Anyone posting on a Blizzard forum will soon be forced to use their real name. Now everyone will know if you're a dude pretending to be a girl.
It's not often giant forum arguments become newsworthy, but that's just what's happened following Blizzard's recent Real ID announcement. The gaming giant has just declared that from now on, anyone with a Battle.net account posting in a Blizzard forum will be forced to do so using their real name.
And to say folks are unhappy is putting it mildly.
Amid many people promising never to post again on the Blizz forums (and then, of course, posting again to defend their not-posting standpoint), are such gems as this, from Blizzard forum member Raze88:
"Today a horrible murder took place in Texas. A 25 year old man hacked his 14 year old victim to death with a fireaxe, after he had a fight with him online at the forums of Blizzard Entertainment. The victim supposedly gained the trust of his murder and borrowed a powerful item from him, with the intention to return it to him the next day. The victim never returned the item and further enraged his murderer on the forums, where the real names of every member are displayed for everyone to see. The murderer narrowed down the name of his victim with the help of his IP and Google Maps, drove to his house and murdered him at apparently 9:30 PM.When asked by the Judge why he did this horrible crime, the murder answered: "Because Blizzard gave me an opportunity to do so."
Yep, for a lot of people, Blizzard's move toward openness & transparency while also stopping spammers and abuse is tantamount to murder. That post, by the way, is on page 17 of a 39 page (and growing as we type) thread. And the announcement is only a few hours old.
However, there are a couple of issues that are of genuine concern.
It's easy to make the joke we did about typical slobby male gamers pretending to be women online, but there are in fact many women who really don't want their gender advertised on the forums. After all, Blizzard's making this move because of the propensity for women who are open about their gender getting mercilessly hassled by idiot users. And it can easily be argued that real names are going to make this kind of thing more common, not less.
We spoke to our resident WoW gamer, Liz Skuthorpe, for her take. "If your name is Joe Smith then it's probably fine," said Liz, "but if you have an uncommon name (like mine) it makes you easily identifiable."
"I think that Blizzard should have sorted out their forums years ago by doing more actual moderating than applying this extreme measure just to stop trolling," she added.
And fair point. It's been a common claim that Blizzard's forums have been severely lacking in the moderation department. However, as someone who knows how tough it can be to moderate even a relatively small forum like Atomic's, the task of keeping across the huge amount of posts on Blizzard's site is near cyclopean.
To be honest, there's another concern too, though this is more from the journalist's side of the fence. I play MMOs, sometimes as a reviewer, more often as a player. But how does this move to transparency affect someone who writes a critical review, or states a player's opinion on the forum while pursuing something more objective in a news article? I've contacted local Blizzard reps for comment on that one.
But we're going to throw another take on the Real ID move, and the hoped for transparency, into the mix. Facebook's moved toward openness and proper names (though its privacy attitudes do truly suck), and with the maker of the biggest virtual space in history moving this way, could we be seeing the first glimmers of that sci-fi and transhumanist dream - the reputation economy? Imagine if eBay followed suit, or that site you go to get your favourite flavour of pr0n. A lot of futurists along the line of Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross see such methods of social translucence as essential parts of post-scarcity economies.
Sure... it's a hell of a long bow to pull, but that kind of thing has to start somewhere, right? In the meantime, though, it's clear Blizzard has an uphill battle against it convincing the hardcore this is a good move. But will it affect WoW subscriptions?
We doubt it.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012