Blizzard Backs Down On Real Names For Forums 432
Ashe Tyrael writes "Earlier this week, Blizzard announced that they were going to be implementing changes in their official forums (for StarCraft II when it launched, and for WoW prior to Cataclysm) that would require users to post under their real names, as part of the Real
ID system. After perusing nearly 14,000 European and 50,000 US forum posts, the majority of which decried this move with various levels of vehemence, it looks like Blizzard has given in to the pressure. From the official statement: '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.' Not that this doesn't leave room for them to re-implement this at a later date, but that's a pretty definite 'no.' It was clear they were going to take criticism, but the size of the backlash was impressive. It seems likely Blizzard simply wasn't expecting that level of antipathy toward their new policy.
Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)
So Blizzard probably estimated that 90% of those jerks would stop being jerks if their name appeared by their asshole posts. So what if 1% of the population complains about RealID? But in doing so, Blizzard totally ignored the other 98% of the populations enjoyment of privacy. And in doing so once they decided this would be mandatory for the betterment of the community, the rest of the community interjected and seemed to prefer the assholes and their privacy to the converse where the assholes now know who you are [penny-arcade.com]. To many of us, this isn't really a surprise.
Not that this doesn't leave room for them to re-implement this at a later date, but that's a pretty definite 'no.'
I disagree. I see Blizzard still chasing this dream of moderation through identity and drastically reducing their moderation. I would bet we shortly see a scheme where RealID is opt in with the catch being that if you aren't using RealID then each of your posts has to be read by a moderator before it is approved as viewable by anyone else. Community regulation can be a difficult and touchy subject with gamers and I suspect this is only the beginning of a very long trial run where Blizzard tries to find the happy medium between anonymity and self regulation.
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It's well known that a pseudonym enables people to be complete assholes [penny-arcade.com].
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People have the right to be complete assholes as long as they do not harm me.
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The real answer is to track down the trolls, and permanently ban them from the game as well as the forum, block their IP and and their e-mail address. Well, only a 10 or 35 day ban in the IP since it's probable assigned via DHCP and will get re-assigned to someone else.
They need to (if they don't already) specify that if people get banned for this reason they don't get a refund on their subscription.
People will still troll, and and trolls will find a way back in, but if you make it difficult and expensive
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The problem with banning is that some ISP's dish out multiple IP's (one here gives you 2 for the price of one, and you can buy extra ones). So the only way to effectively Ban is to ban a sector, which could negatively affect someone else - Not to mention if you have more than 1 PC per household accessing WoW - you've essentially banned a family for 1 person's infraction (though probably a great way to teach a lesson it would be considered unfair.
The way to block them would be to freeze their account - which
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The way to block them would be to freeze their account - which Valve had done a long time ago on their Steam Forums. This got some backlash, I don't know if they still do it, but I wouldn't be surprised. Be an asshat, lose your games.
Thus illustrating the main problem with Steam and all software as a service. Don't get me wrong Valve deciding you cant spam their forums is one thing, deciding they didn't like something you said and removing the ability to play games you purchased is something entirely diffe
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To post on the Blizzard forums, you currently must log in using your battle.net account. So Blizzard already has all the information they need to bad a blatant troll from their forums.
No, the RealID issue was specifically about a) preventing sockpuppetry via alts, b) shaming trolls into behaving, and possibly c) recasting the forums as a social networking site.
Sockpuppetry, because a user of the blizzard forums is represented by one or another of the characters on an account. We readers of the forums do
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what annoys me. Blizzard *already* is not providing an adequate level of customer service IMO - you gotta love waiting 3 days to have a ticket answered in WoW, only to be given the same "disable your add-ons, and clear your Cache, Interface, and WTF folders" canned response. They've got bugs in the game that have been there for *years*, and often don't appear to put any kind of real QA effort into their releases (witness the fiasco a few months ago for the "Love is in the Air" event that had their servers down for *days*). They're pulling in roughly $150 million *per month* from the damn game, and they're still trying to reduce the level of service even further.
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
This stupid response is barfed all over the WoW forums repeatedly every time someone has any sort of complaint. Ever think that maybe some people enjoy the game, despite objecting to some of Blizzard's decisions?
If a customer service rep from AT&T is rude to you, do you cancel your service and just live without a phone? Oh, you don't like Comcast? Well cancel your cable and live without internet or TV, what a concept!
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As if September 2008, when Blizzard last reported WoW expenditures, it averaged about $4-5 million/month ($200 million spent over 46 months).
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
It's well known that a pseudonym enables people to be complete assholes. Complete. And I'd bet that the moderators of these forums were sick and tired of seeing cases where this happened. Either someone said something really inflammatory or got under the skin of a beginner -- turning them off to the game. Some people are sensitive and even Mr. Rogers won't undo what a bully can do.
So Blizzard probably estimated that 90% of those jerks would stop being jerks if their name appeared by their asshole posts.
I agree that anonymity allows people to be the kind of jerks that you wouldn't want to be if your reputation was at stake. But I don't believe that you necessarily have to reveal somebody's real name to counteract that.
In-game, you develop a reputation. If you're enough of an asshole (lootwhore, n00b, whatever) in-game, folks won't want to play with you. They'll put you on their ignore list. You'll be ostracized.
Right now, you can roll up a new character easily enough and shrug off the reputation of your old character. Or create a character specifically for the purpose of being an asshole. You can log in as "Joe the Night Elf" and be a nice guy and go on all the raids... And then you can log in as "Ed the Dwarf" and be a complete asshole... And nobody knows it's the same person. Ed's bad reputation does not affect Joe at all.
All you have to do is make it clear that those two characters are owned by the same account. Then if everybody hates Ed because he's an asshole, they know that Joe is also that same asshole, and they can hate him too.
Associating these characters with your real name is not necessary. And, in fact, I think it creates the potential for some real abuse. Folks will happily harass you to the greatest extent they can for some really stupid shit. They'll post random garbage on the forums, spam you in-game, email you, whatever they can. If you give them enough personal information, they'll happily harass you in the real world as well.
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All you have to do is make it clear that those two characters are owned by the same account.
There is problems with this. You can't use the account name because then you are giving out valuable information. I get your account name, I decide to be an asshat, I can set up a script to hack your account. The way Blizzard would try to combat that is to lock you out after so many password attempts, which I would then do endlessly to lock you out because I'm being an asshat.
The only way around it is to assign some form of public userID that's not associated with the username (like a GUID or numeric like S
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You can't use the account name because then you are giving out valuable information.
Why would you want to use the account name? Sure, it's a simple way to do it... But nobody out there would recognize the account name anyway.
What you want to do is just list other characters on the same account. You can already inspect a character in WoW to see their equipment and whatnot... Just add a tab/button/whatever that shows you other characters.
Then if Ed is being an asshat, and I want to add him to my ignore list, I can also take a look at the other characters that Ed plays as and add them to
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Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:4, Informative)
Right now, you can roll up a new character easily enough and shrug off the reputation of your old character. Or create a character specifically for the purpose of being an asshole. You can log in as "Joe the Night Elf" and be a nice guy and go on all the raids... And then you can log in as "Ed the Dwarf" and be a complete asshole... And nobody knows it's the same person. Ed's bad reputation does not affect Joe at all.
All you have to do is make it clear that those two characters are owned by the same account. Then if everybody hates Ed because he's an asshole, they know that Joe is also that same asshole, and they can hate him too.
Love them or hate them, this is a great feature of Cryptic's games. Every account has a 1:1 mapping to a "handle" (aka "display name" aka "forum name"). When you create a character (for example, "Joe"), in-game, you appear as "Joe," but when you speak in chat, you appear as "Joe@YourHandle." When you right-click or otherwise inspect another character, you also see their handle. And if seeing handles in chat are an immersion-breaker for you, you can easily turn them off -- hovering your mouse over their name in chat will show their full name.
And one of the great things about this system is that when you friend or ignore someone, you do it based on their handle. So ignoring someone will ignore all their alts and likewise, friending someone will show them online no matter what alt they're on. (Though there has been whining about the latter being a breach of privacy...)
Although the primary reason I like this system is that it avoids the name land-rush. I can name my characters any name I want (within the rules :P), regardless if it's a dupe. I wish more MMO companies would adopt something similar. Who knows, maybe Real ID (hopefully sans real names) will get there in the future.
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know there were some real jerks in WoW.
There are some real jerks on the highway, in line at the grocery store, and at your workplace. These are the same people who post GNAA trolls and goatse links.
So Blizzard probably estimated that 90% of those jerks would stop being jerks if their name appeared by their asshole posts.
Their estimates were 100% wrong. Assholes will be assholes no matter what.
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:4, Funny)
I've never been standing on line at a grocery store and had someone tap me on the shoulder and then scream FAGGOT and show me a picture of an overextended asshole when I turn around. You might want to think about shopping somewhere else.
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Yeah it's all about the users. Nothing at all to do with tying pseudonyms to real names so they can be data mined and the info sold to the highest bidder to market more crap at them while paying for the privilege. No sirree.
When one of their CMs revealed his name to prove (Score:2)
a point it was in minutes before people started posting his personal information, twitter account, facebook, name of his wife, kids, their house from google maps... etc
http://vnboards.ign.com/world_of_warcraft_general_board/b19789/113357330/p1/?20 [ign.com]
Needless to say Blizzard started forum banning people.
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A) there are many reasons for people not wanting their real name to appear. None fo them have anythign to do with trolling.
ALL of them might not be about trolling, but you're flat out dreaming if you think you can state that NONE of them are about trolling.
Re:Pretty Obvious Reasoning (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is that there are many nasty people that troll the internet for kicks. It stands to reason that many of those people also play WoW and hang out on the Blizzard boards.
"reasons" does not inherently imply legitimate. If that is what you meant, you should have said that. In fact it is incredibly ironic that while your posts are riddled with spelling and grammatical garbage, you are implying that this other person is lacking a high school education.
B) Blizzards gas crap for moderators.
What does this even mean? I can't even deduce what you were trying say.
zomg srsly lrn 2 spl?
C) If they had enough moderators, then there wouldn't be a problem on the forums.
Clearly this is false. Slashdot has about 2 million user ID's, most of us moderate on a semi-regular basis. Yet still garbage like this has been up for hours and has not been modded to oblivion. The problem on internet forums isn't moderators, it's human asshats.
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Blizzard doesn't want to pay to have enough moderators to actually moderate. This idea was to gt around having to do that. Too bad it's based on a false premise.
That's not moderation you're advocating.
No authority should be encouraged to be that neck-deep in the business of people. Even if it's just people playing a game. Moderation isn't about having employees read every single stupid thing your customers say (and they do, you just try not to tell them). It's about being responsive to your customers' needs, taking to heart the stuff you need to benefit them (and through them yourself), and taking action when necessary to stop problems.
As to trolls, they're not
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Moderation isn't about having employees read every single stupid thing your customers say (and they do, you just try not to tell them).
Trust me. Moderating an online forum is EXACTLY reading every single stupid thing your customers post. "Oh someone started a topic about religion? I guess I can cancel my other plans since my 5 hours will be spent in their reading everything that anyone posts to keep the flames down."
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Yeah, I trust you because you clearly know what you're talking about in that response. Real forum managers can stop flame wars with thread locking and bans, they don't need to waste their life.
I kind of know what I'm talking about. I moderated on ExpertsExchange years and years ago, where there was no point in reading everything. We moderated where we were needed- users questions, user complaints, open questions. I couldn't give a damn about any other posts unless they were personally interesting to me
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We saw exactly this in EverQuest 1 where server forums were independent as 989 Studios/Verant didn't have any. Once one server operator found the real life name of a guild leader that he didn't like, he started getting people to call the child protective services in the guy's hometown and allege felonious acts.
It took tends of thousands of dollars for the guy to defend himself against the DA's inquiry, and to keep his kids.
Also, don't forget: The EU would have kicked Blizzard's ass to the curb. I'm sure
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They do.
You have to post as a WoW character in the WoW forums, so you need a character in the first place. Plus you have to post in the proper geographic region. (I can't post in the EU forums cause I don't have a character on any EU realm.)
I'm also pretty sure trial accounts don't give you the benefit of forum posting.
So, now that I've told you they have already implimented your suggestion...what's your next brilliant idea?
Facebook slippery slope (Score:5, Interesting)
we've decided at this time that real names will not be required
It only means that Facebook brainwashing has not fully worked yet. Expect them to try this again in an year, along with many other websites, when people have got more used to it ("well these other websites already do the same so what's the big deal")
Re:Facebook slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
You can call me naive if you want, but ask yourself: what the hell does Blizzard gain from you posting your real name on their forums? They already know it from your subscription info, it's not like you're giving them new data. It makes no difference to them whatsoever. That's the problem with conspiracy theories: people come up with them before realizing that the conspiracy would not provide any benefit to the alleged conspirators if true
This was just a lousy call by well-meaning individuals, and the fact that they did such a complete turnarond is a positive sign that Blizzard does care about their customers.
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What kills me is... YOU DONT HAVE TO USE THE FORUMS. The problem is that it's become popularly known to stay away from the Blizz based forums because they're just filled with Trolls and little to nothing of value. I think Blizzard wants to fix that and to be honest forcing people to expose themselves is the best way to do it.
As for "exposing children" and women's names. GET OVER IT AND DONT USE THE FORUMS and DONT LET YOUR CHILDREN USE THEM. How many times does that simple little fact need to be express
It all comes down to $ (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't think that this had anything to do with privacy, or "feedback", it was simply that when the accounting department saw just how many hits they were going to lose and the kneecapping their advertising income was about to take, the called the higer ups and put a dollar figure to this kind of bone-head move and it was called off.
Re:It all comes down to $ (Score:5, Interesting)
Tragic brainstorming (Score:2)
This is something you can squarely blame on MBA programs. They emphasize "thinking outside the box" but the important part about brainstorming is throwing away all the crappy ideas you just had and being able to keep the good ones.
Just about every business model/decision that has you thinking "What the fuck?" can be traced back to brainstorming that wasn't followed with any constructive criticism.
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Au contraire, mon frère!
Re:It all comes down to $ (Score:5, Insightful)
because you never make mistakes, right?
There's a difference between making a mistake and doing something that anyone with more than a room temperature IQ should immediatley understand to be an insanely stupid idea.
And I'm talking room temperature in Celcius, not Kelvin.
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Capitalism in action. Company wants to do something. Customers protest not by complaining on the forum (though they did), but by cancelling subscriptions. Company adds up lost revenue and decides that this is not good for the business after all. Customers get what they want.
Hell, this is EXACTLY how a market economy is supposed to work! Kudos to the people who backed up their complaints by cancelling.
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I'm not privy to Bliz's finical statements... but I would bet my hat that the handful of cancellations wouldn't add up to anywhere near the millions on millions of advertising hits they get per day.
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The phone lines to cancel were jammed solid since this started, 3 days ago. The account server has been going up and down from load.
We're not talking about a "handful" of cancellations from a few disgruntled folks. This was a big deal and turned into real money.
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All they have to do to make up lost subscription is sell a few more new celestial steeds ^_~
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wow, I was not aware... thanks for the info :)
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Re:It all comes down to $ (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, everyone wants money. That is NOT a bad thing. The fact that they had to do the math and realizing X is bad as opposed to blindly accepting the fact that X is bad with evidence does NOT mean they are evil or bone headed or stupid. Instead it means.
1. The management of a for-profit company is not composed of moral philosophers that care more about their beliefs than about making money.
2. The management of a for-profit company is smart enough to consider solutions to things that annoy their customers.
3. The management was not smart enough to realize their propoosed solution was worse all by themselves.
4. The management WAS smart enough to learn from their mistake before they actually enacted it.
You seem to be surpirsed, nay SHOCKED I say, SHOCKED to learn these first three obvious facts and are totally discounting #4.
Me, maybe I'm cynical, but in my experience, the first three are common and the only surprusing thing is #4, which you seem to think is a horrible thing. I am gladdened to discover that Blizzard appears to be FAR more ethical and intelligent than many other companies, such as Facebook.
I would trust Blizzard far more than I would trust some one that thinks profit is a dirty word.
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quite the contrary, I'm very glad they changed their minds and learned from it... I simply think that those who are singing their praises wrt respecting privacy are naive. This was a monetary decision and nothing more, it should not be praised as if they "saw the light", they would/will reverse this decision in a heartbeat if they can find a way to make it profitable. Such is life.
Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't played WoW in a LONG time, but for a while I was a devout player (closed beta, open beta, from launch until two years later), and if there is one thing I saw during my time, it was Blizzard listening to the masses.
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Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't about injured privacy of the geek (Score:2)
Think: women who could then be stalked, kids who (with enough research you can find anyones age) could be preyed on by pedos.
When parents ban their kids from using Blizzard products, that *really* hits their bottom line.
The privacy minded gamer was the one they were willing to shaft (along with the discerning LAN-partygoer)
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Blizzard issued official no-CD patches for Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft III a while after they were out. They're quite capable of being reasonable about removing anti-piracy features that annoy their players after some time has passed. Something tells me that the removal of LAN support is mostly just to keep Blizzard's corporate overlords from wringing their hands about teh p1rates too much. Hopefully, they will add LAN support in a patch after the initial rushes of retail sales are over.
Not that it i
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The pirates cared a lot about lan support too. Won't somebody think of the pirates?
Re:Popularity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Popularity (Score:4, Insightful)
Only a handful? There are 252,781 last I checked who signed the petition [petitiononline.com]. Me and my friends vowed to never purchase a game unless we can play LAN.
I played SC2 beta with a friend in my network, behind the same firewall the performance was dismal!! And that was just two, I can't imagine 8 people! My network is gig, My firewall is a Linux based one with 4ghz, 1GB ram, Dual Gig,
Another thing that pisses me off is these gaming tycoons saying LAN is obsolete. A gig LAN(or even 100mb) is far superior to anything I can get from Comcast. Not to mention having friends in the same room (what do you think made halo on xbox so popular)
Taking away LAN does remove functionality. LAN is the ultimate multi-player gaming experience.
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The company with some of the most popular computer games in the world listen to customer feedback and reconsider their decisions based on it. You don't suppose there could be some sort of correlation, do you?
Correlate this, then: if so, why do they still use DRM?
Another WoW killer passes (Score:5, Funny)
We're not retreating.... (Score:5, Interesting)
We're rapidly advancing in a different direction.
The pros and cons on both sides of this debate are compelling. Blizzard's time, money, and "quality of product (the forums)" versus people's privacy.
Not sure why it had to be "either/or". I think they should have rolled out Real-ID-only forums in parallel and let people choose for themselves.
In the end I think Blizzard waited too long. "Serious" WoW-related discourse doesn't happen on Blizzard's forums anymore. Most serious players know to start at elitistjerks.com. Not that their forums are perfect, but if I want good info on class mechanics, gear, talents, rotations... that's where I go.
Re:We're not retreating.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's pretty clear that Blizzard either doesn't think they can or is not willing to do the level of moderating that is required to get forums of the quality found at Elitist Jerks. It's also clear that this proposed change had nothing to do with reducing forum trolling.
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Most people that want to post on Elitist Jerks are fairly well behaved and well informed people to begin with (Why else would they visit the EJ forum in the first place?), in the meantime the official forums have to handle what must be 100 times the volume with a much lower average post quality even before moderation. Just saying "Well get more moderators then!!!" probably doesn't scale well to that sort of post volume.
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Most people that want to post on Elitist Jerks are fairly well behaved and well informed people to begin with (Why else would they visit the EJ forum in the first place?)
If you think this you've probably never read The Banhammer [elitistjerks.com] (the forum on EJ where infractions are posted) or The Thread of Ultimate Suck [elitistjerks.com] (where bad posts are moved, usually after receiving said infraction).
in the meantime the official forums have to handle what must be 100 times the volume with a much lower average post quality even before moderation. Just saying "Well get more moderators then!!!" probably doesn't scale well to that sort of post volume.
Moderating forums scales fairly well with more people. A major problem with the official Blizzard forums is how much you have to do before you get banned. A much harsher policy would clean the forums up tremendously. Or so I'd like to think anyways.
Not So clear (Score:2)
Forums that have real-name associations (like most premium boards wherein a service is attached, say like ... sencha/extjs - albeit purely technical) have a great deal less trolling. There is also the issue of multiple accounts, which is not solved by most "alternatives" people have suggested. RealID makes sense and is a good idea, for Blizzard.
I don't know why you would think this would not reduce trolling immediately.
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That's true, the WoW forums are really nothing but a cesspit. Throw in the fact that they've banned some of the best posters for trivial reasons like speculating about unreleased content and there's really no reason to read or post on the official forums. It's ridiculous that they think a handful of moderators can handle tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of posters on a daily basis.
The real solution to the WoW forum problem is to hire more moderators, require a unique account id that's not necessaril
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They just have to turn it into a game. The rating system is a start but can obviously be gamed. Definitely don't want to include tech support forums though.
Level 1 forum user: Can post only once every 15 minutes for a total of 6 per day. Can create topics only once an hour for a total of 2 per day. Cannot rate posts yet.
2-4 lowers post cooldown by 1 minute per level. Levels 3 and 5 grants 1 additional post each. Level 5 grants 1 more topic.
And, you know, go from there. If your posts are reported or d
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Or done what many other forums have done to great effect:
1 forum ID per paying account, period, and it can't be changed, and then ban like crazy when people troll.
You want to troll? Ok - say goodbye to your ability to post on the forums. Want to troll in-game? Ok - say goodbye to your ability to talk to other people except through local chat.
When you can make free accounts, and as many of them as you want, or you can hide behind alts or whatever, and there are no consequences to you as a result, people will
My question is why? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Because it would be a barrier to entry for the assholes.
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Because it would be a barrier to entry for the assholes.
Why would they care whether their forum name is D1ckH3ad or Joe Bloggs?
SOE link forum accounts to game accounts so you can only have one and bad behaviour on the forums can be linked back to the game account that you're paying money for. That's a far more effective solution.
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Except the real assholes that don't have a problem tracking you down and using real kerosene to end a flame war.
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Except the real assholes that don't have a problem tracking you down and using real kerosene to end a flame war.
My greatest objection to Blizzard backing down on this issue is underscored by the notion above.
You're explicitly saying that the behavior you describe, physical retribution for digital offenses, is a foregone conclusion. You're implicitly saying it is normal, and by insisting that Blizzard take responsibility for it, you're effectively endorsing it.
We ought to put the blame on the individual abhorrent behavior, where it belongs, rather than on this unrelated 'privacy' issue. By getting it backwards, we'r
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My greatest objection to Blizzard backing down on this issue is underscored by the notion above.
You're explicitly saying that the behavior you describe, physical retribution for digital offenses, is a foregone conclusion. You're implicitly saying it is normal, and by insisting that Blizzard take responsibility for it, you're effectively endorsing it.
There are crazy people everywhere and games with easy ganking PvP attract even more of them than elsewhere. Even ignoring the usual asshats, given the number of players WoW has the odds aren't bad that there's at least one serial killer playing the game; you can't change that, and giving crazy people an easy means of tracking you down is not a good idea.
Sure, odds are it won't happen to _you_, but only one person needs to be harassed in real life by an asshat for this to be a hugely retrograde step. And if
Re:My question is why? (Score:4, Insightful)
He is stating that there are several people harassed, physically assaulted, and even murdered because some asshat took an internet argument into the real world.
The Real ID change would make doing so much, much easier.
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He is stating that there are several people harassed, physically assaulted, and even murdered because some asshat took an internet argument into the real world.
The Real ID change would make doing so much, much easier.
While it would make it easier, it would still be orders of magnitude more difficult than REAL LIFE, where it is not a common occurrence.
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Sure, people can be traced if their actions are bad enough to be criminal. The problem is that there's a huge gap between "perfectly acceptable, normal etiquette" and "criminal misbehavior." In real life, deviations from normal etiquette are handled by social norms and mores. If you are a total jerk (but not to the point of being criminal) then you're ostracized. Its much more difficult to do this online, because whenever you do so, the person on the other end is free to change handles and get a "clean s
anyone awake? (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't seen the issue addressed, but I can't see that this measure wouldn't violate EU privacy regulations in some way
They could make it really easy to track trolls... (Score:4, Interesting)
Trouble with user registration (Score:4, Funny)
Global Alias = Win/Win (Score:2)
I'd be even happier to see them implement controls for explicit authorization to share your real name, akin to one's em
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hope heads roll on this one (Score:2)
I really hope someone's head rolls for this mistake. I'm so tired of companies like Blizzard thinking they can do something stupid like force people to post with their real names.
The executive in Blizzard that tried to force this really doesn't "get it", and needs to be removed from a position of power where they can cause even more harm to the company.
It's exactly like when Intuit enforced DRM and then instantly lost hundreds of millions of dollars and had to kowtow to their users. That was obviously a d
Why would the players need to know real names... (Score:2)
The ironic thing is, they can take care of the trolls on the forums anyway. After all Blizzard -does- know which account a post is tied to. The rest of the player base doesn't NEED to know. If someone posts a particular immature or rude post the appropriate thing for the moderators at Blizzard to do is to ban the account. Not 3 day suspensions. Not second and third chances. Ban the account completely. The rest of the player base doesn't need to know the troll's real name for Blizzard to have a zero s
Vindication! (Score:5, Funny)
Not real names, but tied to accounts (Score:5, Insightful)
Blizzard should simply tie forum names to accounts in an opaque manner. You can only create a forum name if you have an account, and you can only create one per account and only if you have a game key activated on that account. The forum name can't be the same as the account username (to prevent disclosure), and once created you can't change it (CS can change it for you, but you have to give them a good reason to). That solves most of the problem without requiring real names anywhere.
Basically for the purposes Blizzard claims to need to address, real identities aren't needed. What's needed is only two things:
Neither of those requires disclosing real identities.
Removing My Posts (Score:4, Interesting)
right to both access and anonymity? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does everyone dismiss the choice of NOT participating in Blizzard's forums as a way to protect your privacy and security. Plenty of people have made that same choice with regards to Facebook.
So many people seem to think that free speech means being free to walk into someone else's living room and call them a cocksucker without having to fear getting punched in the face.
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How do you know that this isn't just the first step?
If we let Blizzard get away with it here, who's to say the next thing won't be the WoW Armory listing the player's full name when you look up characters on it?
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not everyone does.
That said, when you start to ostracize people for wanting privacy and security, it pretty much means everyone is going to loose privacy and security.
The End of GLBT (Score:4, Interesting)
The internet is forever. (Score:3, Insightful)
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When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
C. S. Lewis
And I whole-heartedly agree.
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She was eaten by the elephant in the room.
Re:They learned why it's a bard idea the hard way. (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you know what makes you rather pathetic? That you haven't bothered to find out that info was not actually the right Micah Whipple lives in the opposite side of California.
That utter failure of a copy pasted investigation is probably the least of the reasons they decided to change policy.
Re:They learned why it's a bard idea the hard way. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, that's part of the problem. What if someone who is completely unconnected to WoW but happens to have the same name as someone who does play? And THEY are the one who gets griefed IRL by some maniac who takes a game too damn seriously?
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I think that fear is completely overblown, people publish their real names in wide circulation all the time without getting overly griefed IRL, while the gaming community loves being abusive to eachother I doubt any notable amount will attempt IRL griefing.
There are way more rational fears connected to the disclosure of real names like having your stupid rant about hunters being OP immortalized for all time by the Google index to be found by all your future employers when they google your name or female pos
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So had he been a stalker, he would have killed the wrong person.
How is that better?
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It just annoys me how people keep copy pasting that thing without spending even two seconds to verify if it's even true.
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Then don't post a bloody A4 worth of text, geez. You could have just typed "Maybe they reconsidered if it was a good idea after someone posted a bunch of info after Bashiok(one of the CM's) posted his real name (link)". That would have saved us a sizable amount of screen real estate and you wouldn't look so ignorant.
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Absolute M.F. Win on that users part. Probably got a ban but drove the point home faster than any other method I can think of.
PII is so scary to give out. Anyone with google can simply pop your name in and can come up with google street view pictures of your house with your car in the driveway.
Games are for fun, relaxing, and escaping reality. Not providing _your_ reality to random internet citizens to scrutinize at will.
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G.I.F.T. [penny-arcade.com] reign on for many years to come!
Parent makes an excellent point, and I happen to agree.
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