So basically the super-clever folks over at Blizzard, who happen to make a little online game called “World Of Warcraft”, had the incredibly bright idea to release the actual real-life names of players. But not just like that. After the next expansion is being deployed, there will be a change on the official forums. From then on in, everytime you post, your actual name will be visible beneath your avatar, and then the in-game name. The only opt-out feature you get, is whether or not to display your in-game name – the display of your real name however cannot be turned off.
Well it’s safe to say that it’ll go pretty quiet on their forums pretty soon.
Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature http://eu.battle.net/realid/, a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.
The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.
Source – This page lists all known information about a developer who already released his name
The entire threadnaught on the topic, on the WoW forum – the responses speak for themselves.
Great going Blizzard!
CAPTAIN’S BLOG, SUPPLEMENTAL
After said Blizzard employee revealed his name, he was forced to disconnect his phone line and to delete his Facebook account.
CAPTAIN’S BLOG, SUPPLEMENTAL
The complete Thread-Titan with over 1800 pages (at the time of me looking at it) can be found here
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1 comment
Resender says:
July 7, 2010 at 6:42 am (UTC 0)
Actually it sounds like the end of Blizzard cause they ave a tendency to put their policies on all their products.
Ok, better start checking blizzard forums to make sure Resender isn’t on any cause that would be a very big risk for me.