WoW Forum announcement: Here
Battle.net full post: Here
Today it was announced that they would be changing the forums to show poster's real life names (first and last). Currently there's 500+ pages on the WoW forum announcement and more pages are added as we speak. The links in the beginning of this post will pretty much explain what i'm talking about. I won't be quoting the announcement since it was rather long! This is mostly a rant and my personal opinion about it. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, yes? =P
Blizzard quote from Bashiok
This seems ok. I currently track 25 man progression on my realm forum and if this wasn't in place I would cancel it and tell someone to take over and give them the format, etc. I'd also be working on deleting my past posts. >.> Will I still be posting when this comes into place? No.
One important point which I don't believe has been relayed yet is that the switch to showing RealID on the forums will only happen with the new forum systems we're launching for StarCraft II shortly before its release, and a new forum system for World of Warcraft launching shortly before the release of Cataclysm.
All posts here on the current World of Warcraft forums, or any of our classic Battle.net forums, will remain as-is. They won't (and can't) automatically switch to showing a real first and last name.
All posts in the future on the new forum systems will be an opt-in choice and ample warning will be given that you're posting with your real first and last name.
I apologize again about this rant post, I really do. This isn't something I approve of. The Real ID in game seemed ok because you were in control of who you're friends with and also if you use it in the first place. This doesn't seem like a good idea at all. People have posted about how people can get your real life information just by knowing your first and last name (posts were deleted immediately). This is a game forum; there's absolutely no need for our full names to be displayed each time we post.
I really hope this doesn't go through but if it does, I won't be posting anymore. What ever happened to not releasing real life info on the forums? The forum rules basically stated if a poster distributed real life info about another player it would result in a ban - proof.Done ranting so.. TL;DR - I'm not really fond of the idea from what i've read so far and I really don't want this to be implemented on the forums. I'm not the only one who sees this to be a bad thing, right?
I was banned from the official forums a long time ago so this doesn't really effect me, but I still do not approve of this change. RealID was made for people to keep in touch with their real life friends, not tell people on a gaming forum who exactly they are.
ReplyDeleteBlizzard said the reason they're doing this is to cleanup the forums of trolling and flaming, Blizzard wouldn't need to do this if they properly moderated their forums. The only time Blizzard moderates their forums at all is when they post a major change to the game or otherwise and know that they will receive a lot of forum attention.
Take a look at MMOChampion.com forums, they're much cleaner, granted its a much smaller community, but the moderators there are unpaid volunteers, Blizzard is a multi-million dollar company capable of hiring lots of forum moderators.
...wow, talk about a rant, sorry about that.
It's fine, I feel exactly the same way. XD I really don't see why real life names need to be on forums though, it's just going to cause issues. My name is pretty unique but thankfully nothing comes up about me when I google it. Still kind of worried though since people used specific websites to find info on people >.<
ReplyDeleteHopefully with the negative feedback they won't implement this. /cross fingers!