The Conservative Cave
Interests => Games & Home Entertainment => Topic started by: bijou on July 08, 2010, 04:17:03 PM
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Would you steer away from this post if you had to use your real name to leave a comment here?
Santa Monica, Calif.-based Activision Blizzard just put that question to many of its customers. In a post earlier this week on its Battle.net forums, the game developer informed players of its popular Starcraft and World of Warcraft games, among others, that they would soon have to use their legal monikers when chatting about their in-game exploits on its forums.
Blizzard defended the change as a necessary move to stop spamming and trash-talking:
Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven't been connected before.
As of this morning, 74 pages of comments follow that post. The ones I've read don't seem too positive about Blizzard's move. Typical reply, from "Marine71": "What an awful idea. Who comes up with this trash? Seriously. What happened to you, Blizzard?"
Other Battle.net threads debating the move dwarf that: On the World of Warcraft "General Discussion" forum, the argument now runs nearly 2,000 pages long--and that's only for North American users. ...
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2010/07/world_of_warcraft_real_names.html
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I've been following the thread on the WoW forums that's dealing with this. Last check it's up to over 40,000 posts right now and 90-95% are anti-Real ID. People are cancelling WoW accounts and pre-orders for Star Craft 2 and the next expansion for WoW, Cataclysm, me included. This is being forced on the game by the CEO and higher ups of Activision, which merged with Blizzard a while ago. The lower level employees of Blizzard are being muzzled by the higher ups and are not allowed to talk about this except via official press releases, but from what I've heard, they are not happy at all. Pissed is more like it.
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I don't post on the forums, so I don't care. I do agree it's a terrible idea.
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looks like Blizzard heard their customers loud and clear. They've reversed their decision to make it mandatory to use your real name if you want to post on the forums. Might have something to do with the fact that one of the Blizzard employees put just his name up and said do your worst. 30 minutes later he recieved a call at work from someone with a whole lot of info that he got with just his name.
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I think I made one post on the forums about two years ago bumping a guild recruitment thread. So this hasn't bothered me at all.
Blizzard actually earned some points in my book. Right after I cancelled my account for my deployment someone hacked it and set up an authenticator on it ensuring I couldn't kick them back out. It took Blizz a few days, but I now own my account again, even though I had cancelled it.