A Brief Look Into the Real ID Controversy

[Glynbeard]

You can view the page at http://www.mmowned.com/forums/conten...ID-Controversy

[mi33]

Good article, I agree with your opinion on distinguishing real life and virtual reality.

[Jackie Moon]

Also it is more leverage for hackers considering to prove that you are the original owner of an account you must supply this information; meaning it's easier for hackers to gain players information to compromise their accounts.

[sid1488]

I still don't care. There's just trolls & flamers & useless shit on the WoW forums. If I need to ask something, I would rather go to a sub-community like MMOwned and ask my questions, since, I honestly think I wont even get an answer on WoW forums.

[Nyu²²²]

sid1488, I believe you're a bit narrowminded if all you think about is trolls and flamers, what about your real-life friends, or people in general. Do you want to let them know that you're sitting 12 hours infront of the computer everyday playing video games? As it was mentioned in another post about this issue, what about people who are in witness protection and wishes to remain anonymous.

[Jeremiah]

Excellent article, Glynbeard.

[meisterhd]

It's like if you want to troll with real id on the forums or tell someone they suck, they will look up you're name and find where you live and butt**** the shit out of you.

[rudydimacali]

^ /like lol.

[Glynbeard]

An update from Blizzard CEO:

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. 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.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( Blizzard Entertainment: Mission Statement ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment