Blizzard's announcement that they will force anyone using WOW Forums to post using their Real ID (which will reveal their real name) starting with Starcraft II and the WOW Cataclysm expansion has set off a firestorm of comments. I counted 14 blog posts about Real ID signatures in the forums this morning, 13 of which viewed this extremely negatively. i have not seen any positive postings supporting Blizzard. Only WOW Head was neutral on the topic. I list their message here so you can read the details and blue posting announcement to make up your own mind.
http://www.wowhead.com/blog=162433
If you are intrested in Starcraft players' opinions on this topic, Lume the Mad clued me into a poll. I don't know if it is still open, but when I copied the link, 78% of Starcraft players responding to the poll said they would not post in the forums under this new system, 14% said they would sign forum postings with their real names, and 8% said they would create a new Battle.net account with a fake name so they could post in forums. 2,873 folks had voted.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=134327
UPDATE: WOW Insider is polling WOW players. You have to vote to see the current results but when I found the posting, 81.5% thought using real names in the forums was a bad idea. 18.5% thought it was a good idea. 2,412 people had voted.
http://www.wow.com/2010/07/07/breakfast-topic-real-id-or-real-bad-idea/#continued
You can find the negative postings yourself without any trouble. Given Blizzard's record with security and privacy so far, the Solo MMO Player views this change in an extremely negative light. There are crazy stalkers in this world, there are angry ex-significant others, there are employers who will view employee gamers in a negative light, there are students risking future careers by letting it be known they play WOW, there are folks who will enjoy harassing women who used to be able to use anonymity to avoid these cretins, there are parents who don't want their name associated with WOW just because their child uses their credit card to pay the monthly fees, there are folks looking to steal your identity, addons can be programmed to reveal your Real ID and thus your name....
The list goes on. Let me quote Tobold here--"Blizzard is heading for their first privacy PR disaster."
UPDATE #2: Blizzard has posted three updates to their original announcement. First, the use of real names in forum posts won't be retroactive. Only Starcraft 2 and Cataclysm forums will use real names. If you use the Real ID opt out (part of the parental controls) the account can't post on the forums. And Blizzard says they've given a lot of thought to the issue. They want to "create a great social gaming service" by giving away your privacy.
http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/blizzards-responses-on-the-real-id-situation/
The Solo MMO Player will not use the Real ID system.
UPDATE: WOW Insider is reporting the rumor that Blizzard has changed its mind about blue postings having real names of their employees. To date it is unclear what Blizzard will have its employees do.
http://www.wow.com/2010/07/07/rumor-blizzard-employees-real-life-names-will-not-appear-on-th/
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Copyright Solo MMO Player at http://solommo.blogspot.com
1 comment:
Do they really think that it's a good idea to show our real identity? Oh man, they are really pissing us off by announcing RealID on their forum, it make no sense at all.
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