Blizzard reverses decision to display real names on official forums

Quote from: Nethaera (Source)
Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.c...ut/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment

Comments

  • #1
    I'll give Blizzard credit for listening to their players--at least when it's an overwhelming majority. :)
  • #2
    Players 1 - Blizzard (or Bobby Kotick, whichever you prefer) 0
  • #3
    They just saved a nice chunk of their customers from quitting.
  • #4
    Trolls win.....
  • #5
    Yes, that would have been certain death, especially with all the hacking going on!
  • #6
    Cogzwell; in the forums right now the trolls do not win. Yes they troll but are ignored for the most part. The real names would not have fixed that in that many of the trolls are playing on bought accounts. It was an incredibly stupid move on Blizzard part just to attempt as assine as real ID. It would have caused more Identity thefts which are already as epidemic levels. Don't like a troll report them. Blizzard already has rules in place for that. I just wish GhostCrawler would have grown some balls and apologized himself. Wish he would have stayed with his major, studying fish.
  • #7
    You guys might wanna think about this in a different light:

    It's not Blizz that wanted the RealID thing, it's Activision that does. Blizz doesn't have the power to change this part of the plan, only implement it. For them to be able to do this--keep some privacy on the RealID thing--this shows they never wanted it to be a nudist about it in the first place.

    This is actually showing that Activision is re-thinking the RealID plans they have right now. (You'd think they won't just limit it to Blizz-only games, will they?)
  • #8
    So how did you come to the conclusion that it's all because of Activision, not Blizzard? O-o
  • #9
    I'm not gonna repost what I found out, but a friend of mine has a friend who also worked over in Blizz, and even though lips are sealed, they were not very happy about the way RealID was going to work, according to this friend.

    Let's leave it at here as a bad descion made by Activion (who owns Blizzard, BTW,) and that it's a victory for us.
  • #10
    Activision makes the corporate policys.

    My guess is Gamestop and Amazon called and wanted to know why thousands of customers had just canceled their pre-orders. Pissing off your customers pisses off your distributors too.
  • #33
    My guess is the 70 pages worth of gripes about RealID was the reason they called this off lol.
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