Endangering a customer in anyway should always be a #1 goal of a company. When you risk your customers, you risk your business. You don’t need an MBA to understand this simple concept. Many folks have posted that this is in relation to Facebook and $$$ and in all fairness that is the only possible scenerio that has been made available publicly. Blizzard is a “FOR PROFIT” business, period. They do what they do to make money. If it doesn’t generate additional revenue or reduce cost, they won’t do it. Rule #1 in any investigation or good research…”FOLLOW THE MONEY”.

This has nothing to do with trolls. A trolls real life name is no more valuable than their gaming identity. They still have nothing to lose, but other, compitent, intellegent contributors have everything to lose. Blizz forums will be a ghost town if this goes through.

The Point of RealID and How to Stop It.
http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/cnm4p/the_point_of_realid_and_how_to_stop_it/

Among guilds I do see people posting on the forums just to troll, using low lvl alts that are not in any guild or hardly ever online.
Why? As they don’t want to hear the complaints in whispers when they are raiding.

One could simply spoil that by making one always post on the toons name they have played on the most for the past few months.

I would also not mind to be able to choose one fixed name across all games, though having my real name asociated with my wow toons I dislike.
It would certainly keep me from ever posting anything on blizzards forums.
Latency trouble, go post on the forums? How about no?
I’d instead be playing a different game.

real ID’s ingame are nice, though I’d like the option to not be shown to the friends of friends.
I’d like to be in control myself.

I don’t have a facebook account, I don’t want a potential employer to be peeking through the pictures taken of me when I was drunk/sick either.

I agree I have not see one good reason of using real names and not one person excited about it- more of a hate it or tolerate it attitude.

Not only this, but if you were careless about your online identity at any point, it is an ongoing process to limit the amount of information about yourself out there. To use a current event analogy such as the oil spill currently in the gulf, a split second accident turns into a 2-3 month long ongoing active drama followed by years of clean up and hopefully a lifetime of increased vigilance to make sure that it does not happen again.

I googled myself. And in the first page, I found myself, my wife, pictures of our house (with maps, thanks again Google), the fact that i had placed last in a triathlon, that I had posted 10 years ago in a newsgroup, my (locked) Facebook etc. When I googled my toon name, I came up with the various blogs I have commented on and wow forums i have posted. This is what i want. A clear defined distiction between the separate parts of my life as decided by ME. I have the option of never posting in the official forums. And that is exactly what I will do, not post.

However my concern is this, and it even sounds silly to me now, but how long before someone decides that the RPG portion of WoW the MMORPG is out dated. What if in an effort to crack down on ninja looting in pug runs, Blizzard implements RealAvatar. Now you wont ninja loot because everyone knows exactly who you are in game. It will be John Smith (Feral Druid) , or John Smith (Hunter) . Its the same reasoning. You wont misbehave because everyone knows exactly who you are. Why does it matter if they know who you are? Because there is some form of consequence. Well whats the consequence? Poor rep? Nah your toon already had that if you ninjaed a bunch? Then the only consequence is that some one will find the real you and do something about it.

Thank you but no.

They don’t want to use a single account alias as the displayable name because it nullifies the tie-in with Facebook.
e.g. There’s a player out there called John Johnson and he has a Facebook page including all his real-life friends; many of whom are roughly contemporary, possibly with similar free time, possibly with similar disposable income. Activision/Blizzard want access to those people. They want it to be public that he (John Johnson) plays a game called World of Warcraft. Maybe his friends will want to play it too.

It doesn’t work so well if he creates another Facebook page for his single account alias ‘JJBloodDK’ and uses that as a Wow-only Facebook page, on which he only has friends who are themselves Wow-aliases. There’s little room for expansion.

The whole point of the Facebook deal is that they believe it’s a doorway to new customers and increased visibility/advertising/continuity. The maths behind it is that there is far more revenue to be gained through this integration than will be lost due to initial (they hope) dislike of the privacy policy.

The way this has been handled doesn’t fill me with confidence for the future. It won’t be surprising to see the Orwellian definition of optional being applied to the in-game version of Real ID before long. Don’t like it? Don’t play – you’ve got a choice. Or perhaps they will announce a Platinum monthly subscription; for an extra $15/month you can go back to being anonymous and receive a free Robert Kotick in-game pet plus ‘..the Unknowable’ title.

The suggestion that Blizzard is brute-forcing a solution that will in time cultivate a better quality community is interesting, and admirably optimistic. It may play a part but I doubt it’s the primary motivation. Whatever the case, it’s still removing any meaningful choice for the user. If I want people to know I play Wow I’ll choose to tell them and then I’ll choose through which medium I tell them. I disagree with it being available information by default.

I think it’s a great idea. I haven’t “wanted it for a while” because it never occurred to me that Blizzard would even consider it. I’m glad Blizzard is doing this.

That’s two out of three, so you can still say “not one single time.” :-)

Over and over I’ve seen posts, articles and what-have-you stating that the problems on the World of Warcraft (and many other) forums are caused by anonymity. Now’s our chance to see if it’s true. This is a great experiment, and possibly a very courageous (re “Yes, Minister”) thing to do.

I absolutely can’t wait to see this implemented.

I’m going to address one form of rhetoric that’s getting used, however. Take this to heart;

Before you decide to label those opposed to Real ID as being fearful, or of living in fear, whether it be of change or identity theft or stalking, keep in mind that YOU are attributing YOUR prejudice as the underlying emotion to someone’s decisions and actions. It tells us more about your prejudices, your ignorance, and your naievety than it paints a realistic portrait of the people whose opinions you oppose.

There is a vast difference between being afraid and taking council of those fears, and being aware of potential dangers, acting to anticipate threats, and take rudimentary precautions.

If I look both ways before crossing a street, even though the light is my way, I am not being afraid of getting hit by a car and taking council of those fears. I am instead being aware of the fact that drivers can be careless, and it is prudent of me to take what action I can to anticipate a potential risk, and work to minimise it responsibly. If I were, in fact, taking council of my fears, I would be hiding in my home afraid to leave the house for fear of cars.

People who are speaking out now against a policy of having to publicly reveal their real first and last names in order to post a comment, question, helpful suggestion, or request technical support for their hobby are not taking council of their fears, or fearing change. They are taking the first step to voice their concerns, their reasons for doing so, in the way most commonly known. In many cases, these people are specifying their concerns about personal security.

A second point I feel I need to make, is that anyone who argues that taking prudent steps to protect your identity from being publicly linked to anything they do not wish it to is doomed to failure because of the existence of social networking sites we “probably already use” is simply being facetious. The fact that YOU have already been careless of your identity, and ignorant of the ramifications resulting from being careless, and that it is too late for YOU to do anything about it does not necessarily indicate that everyone else was equally ignorant.

How do you reckon? People are already tools on places like Facebook and whatnot, and that’s (usually) attributed to their real name.

This change will accomplish none of the stated goals. Trolls will continue to troll, and good, quality, contributing posters like B4 and the MVPs and whatnot will just… stop posting.