic.
By saying this is a bad idea we’re admitting there are parts of the Internet which are out-of-control and it’s dangerous to visit there without some cloak of privacy – and that’s quite an admission to make.
Blizzard clearly think that exposing everyone ‘at once’ won’t attract the attention that someone being exposed individually would – whether this is true is another matter entirely.
I’ve used my real name (mostly) from Day1 and my sole unfortunate experience relates to someone impersonating me (name and email address only) and “begging” on a forum dedicated to disabled users (which resulted in me getting a lot of very nice emails).
If you piss someone off to the extent they’re likely to come visit you – I’m not entirely sure you didn’t deserve it tbh.
07/07/2010 at 16:11 Hmm-Hmm. says:
John: You said: By saying this is a bad idea we’re admitting there are parts of the Internet which are out-of-control and it’s dangerous to visit there without some cloak of privacy – and that’s quite an admission to make.
And? Is this news? Quite a few countries heavily censor the internet. Hackers and viruses are easy to attract for the unwary. A lot of people have their WoW accounts hacked (without accessing things like goldbuyers and following up on a scam e-mail). The safety of anonymity is not sufficient to combat digital abuse, but it can prevent abuse in the physical realm. It doesn’t happen to everyone but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
07/07/2010 at 16:50 Guildenstern says:
Your utter callousness and total disregard towards other people’s well-being and safety are completely mind-blowing to me. But hey, at least you are being vile on the internet under your real name!
07/07/2010 at 18:13 John Peat says:
I don’t think I’m being callous by saying “don’t think that anonymity gives you a right to be a prick”.
We have people talking about stalkers and people being murdered – I think that’s being a BIT overdoing it.
If anything, the risk of someone being able to track you down might just make you not behave badly/be abusive or nasty in the first place and thus removes that risk entirely??
End of the day we’ve learned 2 things – that Blizzard have no idea how their community thinks and that people think they’re entitled to be anonymous and I think both parties need to realise they’re wrong.
07/07/2010 at 18:19 Vinraith says:
If anything, the risk of someone being able to track you down might just make you not behave badly/be abusive or nasty in the first place and thus removes that risk entirely??
Right, because the only reason a person from the internet would track you down was if you’d done something to deserve it. Also, women who are raped were obviously dressed provocatively and thus asking for it and people who are mugged shouldn’t have been in that neighborhood to begin with.
07/07/2010 at 18:43 Jeremy says:
That’s a little strong Vinraith, and a bit of a straw man. He’s more saying, “If you punch a guy in the face for no reason, then get punched back, you probably deserved it.” Obviously he’s not condoning the kind of radical behavior or ideology you’re speaking on. I don’t agree with him, but over hyping his point does the discussion no good service.
I’m not too concerned about my own anonymity on the internet, because I have the capacity to know when I’m being duped, and I know which shady corners of the internet not to visit. However, there are a ton of innocent children out there, and naive young people who just aren’t that technically savvy, and there are a lot of people who aren’t so innocent who have the charisma and technological know-how to prey upon them. That being said, I’m not certain those people will troll the Battlenet forums, but still, requiring a real ID seems a bit extreme. I don’t think we’re necessarily entitled to “rights” on another companies forums, but I think there should be a privacy option for parents who register the game for their children.
07/07/2010 at 18:49 Vinraith says:
He’s more saying, “If you punch a guy in the face for no reason, then get punched back, you probably deserved it.”
No, he’s saying “if someone punches you in the face, you must have done something to deserve it.” He’s ascribing rational behavior to overtly irrational people, which is itself kind of nuts.
07/07/2010 at 18:54 Jeremy says:
Agree to disagree :) He said “If you piss someone off to the extent… ” insinuating that there was an initial pissing off period before the “meet n greet” time. Still, it’s all semantics, and I don’t agree with him however he means it :)
07/07/2010 at 19:04 John Peat says:
I’ve always thought Vinraith was a bit of a nutter – he only goes and proves it tho :)
For the record, if you came up to me in reality and starting calling me a c**t to my face you’d stand a reasonable chance of getting walloped – but on the Internet you can do so with completel immunity which can only increase the number of people doing it.
Restoring some level of responsibility wouldn’t be half the disaster you seem to think it would be and the general wailing of the Internet over this just shows how immature it really is.
As for any realistic privacy or security concerns – that whole topic is too “Daily Mail” to give any serious consideration to at all…
07/07/2010 at 19:12 Vinraith says:
You’re still assigning rational motives to irrational people, I honestly don’t know how anyone can be so naive. Again, is every victim of a crime asking for it? What makes you think that someone has to have been insulted to become irrationally hostile towards someone? Crazy people take offense at totally innocuous things, and surely you’ll acknowledge that anyone that would hunt you down over an internet argument is crazy?
Did you even read this thread? The concerns of female gamers? The concerns of gamers whose employment might be threatened?
Why is it that people who are unconcerned about their own privacy are so hostile towards anyone interested in preserving theirs?
07/07/2010 at 19:25 Inno says:
Good thing we have John to decide privacy is something to be swept aside with no consideration at all. It’s almost like he can’t wait to “dish out some responsibility” in real life to people that may offend him in some way or another. Scary stuff indeed and a good argument pro anonymity. ;)
07/07/2010 at 19:25 Zogtee says:
“If you piss someone off to the extent they’re likely to come visit you – I’m not entirely sure you didn’t deserve it tbh.”
Sure, tell that to the french guy who got tracked down in RL and stabbed in the chest by a guy he had fragged in CS. I mean a fragging totally deserves being stabbed, right?
And what about those women and ethnic minorities who are already being harassed on the net? I’m sure they deserve what they get for having the nerve to venture out on the net, right?
It amazes me how quick some people are to hand over their personal details and scoff at privacy concerns. Sometimes I think you would hand over your balls with a smile if someone asked.
07/07/2010 at 20:41 Klaus says:
Blizzard clearly think that exposing everyone ‘at once’ won’t attract the attention that someone being exposed individually would – whether this is true is another matter entirely.
Blizzard is wrong.
I’ve used my real name (mostly) from Day1 and
Yes, well, John Peat is a fairly innocuous name. Unless you’re bringing attention yourself* and/or offending others you shouldn’t have too many issues. Of course you must realize that, everyone isn’t so lucky to be John Peat in the western world, some of us must be Muhammad Smith’s** and what not. And judging by your attitude of others safety and concern, it’s easy to assume you’ve had little to no trouble.
*Bringing ‘online violence’ to the real world is always wrong, in my opinion. Whether the violence is dealt to the troller, or person trolled is irrelevant. And I have been both.
**Not my real name. lol.
07/07/2010 at 22:05 Jeremy says:
Again, I have to say I mostly disagree with John, but just because someone has a different opinion than my own doesn’t mean it is uninformed. He’s clearly not saying that every victim got what’s comin to ‘em!.
I can see your point, John, take away the veil of anonymity, and there’s a good chance that most people will respond reasonably to that, and maybe think twice about posting something. However, in the end, trolls will find a way to be trolls, and they won’t care if they’re known as xXangelfacekillerXx or Terrence Willard. Functionally it won’t make a difference either, an account is an account, regardless of the forum handle, and a ban worthy comment will still get a person banned. Granted, I don’t think simply knowing a person’s name will suddenly offer a random troll endless data with which to terrorize a user, but in the case of underage users, there should still be a level of protection available.
08/07/2010 at 02:15 DJ Phantoon says:
As an American who values both Freedom of Speech, and Privacy, I’m wondering what bizzaro-universe the rest of you came from where you want NEITHER. You want safety, instead? This will provide no safety whatsoever. The only safety it gives is that of “oh nooo the bad man said bad things protect me for I am a weak and defenseless human being not able to deal with humanity”. Go live in a bubble.
“I’ve always thought Vinraith was a bit of a nutter – he only goes and proves it tho :)” Actually, you’re making no sense with your strawman arguments, and you use ad hominem to support your claims? Well guess what. I value freedom of speech and privacy more than I value your feelings. Is that wrong? Maybe where you are, but certainly not where I live.
07/07/2010 at 16:08 Inno says:
It’s all fun & games or “an interesting social experiment to combat trolls” until a friend or family member gets harassed or paid a visit by some nutjob. This isn’t some far out possibility, these things have and do happen alot more than you might think. Particularly when you’re of the female gender and/or have a certain age. I know of cases where people had their personal info tracked down solely off a picture where their face wasn’t even fully visible.
By handing your full name to the entire internet (as these forums are publicly accessible) you’re doing half their work for them. Comparisons to Facebook are only valid when you’re a member of a certain group or maybe a network since otherwise there’s no real connection or a way to browse through names (FB is more secure than a phonebook in that way).
Btw your comment as to one probably deserves it when someone pays you a visit when “pissing” someone off is vile & repulsive. What pissing someone off is to one person may not be to someone else. It may even be completely misinterpreted. I’m not even gonna mention all the other possibilities or reasons for someone to visit or contact you.
07/07/2010 at 18:16 John Peat says:
You’re forgetting that no-one is forcing you to post on these forums – what we’re saying is there’s no automatic right to be anonymous – no-ones saying you HAVE to post.
If you feel people may track you down (and remember that EVERYONE is in the same boat – you’re not some novelty figure) then just don’t post – it’s an easy enough decision to make.
Blizzards Forums have a particular issue of people being nasty/idiotic and unfriendly and this is how Blizzard are suggesting they resolve that. If it leads to fewer people using the forums I doubt Blizzard will care…
07/07/2010 at 20:25 Klaus says:
If you feel people may track you down (and remember that EVERYONE is in the same boat – you’re not some novelty figure) then just don’t post – it’s an easy enough decision to make.
Wat? Are you serious?
EVERYONE is in the same boat
Disagree.
I have a Muslim name, and after some kook ended up following me online shortly after 9/11 to ‘tell me off,’ (and I was in a writing forum with nothing to do with such things) I have never used my actual name online again. I think I should able to post on the internet without the fear that some nutjob should teach me a lesson because I knifed his character, or because I said things that were controversial to them, etc. The way you present things does indeed sound like ‘blaming the victim.’
Theoretically everyone is the same boat, but in practice they’re really not.
08/07/2010 at 02:24 DJ Phantoon says:
As much as people would like to believe it, life is not fair, right down to continued discrimination. Women are exempt from the draft, sure. They also make less money, are the target of crimes more often, and are more often the target of sexism (sexism is a crime sure, but I meant criminal).
And the very fact that religious bias was INTRODUCED into media in the year 2001 AD targeted at Muslims because of a fear-based campaign is incredible, but not all that surprising in the end. Base emotions react faster than logical thought. It’s still completely, wholly unacceptable, and pretending it ISN’T there will make it worse.
07/07/2010 at 19:16 Electric Dragon says:
Excellent comment from Nattie on Metafilter: http://www.metafilter.com/93492/But-my-name-really-is-Deathblood-Blackaxe#3171416
07/07/2010 at 19:18 Vinraith says:
Wow, that really does say everything that needs to be said on the subject much better than I could.
07/07/2010 at 19:42 Tei says:
wow… it seems, we, the male community, are awnful :-(
07/07/2010 at 20:55 Klaus says:
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wowriot+%28Latest+Wowriot+Blog+Posts+-+Wowriot.Gameriot.com%29
Don’t fail on me, html!
So basically, one of the Blizzard employees deleted his facebook account after it was found with his real provided from RealID.
07/07/2010 at 20:57 Klaus says:
Stupid html. Fail.
08/07/2010 at 02:15 Psychopomp says:
That’s it, I concede.
This is a terrible idea.
07/07/2010 at 19:34 dogsolitude_uk says:
OK, what happens if I’m looking for another employment contract, and someone at my prospective employers decides to google ‘Darren Levell’, only to find a sad little WoW fanboy with furry tendencies, poor spelling and grammar?
How does the employer differentiate between the WoW Darren Levell and the one who actually applied for the job and has never played WoW in his life?
I’m not Darren Levell, btw. :)
07/07/2010 at 19:41 Nick says:
Its not exactly likely they are going to instantly assume its the same person unless the name is extremely uncommon, even then..
07/07/2010 at 20:10 Howl says:
I agree. It’s a great idea. The wow forums are right up there with YouTube for offensive gibberish.
08/07/2010 at 02:13 Ross Brackstone says:
“Most people use the same nickname everywhere. Surprise! It’s not much harder to harvest your identity from your nickname than from your real name.”
I just want to highlight this because it’s so easily passed over. Nicknames are a kind of fake anonymity and it’s probably best to avoid any doubt over whether or not you are anonymous while posting on a public forum. If you don’t want someone to know you posted something on the internet the best thing you can do is not post it.
08/07/2010 at 02:19 Klaus says:
Or just use a generic nickname like ‘Klaus.’ And if some other user were named Klaus before I came here, I would be known as some other generic name like ‘Sam,’ or ‘Pedro.’