http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041&sid=3000
Real names on most any forums are a bad idea. WoW? Even worse.
Everyone knows that I am geek and that’s wonderfully peachy. What if you aren’t thrilled with sharing that with the world? Now a google search will happily provide how you aren’t sure how to respec your Feral druid to best tackle a heroic raid. Awesome.
The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild
Hire more mods. Don’t tell me you can’t afford it.
We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.
Did I mention hire more mods? Pay them well, too. Community Managers are worth their weight in gold and, as the biggest game in town, Blizz should really be setting and example here. This is not the best example. People like Sanya Weathers rock. I don’t play anymore but, when I did, I used to post on the forums a lot. A lot. Would I do that with this new system? It wouldn’t hurt my name to be found linked to WoW but, ehhh…. I barely use facebook and I’ve been on the verge of deleting it all for months now. Heck, I ALMOST deleted it last night but figured I should sleep on it. Twitter? Blogging? Videos? Not a problem for me. It’s about choice and control. Facebook takes some of that control away from the user. WoW forum access is a paid for product and they get to decide whatever ridiculous-while-legal terms they want. Will this stop the die-hard fans? Probably not. On the fence people who have real questions will probably run to other forums, if they ask at all. That’s a loss for the Blizzard community. The jerks? Will have fake accounts up the wazoo and still harass and spam people. gg Blizz. What is really gained from all this? They already know everyone’s name and address and credit card info! And, for the 99% of you that read this and don’t have breasts, this adds a whole other layer of suck. Not that guys don’t get stalked. They do too and it sucks for anyone who has been through it. Yes, I know. I’m sure none of you are shocked. Anyway. The guys who play female avatars never bothered me but, again, whose business is it to out them for it if they’ve kept it secret and don’t use vent? I want to look at pretty characters kicking ass, too. The girls who are girls will now be totally easy to google for whatever other personal information may be out there. Not cool.
This is purely an emotional response for me right now. I will forever defend the right to be anonymous on the internet. I hope that other WoW boards become more popular and helpful in the future to help those uninterested in this new system. For my teeny tiny part, I refuse to implement any facebook tie-in system on my sites. Not happening. No, no, no. I love when you guys comment. I really love when you guys e-mail. The choice to use your real name or not is entirely up to you :)
ps: Hey, game companies and world at large! Stop trying to tie the world to facebook. Pretty please. The thought of the fact that I am probably going to have to make a fake account to play games one day really ticks me off.
{ 9 comments }
Very nice post, totaly agree with you. Looks like Blizzard is making a big mistake to their costumers.
Ha! If I cannot find some way to use a fake name with that RealID, well then I simply won’t be playing any of their games anymore.
This feature wouldn’t stop me from playing, since I never posted on the boards in the first place. However, I do agree that features like this should be opt-in. If people don’t mind having their real IDs posted fine, but I certainly wouldn’t want to post mine. However, I do like the ability to rate posts. I agree that Blizzard should hire more mods for the boards, but I also like giving the community more power in policing itself so that you don’t always have to run to the mods for support.
They are “opt-in” Matt… when the new forums roll out, you will be presented with the “opt in” when you try to post. If you don’t want your name posted, you can just not post. The forums are “optional” after all.
Of course, it also means you can’t get technical support, customer service support, report bugs, provide PTR or beta feedback, or make suggestions, but hey, that’s all “optional” stuff anyway!
/sarcasm
Crosslinked from Lum’s Blog, but I agree 100%
I had a WoW subscription that I cancelled because of this change (or rather, this change was the straw that broke the camel’s back).
Great post. I agree that I can’t see how this helps Blizzard and it will certainly drive away customers. I was thinking of signing up with the next expansion because it has been years but this RealID thing has killed that plan. I’m just hoping that other game companies don’t jump on this bandwagon.
Why is real names on most any forums a bad idea? I don’t understand. I have been on the forums for Flightgear and Ubuntu, the official Elder Scrolls forums and tons of others. I have never had a problem with my real name.
I tried WOW last year for 3 months and I played on Feathermoon and I didn’t mind giving my real name out when people asked, it was a male character. I also had a female character as well on a normal realm and still gave my real name out and said I was male when asked.
The only issue I could see was for users on Moonguard. made me a male warlock and checked it out. I was only there to observe, honest! Well I have to admit I was anonymous on Moonguard, but I was only looking.
Err, brain fart. Of course people should have the right to be anonymous or give out their real ID.
My first post was in response to Jenn’s statement.
“Real names on most any forums are a bad idea. WoW? Even worse.”
I’m a moderator on a rather big forum (something like 60k accounts). Normally I’d just use my name when making this comment, but I’m not, and I’ll explain why later.
We have no problems whatsoever on the forum. The solution? Ruling with an iron fist clad in velvet, and making very clear that this is not a democracy. Tyranny, just like happy hour, never ends.
Of course, the forum isn’t a support forum dedicated to a big money-making product, and the moderation staff is entirely on a volunteer basis – thus no employer to keep happy by making forumers not complain.
Nearly all forumers love it there. We have a great forum culture, I frequently see comments about how they like the way we enforce things like maximum signature sizes and removing seizure-inducing animated avatars and stuff.
Now, why didn’t I post this under my real name, or name the forum?
Because I like to keep my social networks separate. I have a WoW gang, a real-life friend gang, a forum gang, a Facebook gang. There’s a lot of overlapping, but when there’s not, I want to keep them separate.
I have entirely different online personas for each sphere. With the WoW gang there’s plenty of infantile poop jokes and cheap laughs. (…OK, on the forums too.)
I’d never act that way on Facebook. My mom might start wondering.
And that’s exactly why I’m opposed to what Blizzard is doing. I don’t _want_ my social spheres forcibly joined. I keep them separate for a reason.
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