Archive for the ‘Real ID’ Category

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman Gamer scorned.

In 1697, when William Congrave wrote that memorable quote in his play, “The Mourning Bride”, he obviously didn’t include the part about gamers nor did he have us in mind. But the events of this week that began on Tuesday when community managers of the World of Warcraft forums announced in the forums that sometime shortly before Cataclysm (WoW’s 3rd expansion) goes live, a new forum system was going to be implemented in which people who choose to post on the forums will be required to do so using their Real ID which for most people is their real life first and last name. And while I’m sure that the brains that run Blizzard Entertainment expected some amount of blow back I don’t think they necessarily expected the hate bomb that exploded over what many saw as a huge violation of their privacy rights. Apparently Blizzard hadn’t been paying any attention to the rage that Facebook caused with it’s huge privacy violations.

In just over 3 days from the time of the announcement, the forum thread had reached nearly 50,000 posts, the vast majority of which were highly critical of the upcoming change.

Now, I understand what Blizzard was trying to do. The official World of Warcraft forums have earned a legitimate reputation for being an untamed wilderness of hate, flame wars, and trolling, as well has being highly unwelcoming to new players to the game.

How ever, there are very legitimate concerns about having your identity exposed to the cesspool of the internet, and doubly so when you tie it to game that can and has driven people to the emotional edge.

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