Blizzard recently announced, and then retracted, their decision to make RealID (I.E. showing your real, full name for your account, to everyone) part of the forums. There were over 2000 posts about how horrible this was and how it would ruin peoples gaming experience. My opinion is slightly different than most.
You see, I am completely for RealID on the forums, and everywhere on the internet really. We all know that the reason the WoW forums and almost the entire internet is trollish and useless is because of anonymity. You give people the ability to do and say whatever they want without any consequences or even potential consequences and they will, 99% of the time, do terrible things.
I know why people are crying out against it, and there are three reasons.
1) They like to troll. This is probably in the majority. Sure they are posting on their level 80 mains about privacy, but it’s their level 1 trolling that is compelling them to do it.
2) Right to Privacy. This one is complete trash. If you are on your own web page, then sure you have a reasonable right to privacy. If you are on a public forum, just like being in a public place, you have given up your reasonable right to privacy.
3) The Danger. People have been railing against this because if people know your real name they will hunt you down and kill you. This is utterly retarded. Plenty of people know my real full name. Most of the people I work with, most of the people I go to school with, dozens of ex-friends and ex-girlfriends, half of the people my parents know, etc. I’m not worried about any of them tracking me down and killing me, and many of them live in or around the town I am in, not halfway around the world. You know WHY I’m not worried about them trying to kill me? A few simple reasons really.
1) Murder is a crime and most people do not want to go to jail.
2) It is a lot of effort to go through and if they are that insane AND dedicated they will soon rule the world.
3) I am a nice guy. I don’t call people asstards for no apparent reason and, while at parties, I don’t jump into conversations and just call everyone douches, throw my drink at people and then run around naked.
Having my real name on the internet, or on the WoW forums, does not exponentially increase my chances of dying. Might someone die because of it? Only in the since that people die because SOMEONE built a road that he was walking on when someone mugged and killed him.
I do however understand peoples complaints that it wasn’t always a requirement, and that to require it now is wrong, since many people are addicted at this point and would keep playing even if they didn’t like the rule. I just hope that they make this mandatory for their next MMO, and for ALL MMOs in the future. I was to see [CharacterName][RealLifeName] says “….” in chat from now on. Make people deal with the things they say and do.
Manifest Pixel 