Real ID edges its way into Blizzard Forums

[Loopah]

Blizzard will now be using their subscriber's First and Last name to represent their forum posts on Blizzard forums.

What's your take on this?

I can think of an obvious pro right off the bat. Hopefully less trolling. At the same time I can see this idea being quickly withdrawn by Blizzard as the hate mail piles up.[INDENT][COLOR=#3366ff]Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - http://www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the ne... Read the full article...

[Cel]

You saw what I said in IRC, I don't disagree with their motives at all, but there are potential legal ramifications to this and a whole lot of backlash.

In the end they have everything to lose and very little to gain by sticking with this as a company, I find it very unlikely they won't end up backing down in the face of lawsuits. They could even potentially end up being charged as an accessory to a more severe crime if someone uses that information to harm another person.

[Kinetic]

I hope Blizzard stands firm on this and that it spreads around the industry. Time for these Ritalin-fueled 13 year olds to learn that they can't just go running their mouth without consequences.

[Demolition]

And what happens when the child snatchers realize with a few bucks spent on Blizzards game they can have the real name of thousands of 13 year old kids to choose from Kinetic? Would you want your boy or girl's name readily available for someone to do a search on the net for your address and snatch him/her up?

I am strongly against using Real names. Aliases are great for protecting the person behind the computer from abuse. Even if the lil shit uses it to his advantage to make an ass of himself.

[Kinetic]

You've got to have a REALLY unique name to be found in real life on a forum that serves the entire North American continent, unless you've been very stupid and shared information and/or pictures publicly. At that point, as is usually the case with stuff like this, the parents are the ones that are falling down on their job of teaching their children how to protect themselves.

I think it is far more likely that people who live very close to each other and didn't realize it will have confrontations of some sort when they figure out that the annoying shit always trolling their posts goes to their school or something of that nature.

I'm also really looking forward to someone named Chris.Hansen showing up on the forums looking for dates.

[Talifey]

We hated it on SC2.

It's completely MEH on WoW.

And its absolutely retarded on forums.

Might reduce the level 1 alts posting, but we'll probably just see an upswing in people posting on their sisters account or something stupid. Trolling won't go away, at all. People who were dicks will still be dicks. Just a lame attempt to cash in on social networking.

Gamers like handles, we've had handles for the last 15 years, if we like someone they get your email or messenger, if we really like them WE decide to give them names/photos/addresses whatever. I don't see any reason to take ANY of that decision making out of the gamers hands. I don't wear my drivers license on my shirt like a name tag, I don't see why I should have my name plastered all over blizzard forums and their games.

It's, just, dumb.

[Demolition]

You've got to have a REALLY unique name to be found in real life on a forum that serves the entire North American continent, unless you've been very stupid and shared information and/or pictures publicly. At that point, as is usually the case with stuff like this, the parents are the ones that are falling down on their job of teaching their children how to protect themselves.

I think it is far more likely that people who live very close to each other and didn't realize it will have confrontations of some sort when they figure out that the annoying shit always trolling their posts goes to their school or something of that nature.

I'm also really looking forward to someone named Chris.Hansen showing up on the forums looking for dates.

http://www.pipl.com

I put JUST my first and last name in there... Knowing my ingame name I was able to narrow down the list of people with my name to me in an instance...

Try it, you'd be surprised just how easy it is to locate yourself on the internet now days...

[spyd]

http://www.pipl.com

I put JUST my first and last name in there... Knowing my ingame name I was able to narrow down the list of people with my name to me in an instance...

Try it, you'd be surprised just how easy it is to locate yourself on the internet now days...

Didn't find anything on my name, and it's pretty common

[Cel]

Found me pretty easily, including an offer of a background check that showed previous cities/states lived in just on the tooltip.

[Kinetic]

Didn't find anything on myself at all. Not even anything close. Maybe you guys with criminal records are just easier to track.

[Kinetic]

Back to the main point, I guess my opinion on this is somewhat skewed because of my Blizzard forum usage. On occasion I will read a Blizzard forum, and all the asshats are extremely obnoxious. On the other hand, I have not posted to a Blizzard forum since back in my WoW days, and even those posts were in the Doomhammer section so they were not read by the "general" crowd.

I will note however that posts on the server specific forums back then seemed to usually stay much more civil because people knew who you were in game, what guild you were with, etc etc. Having the Drow tag show up in a thread also convinced people to not act like asshats because any Alliance people posting had the eventual goal of trying to join. Do I think real names will have this same effect? No. Do I see what Blizzard was going for? Yes.

To sum up, I think Blizzard is just a little early to the party. Five to ten years from now, the social stuff will be so intertwined into everything that we would laugh at this discussion.

[Tivia]

Sorry, as someone with a fairly unique name I am going to disagree with you Kinetic. There are far easier and better ways to deal with the trolls and forum tards then forcing real names and causing a very real security issue for far more people. I want the choice to be able to offer certain people my real name, I do not want it given out.

The real thing that bothers me is the potential to lose job potential as a result of it. Before you laugh, no one thought work places would poke around peoples face book pages and yet that happened. This is a very real threat to working professionals who simply want to have a hobby that is not playing golf, football or sitting in a bar. There remain far too many people who have a completely irrational stereotype when it comes to gamers. I have avoided facebook and all other social networking sites for years, I don't want that crap crammed down my throat.

I have had an alias as a gamer since the early 90's, I am not interested in giving that up. This is a bad idea, a bad decision and it is going to end up costing Blizzard heavily. Whoever proposed this idea honestly needs to be fired for being a complete retard.

[Talifey]

This is fantastic:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...d=1&pageNo=882
People decided to show a blue poster just what you can find out by just knowing someones name on the internet...address! Phone! Pictures! facebook (which he had to delete...) Absolutely brilliant.

[nyke]

Well in all honesty this is the future of social networking. They should just display the first name and last initial.

[Kinetic]

This is fantastic:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...d=1&pageNo=882
People decided to show a blue poster just what you can find out by just knowing someones name on the internet...address! Phone! Pictures! facebook (which he had to delete...) Absolutely brilliant.

Lol!