Blizzard chalks up Real ID kerfuffle as a learning experience

Nothing wrong with a bit of sweet pork

@Ashkental

Real ID will always be awesome to me, as long as it stays in game and I can choose when to use it. (I want friends to see it. No one else)

Real ID in the forum was a horrible idea. At least, the way they were planning to use it. If it was opt-in via the privacy options to either be your WoW character or Starcraft ID, or show your real name, then I can see it going okay...the people that want it can have it and the people that don't won't have to have it.

@Ashkental
What they should've done is what too few companies do - let the consumers in on feedback. It could've been easy to make a poll "Do you want real names shown in forums?" I'm sure they could have had the same outcome without the work wasted in actually making the changes that would never come to be.

@Themoreyouknow
My guess is the higher ups demanded this change or one like it, and in order to derail the fail the lower-downs followed their orders their logical conclusion (I want to say "consplosion")

@Ashkental - The dirty little secret of the entire plan (supposedly) is that they were trying to set up a Facebook-esque social structure, with all of the advertising dollars that come with being able to data mine posts using gamers real names.

Whether that is true or not, I have no idea. I don't think they went through the trouble of coming up with this idea in order to "civilize the forum discourse" or whatever reason they gave out when this all imploded in their faces though.

@galacticronin

I think you sound a lot like a dick with no understanding of jokes or common sense.

P.S. If you're wondering, I didn't say you "come off like a dick" because the thought horrified me.

"God forbid these artists and developers learn from their mistakes."
That's one thing. Another is calling these mistakes a social experiment.

@EazySCT

Okay, before I comment on the wording, it does make sense in context, at least. That being said:

I posted a comment on Joystiq, to post it, at Joystiq where I did post a comment?

@galacticronin

This is a really short article, so I'm not sure how you missed this:

"Ultimately we decided we would not go in that direction for the time being, and see if there were other ways we could address the objective we had, which was to improve the forums generally."

They didn't pledge to not do it anymore, they said they aren't doing it for now. Also maybe they DO deserve to be made fun of; it was pretty obvious to basically everybody that publicly revealing personal information against peoples' wills isn't going to be a popular idea, or a very good one at that.

Not too bright? The idea is that people who know you or need to contact you can find you in the phone book. Giving your name away means any freak on the internet can find you.

I would rather be trolled on the internet by a random then tracked down and harassed.

@(Unverified) I would be more concerned with freaks in your actual real life neighborhood than some random guy on the other side of the world finding it necessary to kill you because you made a certain post in a forum. In fact that doesn't sound very plausible to me at all.

People aren't very good at judging dangers. This should be fairly obvious but there are not more killers on the internet than there are in real life. If everybody uses his real name the danger is pretty much non existent. How would he know who to pic? What would be the difference between being picked out through the internet or on the street? Do you think this killer for some reason only kills people who he finds on the internet? That he has never killed before? Wouldn't it be easier for him to pick someone from the place where he lives?

People are making a huge deal out of nothing. Think about all the benefits a real online identity would bring. From personalized searches. To being able to use this identity in the real world to increase your standard of living. Imo this can't happen soon enough.

people have no problems showing up in an auditorium using their real name and face in front of a thousand strangers. Your average forum doesn't even have that many members...

@DaFreak

I think the general idea is that if some lunatic hates some post you made or some opinion you made they are still anonymous because all they had to do was read what you posted and have a psychotic breakdown, while you on the other hand do have your info posted for said anonymous nut to find/hunt down etc. I do agree that it is unlikely that someone would actually show up at your door but 4chan has easily proven you can be harassed if your identity is found out. That plus the nature of the internet to be polarizing but the Penny Arcade theory mean it's just better to keep things as they are.

@CA Don't get me wrong, I get what you are trying to say. It would be inevitable that there would be some internet related deaths every year. But just like we accept a certain amount of casualties on the road, I believe that in time we will accept a certain amount of internet deaths as well. The benefits will outweigh the cost.

It is hard to say exactly what a combination of geolocation and eID can do because the most interesting, game changing stuff nobody ever sees coming and still needs to be invented but here are a few example, imagine walking into the library, a virtual librarian on a screen on the wall calls for your attention by name and says the newest book from your favorite writer has just come in. It knew you loved him through facebook or whatever.

Imagine walking on the street and all of a sudden your phone starts buzzing. You take it out of your pocket and it asks you whether you are interested in visiting that museum you just walked past because it is having an exhibition on robotic art. Imagine a friend network, something like foursquare 3.0 where you can share places, information, objects,... on a map with everybody who shares the same interests or a network of friends.

What if you could aim your phone at a person from a distance and see what his or her interests are before you go try and hit on them. You might save yourself an hour long talk about knitting. To some people that might sound scary but for me personally it sounds like magic and i want it now.