It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. The reason is a little technical, but in short it comes down to website maintenance. All the technical tidbits should be sorted out now and I’ll try to be a little more active again.

A good start is to conclude the Real ID posts I’ve made. The last time I wrote about it, there was a huge uproar about Blizzard going to publish our first and last names on their official forums as they were planning to attach them to the posts we made in an attempt to improve the quality of discussions (read: get rid of all the forum trolls). However, I don’t think they had anticipated such an enormous amount of protest coming from the community. No doubt the very same forum trolls were very vocal, but as I stated, I felt that there certainly were valid grounds against such a policy.

Not too long after the shitstorm hit, there was an open letter from Mike Morhaime (CEO & Co-founder Blizzard Entertainment):

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters (http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/about/mission.html), and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

Thankfully they’ve come to their senses about this! It gets even better though! As you might know I have been a little… sceptical about the “friends of friends” feature that was introduced with Real ID. From an interview with the developers on Twitter, it appears they’re going to introduce an option to disable this feature!

Q: Do you have any plans to allow players to not show their real name to friends of friends while using the Real ID system?
A: As with any new feature we add to our games, we’ve been evaluating how Real ID has been used since its release to identify new functionality that would help improve our players’ experience. The in-game Real ID “friends of friends” list is designed to give players a convenient way to populate their Real ID friends list with other players they know and trust in real life, allowing them to quickly and easily send Real ID friend requests to these people without having to enter their Battle.net® account names. However, we recognize that some players would prefer not to be displayed on friends lists in this fashion, so we plan to include an option that will allow players to opt out of appearing on their Real ID friends’ “friends of friends” lists. We’re anticipating this feature to be available for StarCraft II shortly after release of the game, and World of Warcraft at around the same time — we’ll have more information for you in the coming weeks.

So, good news! My concerns are laid to rest for now. I’d still prefer an alias to be shown, instead of my real name, but due to the removal of friends of friends, it’s not quite as big a deal any more.

My previous post here (which has been a little while ago, I know) was about Blizzards Real ID implementation in their latest World of Warcraft patch. When I did my daily lap around the internet this morning, I stumbled across this topic. Read that first post, please. The summary of the post is this: Blizzard will start using our real names on their official and publicly available forums, thanks to… Real ID. Of that post, this paragraph stood out the most:

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.

So, one of the reasons for displaying our real names on their forums will be an attempt to reduce the trolling on their boards. I agree this is necessary. The World of Warcraft forums are like a particularly nasty scorpion pit. People are just rude, they do not contribute to discussions except to troll. But, is displaying our real names the solution to this? I have nothing to hide, but I don’t care much for random people knowing my name. To everyone in favour of this change and defend themselves by saying they have nothing to hide, do you give out your name to complete and utter strangers you meet on the street as well?

I’ve been active in online communities for a good many years now. I’ve always taken good care to guard my privacy, avoiding any scary social networks, in terms of the availability of my personal information on the internet. A simple google search doesn’t reveal anything about me; I do realize it’s extremely easy to get to my details if you’re a bit web savvy (I will leave you to puzzle this out for yourself) though, but why make it even easier?

Let’s not even talk about potential new employers looking around the web before hiring someone. They’ll find all these posts from you on Blizzard-related forums. Gaming isn’t always given a positive point of view. There are plenty more valid privacy concerns to oppose these changes. How about the people who are a little messed up in the head and start harassing others? Before you tell me this is unlikely to happen, I’ve seen it done to someone close to me. The whole “community” is full of jerks who think it’s fun to take away the enjoyment of others. Giving them quick, easy access to real names will lead to a potentially far more dangerous form of harassment. Looking at it from this point of view it will simply punish the honest people and give the bad people another tool of harassment, but this time on a far more personal level.

In these times where there are regular reports of hackers stealing account information, I really don’t like someone else deciding to publish my personal information on the internet. I have no qualms about having some bits and pieces out there, as long as I personally make the choice of making that information public. In this case however, a commercial company decided for me and has not made any opt-out mechanisms available for me.

Lastly, I really have no desire for any form of social networking in my gaming experience. If I had wanted to participate in such things I would have created a Facebook account a long time ago… Why is this being forced on me? This has absolutely nothing to do with me being a social misfit or anything. It has everything to do with being naturally suspicious of other people and strangers in particular.

Where does this lead to though? For now it seems fairly innocent. I do think handing out personal details like this on public forums is a step too far though. Especially in a rotten community like World of Warcraft. This really makes me realise how much information a commercial company has and what they will do with it… Are they simply allowed to throw our information on the internet like this? If so, where will it end?!