Blizzard Demands Your Real Name for Forums
Would you like to see the same policy in effect for Tom's Hardware?
Last month Blizzard revealed a new feature for World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and other games that will utilize Battle.net. Called Real ID, this voluntary service creates a "friends list" of sorts that provides the real names of players, their army of characters, and the ability to see what they're currently doing on Battle.net. Real ID even provides a cross-game, cross-realm chat client.
Now Blizzard has revealed that it will also be requiring those who post on the forums to use his or her real name – no more screen names to hide behind for those who find trolling a pleasing pastime.
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.
We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.
- Windows 7 Saves 43 Hours, or $1,400 Per PC
- Intel's 'Project Offset' First Person Shooter Canned
- Blizzard Opens Writing Contest for WoW, SC, Diablo
- IBM Switching to Firefox as Default Browser
- Google: We Can Be Trusted With Your Data
- Microsoft Announces InstaLoad Battery Technology
- EU Could Force Apple to Put Flash on iPad, iPhone
- LG Confirms Android Tablet, Froyo Phones for 2010
- Prince Says ''The Internet's Completely Over''
- Deals for July 7: Beats Dr Dre Headphones $86.18
- Hitachi External HDDs Looks Sleek, Does Cloud
- Buffalo Unveils 256GB IDE-Based SSDs
- Firefox 4 Beta 1 Now Available for Download
- NASA Releases Unreal Engine MMO Preview Demo
- Android 2.2 Beats Apple iOS 4 in Benchmark Tests
- Lenovo: We Are Lucky Steve Jobs Has Bad Temper
- Report: New Intel Desktop Chips Coming Soon
- Blizzard Responds to Concerns Over Real ID
Not a chance. My real name is rare. If I google my name, any results refer to me. I don't want things like my gaming etc to come up, and I don't want to be that easy to find if someone on the Blizzard forum decides to look. I understand that this might help reduce trolling, but it just means I wouldn't feel comfortable using the forum.
People will just move to private forums.
Ever since discovering the internet all those years ago, my real name has never been revealed. I keep my real life and my internet habits seperate and will continue to do so, as will most people.
Keeping your real name and your Internet identity separate has always been good practice.
A "veil of anonymity" is sure to attract trolls, but it also allows people to be more open and honest, and comment without fear of persecution or intimidation from interests only too eager to track people on the Internet.
Like the other people here, I am not at all comfortable with this move. If the forum is so busy then perhaps get some more moderators.
As far as i'm aware their EULA does not state you need to input your real name when signing up for a Bnet account. Therefore, providing you are not using a creditcard to pay for a subscription (i.e. WoW). For games such as Starcraft 2 there is nothing to stop you registering with a Pseudonym.
My card details only have my initials and surname. That'd obscure me hugely.
If they want less Trolls on the forum why not just force all the people playing trolls to race change to orcs and be done with it?
I have no problem posting with my real name, those i play with know my name, but I can imagine this won't go down too well with the masses of kids that do troll the forums.
The problem is with things like facebook, no one is anonymous these days.
I always use my real name, or at least a variation of my Nick name but my full name is normally somewhere. I don't really see the need to hide my name online, I'm not ashamed of it, and there is more then one Nathan Skidmore in the world (look on face book, there are 17 Nathan Skidmores on there, shouldn't take you long to find my blank account if you think about it).