Your real name to appear on Blizzard's official forums

by Mike Schramm on Jul 6th 2010 6:30PM

Long a source of rampant trolling and epic flamewars, Blizzard's official World of Warcraft forums will soon be a lot less anonymous. The company announced today that it will be using the Real ID system, which was recently implemented into Battle.net, on its forums. Once Real ID is in place, each catty remark and witty comeback on Blizzard's forums will have the poster's real first and last name attached to it. (Previously, posters could hide behind their in-game character names.)

Real ID will be rolled into WoW's forums by the release of the Cataclysm expansion later this year. Additionally, the system will be added to the StarCraft 2 forums before the game's July 27 launch.

Blizzard's eating its own dog food, too -- its community representatives, previously known only by aliases, will also be posting under their real names. Additionally, forum posts will be subject to a new ranking system, replies to forum threads will be grouped, and Blizzard posters will be able to "broadcast" messages out to everyone on the game's forums. Blizzard says its goal with these changes is to form "a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that's highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships."

Via: WoW.com
Source: Battle.net

Tags: activision, activision-blizzard, battle-net, blizzard, blizzard-entertainment, Cataclysm, forums, official, pc, real-id, World-of-Warcraft-Cataclysm

Reader Comments (104)

Janet Jackson has replied to your post.

Its about time too, the forums are TROLL central.

@Kid Icarus I have to agree.

I love WoW, but man.. the fans can be absolute turbo-douchebags sometimes.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze
That's because like TF2 WoW is mostly populated by 4chan. If you go to the TF2 forums it's like a more tammed 4chan because it censors most things and you can get banned easily.

@The Aquacharger

You're kidding me? TF2 is mostly 4chan, but it's also one of the better communities I've been apart of. Blizzard has ALWAYS had this immaturity shit, Diablo had this, Starcraft had this, it is nothing new.

@Cleric
Yeah, it's a good community, but if you go to their forums it's constantly at hell over something.
And the community is good if you don't have rare items. I constantly get belittled for my Sam and Max items (I love the games and got the items as a bonus, so what) and get hunted down by players. So, I simply let them rage over it and just start to gloat about my items after they cry about it. But, when that doesn't happen ingame is a wonderful community. Ofcourse I also play with atleast 3 friends so while people're focusing on me my 3 friends sneak around and get objectives.

@The Aquacharger

Hats ruined that game since the beginning.

@Cleric
They were a nice idea, but oh my god does the community care way too much about them.
There's a few I'm trying to get but that's just 3 hats and I'm not aggresively trying to get them. If they drop, they drop if not then I keep playing 'till they drop.

@The Aquacharger whoa whoa, hold on here. 4chan might be pretty popular, but not "most" of a 12 million player audience kinda popular. Maybe the forums are made up of /b/tards, but a good deal of the kind of people who play WoW are the kind of pleasant people who've never heard of 4chan.

@TheDarkWayne
I should've specified. When I said TF2 and WoW are made up of 4chan I meant the forums. Ingame it all depends on who you meet, but both games forums are pratically made up of 4chan.

Let's see the trolls "post on an alt" now.

Excellent, /b/ will be all over this.

inb4 lawsuits

@Undying Why? The forums(and Battle.net in general) are 100% opt-in. Also, Blizzard is not retroactively adding real names to older posts. Your name will not appear anywhere without your knowledge(and acceptance of the Battle.net ToS.)

Somebody x says something somebody y finds offensive. Unfortunately, somebody y is an undiagnosed psychopath who now knows somebody x's real name. Somebody y looks up somebody x's address, and goes to express his displeasure in person. Pieces of somebody x end up in five different states. Somebody x's grieving family takes a nice chunk of Actibliz's money in a lawsuit (or perhaps more likely, an out-of-court settlement).

Seriously, I don't see how this can possibly NOT end as I've described. There are too many nutjobs on these internets for anybody with a brain in their head to use a service that requires them to publicly associate their real identity with their comments.

@(Unverified)

Do you realize how many people have the same name all over the world? It's not like Blizzard will be listing your country, state/province, and town you live in. Just because you have somebody's first and last name doesn't mean you can hunt them down.

@Undying

"Somebody x says something somebody y finds offensive."

Don't say anything offensive. Problem solved.

"Just because you have somebody's first and last name doesn't mean you can hunt them down."
Sometimes even the first sufficed. Get somebody's first and last name, search it on Facebook, find the profile that fits his/her personality and there you go.

@(Unverified)

I love the "common name" argument.

But guess what! A LOT of people don't have common names.

@Undying you simply do not have to post at all, if you care for privacy and such. it's like Facebook... the really paranoid do not have FB accounts.

I feel like this is a move that Blizzard SHOULD NOT have taken.

There are many many underage kids who play Blizzard games. And having their full name pop up on the forums would make it easier for a possible pedophile to discern between a girl/boy and with how many minors use myspace/facebook, may lead to undesired results.

I don't know... I just feel like it'll start getting a load of hate from Fox News/concerned parents haha

@(Unverified)
Even better.
Troll and get F'd in the A.

@(Unverified) Battle.net's parental controls will allow you to block your children from posting on the forums.

@mbarriault

I think it's like 1/10 parents who know about parental controls and even less who use them...

@mbarriault
By all means I'm not a parent haha and I don't have kids

But with how little most parents know about working a computer, a kid could easily lie about their age and sign up on their own. Sure it's a breach in most website/forum terms of use but it happens. It happens with just about any social networking site so it will probably happen here too.

Eh I dunno, just my two cents haha

@(Unverified) Thankfully, the product you are paying for is still World of Warcraft, and not World of Warcraft Forums. Jerkfaces can still be jerkfaces in-game, whew! If I was a parent, I wouldn't let my kid near the forums anyway...for so many reasons. I mean, I wouldn't even let adult friends near them, if I had that kind of power.

@Deschain That's a very large fault in those nine parents. Maybe when they find out that their children's names are being published online they'll bother themselves to learn.

@The Nth Doctor

Agreed. But it's still something to ponder.

I think loss of anonymity should spread throughout the internet to all sites and forums: it's much more conducive to cool-headed discussions, and it would stomp out a great deal of trolling.

Except 4chan.

@ch3burashka
No it wont, dicks will be dicks. I also find it funny that you say people should use their real names when you seemed to sign up at Joystiq using a fake name.

@The Aquacharger
Now now now, lets not be hasty with this whole 'real name' thing.

@m night shyamalan
Oh you. Your movies are terrible.

Time to buy that on sale copy of WoW and register it to "Justin Bieber" and continue to troll....

I mean... Post constructivly.....

This is brilliant, and I hope it sets a standard going forward. Web anonymity is dead. If you say it online, you should be comfortable saying it in the real world.

@beaurosser
I don't post anything online I wouldn't say in real life (then again I'm a massive prick) but I find the loss of anonymity to be stupid. The ammount of times I've seen people's phone numbers, addresses, and all their personal information show up just from someone finding their first and last name is very high. I even did it to my one friend who was so sure I couldn't find out where she lived or her phone number.
I then used it once to threaten someone on Amazon to give me a refund because they sold me an obviously pirated game[They gave me a fake address for the return lable and on the package they sent me]. So, instead I used the information and sent pictures and everything I had to prove he sold me an fake game and sent it to the publisher, developer, amazon, and many other places and decided to let things happen. He's been banned from Amazon and the publisher told me they were going to do all they could against him.

@The Aquacharger

I'm not quite sure I see where you're going with that. If they had to use their real name, they would most likely not try and sell broken games, thus your described situation might not have happened at all.

@beaurosser
No, what they gave me was D. then their last name. From there I then had to track this person down. They wound up living in a small town that was about a 3 hour drive from where I live. Ofcourse their mistake was using their last name. Because of a small town there were only about 2 Asian Families, and this person had an Asian last name.
I would give you the amazon store page, but, it's one of those games one doesn't want to share that they bought.

@The Aquacharger

So your point is "I managed to brake someone's anonymity and it was awesome and it helped a lot... and it would have been much easier had he been forced to use his real name... maybe he wouldn't even had sold me a pirated game... avoiding the whole problem... BUT anonymity should be protected FOREVER"

or an alternate point: "Regardless of whether or not people give real names in the internet I'm still able to find them in real life.... but people shouldn't give their real names because somebody (other than you I assume) might find them".

@ngSliver
No it was to prove that having a small ammount of information can easily track someone down with. It took me about half a day to find this person, but I did.
Unlike some people I don't use this stuff to do bad things to people, just what I feel is right.
Hell even with buying off Amazon I've had shipments where there was no return lable. They all came in nice, non-pirated, and condition as described.

This isn't going to end well.

@The Aquacharger
Goddammit Blizzard just when i thought it was safe to play WoW.

That's a pretty bad idea considering with someone's name they can do worse then trolling

@Sleepyperson

What does this mean? Explain.

@beaurosser
It means instead of using my real name I could sign up with someone's name I hate or something else. Then ruin their reputation.

@Sleepyperson

And its also VERY easy to find someones address using their first and last names. There are some crazy people that play WoW. And all i have to say is that this WONT end well.

@thelastCOG
And to add what you said if you want to see why this is a bad idea. Look up the Lineage 2 murders in Russia.

@Sleepyperson Couple it with the IP locators and you've got some mischief to be had.

@Nintari
LOL

I can not believe how many of you people are not seeing what this really means.Taking away anonymity will only hurt legit forum goers much like DRM only hurts legit buyers. Trolls (and anyone else) can make new accounts once they buy a blizzard game with fake names protecting their identity. I could post a number of reasons why this is the worst idea Blizzard has ever had, but it has already been posted here:

http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041&sid=3000&pageNo=1

Last post on first page. This is not about trolls. This is the least of our concerns in regards to are damn right to privacy. If anything, this will open massive new doors for malicious trolls and moreover actual harassment.

@Deschain

BTW I see most people are only talking about WoW.

This will effect all of the forums and both Diablo 3 and StarCraft 2 will a from of Real ID IN GAME.

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World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Your real name to appear on Blizzard's official forums

Reader Comments (104)

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:35PM nighttime said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:35PM Kid Icarus said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:50PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:55PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:05PM Cleric said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:11PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:13PM Cleric said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:15PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:25PM TheDarkWayne said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:29PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:35PM ticklefist said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:35PM MrAlex said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:36PM Undying said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:17PM Ubidan said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:49PM The Gas said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 8:28PM Hyperion45 said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 8:39PM Diodax said

Posted: Jul 7th 2010 6:15AM Unvrfd said

Posted: Jul 7th 2010 3:48PM st3v3n said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 4:05PM mxwp said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:38PM t3hguitarman said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:44PM ticklefist said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:46PM mbarriault said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:51PM Deschain said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:55PM t3hguitarman said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:01PM sigma8 said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:10PM The Nth Doctor said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:11PM Deschain said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:38PM ch3burashka said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:18PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 11th 2010 1:58AM m night shyamalan said

Posted: Jul 11th 2010 7:07AM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:40PM Hivetyrant said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:40PM beaurosser said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:49PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:27PM beaurosser said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:33PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 8th 2010 12:47PM ngSliver said

Posted: Jul 11th 2010 7:12AM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:42PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:15PM Special Agent Bob said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:46PM Sleepyperson said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:49PM beaurosser said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:50PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:58PM thelastCOG said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:04PM The Aquacharger said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:14PM BigD145 said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:49PM t3hguitarman said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 6:50PM Deschain said

Posted: Jul 6th 2010 7:16PM Deschain said

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