Slashdot Mirror
Blizzard Backs Down On Real Names For Forums
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.
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. 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.
My work here is dung.
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")
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.
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
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.
Living With a Nerd
Hmm... 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?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I thought we had a WoW killer in Real ID this time, but like always the developers don't keep up to their promise.
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.
People can already be traced. In cased of extreme abuse the IP can lead to a subpoena which can lead to the ISP having to reveal the real location of who had that IP at that time. Why would Blizzard want real name to be mandatory for playing?
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
Do you think that Blizzard is really so ignorant as to believe that the community wouldn't explode with a change like this? Something smells here...
Can they seriously not notice the weekly Facebook privacy dramas and not connect the dots as to how this scheme would blow back on them?
I haven't seen the issue addressed, but I can't see that this measure wouldn't violate EU privacy regulations in some way
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
Click on the posters name and you see a list of characters and what servers they're on. Now that level 1 anonymous troll isn't so anonymous while the rest of the populations privacy is still intact. Problem solved without as big an uproar, couple that with a new feature to ignore by account without actually giving out the account name to help ease any stalking fears and your set.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
G.I.F.T. reign on for many years to come!
Apathy is not the word you were looking for in that last sentence. Something like negativity would work though.
Worked in the dorm commissary for awhile. At one point they decided to go from first names on name tags to first/last names. That lasted about 48 hours. You can't believe how much harassment will occur outside work if the patrons know your first/last name. There should really be a repository/educational class of REALLY BAD IDEAS for business majors.
I know you're joking, but a multi-passenger Celestial Mammoth would be pretty sweet...
She was eaten by the elephant in the room.
The system couldn't handle so many people named Cowboy Neal.
Have gnu, will travel.
All they really need to do is implement a mandatory Alias with your Battle.net profile to be displayed in lieu of your real name. You still get recognized as the person that plays X and Y character in game A and B, just without using your real name. It doesn't really help with the whole accountability thing (neither do using real names) as determined trolls will always be lurking about.
I'd be even happier to see them implement controls for explicit authorization to share your real name, akin to one's email, phone, or address, to specific individuals/groups of friends, but simply using a global alias would suffice in the short term.
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.
Flame On!
That would work 'okayish' I guess. The reason I skip most online games is it really is a pot luck what sort of user you will get on the other end. Putting real names would put the 'would I say this to my family' squarely back in the picture. Honestly it is too late for WoW at this point to put the genie back in the bottle. It is out. People already are used to it this way. If it had been UP FRONT this way....
I am looking for fun not jr high revisited. If I wanted that I would teach jr high school kids or play online games. I am a horrid teacher and frankly do not wish to go hang out with jr high kids or at least people who act like them.
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?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
It just annoys me how people keep copy pasting that thing without spending even two seconds to verify if it's even true.
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.
There are levels of investigation appropriate for various types of posts. For example, if I were submitting a story to Slashdot, I would spend more time looking into things. However, I don't have the time to fully research and vet every little thing I ever link to on the web. Be realistic.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
The masses have spoken!
I don't see the need to have people post under their real names in the Blizzard forums to lower the number of trolls. For example to post in the SC2 forums, you should need a SC2 key (this may already be in place) and since each user is associated to only one account, banning a user from the forums would require them to shell out another $60 for a new key. I think this would be a very good deterrent.
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 decision done by a group of people that aren't good enough to make decisions on behalf of a multi-billion dollar company and need to be removed immediately.
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 posters having a horrendously hard time being taken seriously.
The whole "ZOMG, I'll get IRL griefed!!!" is just like the people that rather take the car then fly because this one plane crashed that one time and killed 300 people. Yes it happens, but not often enough to matter and there are much serious and probable things you should be worrying about.
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.
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.
Why not have an anonymous asshat forum and a realID forum? Then users can pick based on the ratio of signal to noise and privacy.
Found this followup on another site:
But did you know that Bashiok is tendering his resignation because of this? They didn't have the wrong guy. They had the correct person, but the wrong address. They had his mother's address. People were leaving notes on the door, she had to turn several pizza deliveries away. Oh, and eventually, they did find the right address. He's now staying in a motel.
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 strikes policy on -THEIR- forums. Straight up ban enough accounts and people will settle down and take the trolling elsewhere. Especially since in Blizzard's case it costs real money to start another account to post with, and even those could probably be prevented easily enough with a bit of work on Blizzard's part without having to give private information out to the player base.
This is about the unintended consequences outlined here on /. a few days ago.
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)
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
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. .. Do you know what makes *you* rather pathetic? That you haven't stopped to consider that it doesn't matter if this is the "right" Micah Whipple. What does matter is that now that his information has become "public domain" THIS person can potentially now receive high levels of disruptive events in his/her life. The obvious example is that if you don't like his behavior, you do a quick search, go slightly crazy, go find them and do something malicious.. and it may not even be the right person.
Its bad enough that someone could find you in a video game and do something to you because of your actions (rolling higher on a coveted piece of loot) or something more nefarious.. but that potentially completely innocent individuals may receive undue harassment over it.. whatever
I'm posting anon and no one will actually read this, but I know the example and illustration have been used ad nauseum
Never underestimate the power of nerdrage. We may be an army of cats, but stirr us up sufficiently and we become a pride of lions.
.. all of this coming from the guy who doesn't even show his email publicly on slashdot.
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.
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
Needless to say Blizzard started forum banning people.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Although they reverted this change, I'm still pretty weary of the direction that Real ID is going. Personally, I've opted to delete all official WoW forum posts using a GreaseMonkey script I've found: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/81103
Honestly I think Blizzard got scared. The backlash from people was really bad I think they were afraid of people dropping off battelnet and there forums because of this move. Most people did not want this because of privacy issues such as stalking and employment issues. I think the big issue was a simple Google search of your name would have brought up information that most people did not want unveiled. I do think this will get more excepted as time progresses with Facebook and social networking getting popular. I can see them trying this move again in the future by then things may change.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
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.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Doesn't matter if its true, might even make it worse since it is possible to target the wrong person with the same name
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Sorry, but their response neither showed responsibility nor commitment to avoiding this disaster.
They chose to make a wishy-wash corporate speak reply after several days of criticism.
That would only encourage e-vigilantism, if a level 1 troll is linked to somebody's main. Additionally, masterful trolls will just have a "forum trolling" account consisting of only level 1 alts, so that doesn't necessarily eliminate trolling at all.
It also doesn't necessarily preserve legitimate uses of anonymity, such as posting to the Guild Relations forum for advice on how to handle a sensitive guild situation -- in fact, linking the question directly to the guild could make the situation worse.
otherwise why let the thread go on for 50,000 posts if they didn't want to get a point across themselves?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
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.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
But what's the threshold for the ban? Part of the problem with the WoW forums is not just trolling and flamebaiting but also just the horrendous signal-to-noise ratio. It's a bit like saying that you're going to browse Slashdot at +3 and see 10 posts and then browse at +1 and see 1,000. But can you ban people just for being stupid or greedy or short-sighted? Is a post that just says "warlocks are overpowered they need to be nerfed" enough for a ban or deletion? And since there are a lot of general-population, non-hardcore players who are naturally attractied to the game's official forums to share their opinions, do you want to deliberately alienate those people by telling them that they're posts aren't good enough?
:V
The advantage that boards like Elitist Jerks have is that they can moderate at a level of not matching the board's standards - they can subjectively lock posts that are overly simplistic or don't add anything to the discussion if they feel like it. I don't think you're ever going to see true "subjective moderation" implemented as a policy at WoW forums - there's just too much politics involved. But the problem as it stands now is that there's so much subjectively bad material clogging up the WoW forums that it's rarely worth trying to read through them, and when you do find a post on a topic you're interested in, it's hard to tell who actually knows what they're talking about and who is just good at bullshitting.
I supported the RealID maneuver because I felt that it was Blizz's attempt to do something to make the forums worthwhile. I don't know 100% if it would have worked, but I hope they manage to come up with something else. Maybe, like, a karma system.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Posting real names would have ended all honest GLBT discussions in an instant. That's immediately a great reason not to post them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I play games (not wow anymore, thankfully) to escape the realities of life. I play to just dissolve into a game world for 15 minutes, an hour, whatever. I don't need to make a comment on the forums that some 12 year old doesn't like who then turns around and uses my unique real life name to then go to my facebook and post my pictures with penises drawn all over it. Sounds harmless and in reality I wouldn't be hurt by it, but it's just unnecessary BS I'd have to put up with that involves me, personally, in real life.
With my name, you can easily find out what my personal address is, what my phone number is, etc. Who is to say a disgruntled 12 year old guildmate, of whom I just kicked out of the guild, won't simply start prank calling me. Or, I get 4 chan'd by the same jerk and thousands of people start pranking me. I would call that a very real form of IRL griefing.
It's a game where irrational kids frequent. This isn't a professional support forum for diagnosing routing issues where you can post with very little chance of an enraged 12 year old trying to annoy you in real life.
But above and beyond all of that... I should simply have the right to not provide my personal information when I choose. Not when Blizzard chooses.
What's next, I'm meant to start being worried about a potential griefer harassing random people out of the phone book if I type something that annoys him? Stop giving in to fear, geez, it's this sort of batshit craziness that allows police states to happen.
If you're going to be worried, atleast be worried about something remotely plausible, I mean where is this flood of IRL griefers going to come from anyhow? Stick to addressing the real privacy issues connected to name exposure rather then useless paranoia.(Professional consequences, name based discrimination, inability to escape RL etc)
As much as I hate this on the WoW forums it seems oddly appropriate here.
I found a couple of shareholder credit card and security code numbers, and fired off an e-mail with them enclosed, with the clear phrase "Implement RealID, this is what is up at stake, bare minimum."
I'm brutal, but that's the *ONLY* way you're going to get them to listen. Threaten their money directly, and they'll back the fuck off.
*waves to Electronic Arts*
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Assign a moderation system that promotes in-game uniqueness. Make good posts and get a white aura around your toon in game, or a companion pet, or anything. Everyone can see it, totally optional, and promotes good posting. Troll posters could get chat limitations or slow XP growth, or any number of penalties. I think blizzard has to realize that people posting on the forums are most likely playing the game. Hit them where it hurts.
Giving out the real name of players would open the door for more serious bullying. For a start, imagine some douche names his character BlackKiller and starts ganking in game only people who are black IRL.
Look, if I apply for a job, the last thing I want them to know is personal data about me. If I played WoW, I would want to keep that private, because people are petty and opinionated, and the less they know about you, the less they don't like. That's my reason for freaking out about it. The long term record-keeping quality of the internet means that anonymity keeps my opinions, my hobbies, and my interests separate from the database containing my real name. It's not that I'm ashamed of it, it's that I refuse to submit to the whims and prejudices of others.
It's well known that a pseudonym enables people to be complete assholes. Complete.
Really? Then Ban them. Blizard knows what account name is attached to a forum post. problem solved.
And I'd bet that the moderators of these forums were sick and tired of seeing cases where this happened.
Ban. Ban. Ban. Delete Account if needed. I don't really see a problem here.
Also, it isn't having a pseudonym that causes people to be assholes. Its the larger disconnected nature of the internet. Even if I call you a bastard, and you know my real name, how will that hurt me if you live in Florida and I live in California? Chances are, we will never meet, or interact in any way outside that forum.
The only thing this real name policy would do, would be to insure that Blizard got sued when some unhinged nut went and murdered someone else because they were called a 'hamdoctor' on Blizard's forums. And I will wager hard cash with anyone who thinks otherwise, because there are just enough loons playing WoW.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
So, what's your real name?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Johan Rydén, yours?
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.
No, what makes him rather pathetic is that he put "bard idea" in his subject line without singing the entire post.
What makes you rather pathetic is that run-on sentence abruptly launches into a new clause doesn't make sense.
Here is the reason they're backing off: http://asnowstormbyanyothername.blogspot.com/
It seems it's no skin off their nose until chickens come home to roost.
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?)
...because EJ aggressively bans anyone who acts like an idiot. Go check out their 'banhammer' section for copious examples. EJ realizes that 90% of their users really appreciate that 10% of the users aren't worth having around. There are a lot of idiots that visit EJ, they just dont stay long.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Their prime motivation behind Real ID was not the quality of the forums and helping users. It's the deal activision signed with facebook to promote closer cooperation. Activision saw Farmville's success and wanted a piece of the pie of social networking/gaming. Real ID was the first step towards the $$$ of a social networking/MMORPG. Imagine the targeted advertising potential in that monstrosity.
They couldn't care less about the user's complaints. They expected any money lost to cancellations to be made up with money from a new social networking/MMORPG model of targeted advertising.
Things only really hit home when this happened: http://asnowstormbyanyothername.blogspot.com/
So had he been a stalker, he would have killed the wrong person.
How is that better?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
People have secrets. secrets they can be ostracized, fired, and killed over in some places.
I know people who are still in the closet. The have several characters. The have the character they play with their gay friends, and a character they play with there older friends and family.
You could argue that should just 'come out', but that would show how little you know of those situations.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And people don't publish their real-life names in wide circulation, and still get people figuring out their real-life name and harassing them. I've been a Wikipedia admin for five years, and in that time:
* I've been sued twice.
* I've been the recipient of numerous death threats
* I was the intended target of a real-life harassment campaign. The person leading it figured out my real-life name, and then connected it to the wrong address and telephone number. Some random person in Michigan suffered a few weeks of attacks before the perpetrators figured out they had the wrong target.
Why shouldn't Blizzard just use a moderation system similar to our very own? It seems that this kind of system would be a lot more effective in reducing the amount of trolling and general stupidity. Is the population on the forums just too big?
No sir, I value my privacy. Glad to see you practice what you preach at least.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Last night my son and I opted out of the RealID account provision.
For you, it might not be a big deal.
But there are only two people in the entire world with our last name, so there is no way I'm going to let the level 70 Death Knight I ganked last night find out WHO I am and WHERE I live so that he can set my house on fire, in his teen-fueled rage.
Privacy isn't a privilege.
It's a RIGHT.
Any sufficiently pervasive general motive is indistinguishable from a conspiracy.
I was wondering what sort of numb skull company Blizzard had become. But then the world cried foul and they listened. I commend them for responsiveness. I still condemn them for blind nonsense. I will be watching for more idiocy.
I think that with SWTOR on the horizon, WoW may have to do a lot to prevent losing users. Pissing off a bunch of consumers could lead to unsatisfied customers who may find something "better."
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
They got socked in the pocketbook by cancellations.
They saw traffic on the boards spike, mainly in a single 2200 page thread. Most from paying accounts (I'm sure the gold farms and bots stayed quiet), all stating that they would NOT take a bite of this shit sandwich and they could prep for further cancellations if this actually didn't get changed TODAY.
And they were made to look like complete assclowns in the media.
About the time the beancounters got through running the numbers, a hit was put out on whomever it was that actually considered this a good idea and the heads of several highly placed underlings were left on the doorsteps of the forums by way of apology.
So what does this mean for Blizzard/Activision now?
Well, first of all, it's demonstrated that they're NOT trustworthy when it comes to things like this (unless you can pose a real threat to their revenue stream and public persona simultaneously).
As such, only a fool would continue trusting them. Unfortunately the WoW playerbase is large enough to keep Blizzard tripping over likely fools for several decades.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
People who are in love with this utopian vision of anonymity-free forums are always amazed to find out that not everyone shares their opinion.
People are assholes to each other offline despite knowing each other's real names (and addresses, and mothers, etc.).
People are assholes to each other online despite knowing each other's real names too. You can feel pretty secure being an asshole when you know for a fact that your target lives a continent away, or in another city. Unless you actually break some kind of harassment or hate speech law, what are they going to do?
The kind of person who would actually travel a vast distance to beat up someone who pissed them off on a forum would obviously have a field day with real names, and I doubt the reciprocal revelation of their own name would do much to deter them.
Some people don't want to connect their real names to their forum nicknames, not because they are ashamed of anything they say or think that there's anything wrong with it, but because they're aware that they might attract serious meatspace trouble for it anyway. Or because -- like me -- they just don't want everything they've ever said online to be instantly and trivially linked to their real names with a single search.
Finally, some people don't like to use their real names because the names themselves reveal things about them which invite additional crap from assholes: gender, nationality and race. The internet allows people to present a neutral public face to strangers, and thus communicate on a more level playing field than is ever possible face-to-face. I consider this to be one of the best things about the internet, and I'd like to cultivate it, not eradicate it.
What really happened is that LEGAL called management and explained to them that the EULA would not protect them from liability if someone was to get hurt because of this. Jerks and idiots in the game are also jerks and idiots in real life. All it takes is one wacko who's is willing to travel in order to club that "annoying rogue" in real life.
In fact, the new real ID isn't that secure. Add-on can grab it despite you.
Think about this.
if you read the forum post that supposedly "ended" this "feature" youll notice that they didnt completely rule out doing it again in the future, they just understood they were going too fast and need to slow down/sweeten things a little, you WILL see this thing again eventually, mark my words
i also think most of you guys are missing the big picture here, moderation might be a good reason to *give out to the public* for this but it really makes little sense to roll out this kind of system for just that, too much cost, testing and backlash just for a "chance" to calm down trolls that have been there since ever
a more probable reason for this is to prepare the road for integration with other services (many of which require real names), never forget that bnet is turning into a store with starcraft2's release and as such it wants to be THE store, imagine being able to use facebook/twitter, pay your taxes and order your pizza without closing the bnet window, all while leaving activision-blizzard a nice cut of the transaction
So they yield when we complained about this, but not LAN? If anything, LAN is much more important than whether or not we use names on the forum. Add LAN before it's too late! Wait.. It is too late.