Blizzard plans to reveal poster's real names on forums. Rage ensues.
 

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html...09041&sid=3000

Summary is: to cut down on trolling and 'improve the social environment', if you post on any Blizzard forums after a certain date it'll be using your real name - that is, the name you've got tied to your WoW account or whatever for billing purposes. Posts earlier than that date will not be retroactively changed.

The WoW forums version of that topic has, as I write, 19,374 posts, not to mention the huge flood of additional topics. I think that speaks for itself.

This is totally symptomatic for a trend in companies and governments to choose cheap, quick and radical technical solutions with obvious drawbacks over more expensive and subtle ones that need more time to take effect but work better. If they're concerned about the social environment they should hire 10 or 20 decent moderators.

Not that I needed another reason to stay away from all kinds of multiplayer activity in Blizzard games, but much appreciated. Any number of people with me will surely boycott those forums to protect their personal integrity, some will certainly stop playing, Blizzard's stock will go down, and of course they will have a lot less spam and trolling. Everyone wins!

As Blizzard is a large professional company who make well reasoned and educated decisions, we should follow in thier wake. I expect these changes to be implemented here pronto.

I'm actually all for this change. I must sadly admit I play the game and am a bit of an avid theory crafter. I've written some guides that have been made sticky threads (mainly for warriors, bless their berserker, steel clad hearts) and the community as a whole is attrocious.

I never really understood why they never seemed terribly interested in visible moderation. Everything that happens (which isn't much) is always shadowy and behind the scenes. There's no mod posts, no warnings, its just suddenly blammo: thread is deleted and some posters aren't posting anymore.

I guess they don't feel like paying people to moderate an internet forum (I can kind of see the reasoning there, moderating those forums properly would be a full time job and honestly, who wants to pay people to press buttons on a forum interface?) and its not as if they can simply elevate users to mod status. You would see the advent of super cliques and arbitrary bannings before long and a complete break down of the system.

They've always had a real hands off approach to the community, and sadly the community is a disgusting rabble of morons and inciteful e-rage addicts. At least now people won't be emboldened to run their mouths on level 1 alts.

Its way too easy to hide behind another character on those forums. Now people can be held accountable for their posts and the bad apples can hopefully be weeded out. Although, in a community like that, we're talking about a variance in rotten fruit, as there's very little of the wholesome delicious variety at the best of times.

And I thought it was annoying that they made it so if you added someone as a friend through their email adress that they could see your full name... (not that anyone not speaking dutch could pronounce my last name)

Personally, I'm annoyed by this move, I feel there's no need for others to know my RL name when we're doing something together online, linking a single alias to an account would be a better alternative, imo.

Yes. They will. People who use their real names on the internet are just as much jerkoffs as people that don't. This is all just leading up to an inevitable stalking/kidnapping scandal, rather than the forums getting any better. This is not a legit alternative to getting some goddamn moderators.

Considering there are roughly a shitton of other "Corey Smiths" out there, I could care less. Yay generic names.

You people act like knowing your real identity is going to invite international assassins into your kitchen or something.

Honestly, the fact that you can hide behind a false persona online is artificial and unnatural, what the hell do you do when you go buy shoes are buy an airline ticket? Tons of people know your real name and nobody has stalked you yet.

weirdos man.

Not to mention the people who would stalk you can get access to information more sensitive than your name. Look at how many WoW accounts are hacked every day.

This change doesn't reveal anything people can use to really harm you.