These Circuits Run on Booze

UPDATE 09/07/2010: Unsurprisingly, Blizzard has retracted their plans to use real names on the forums, but it sounds like they will still have some kind of unique identifier for their posters (something about a character code?) The post announcing the decision can be found here.

Blizzard announced 2 days ago that, as a part of their new RealID program, all posts on the official Blizzard boards (that includes the World of Warcraft boards, Starcraft boards, etc.) will have the poster’s real name attached to them.

Ever since, the Internet has been thrown into a torrent of rage. People left and right are complaining about Blizzards decision, calling them irresponsible, short-sighted, and claiming that they are doing their fans a huge disservice.

As proof of their point, people have dug up the information on one of the “blues” (a Blizzard employee) who had posted the announcement of the new change. And began citing stories of people who were hurt or murdered because of beef they had with someone in-game.

And people wonder why it’s still not cool to call yourself a gamer.

Probably because we all look like this guy, right?

Regardless of whether you think RealID is a good idea or not, what did digging up personal information on that Blizzard employee prove? Well, mostly, that WoW is populated by a bunch of dicks (though that should come as no surprise to anyone that has played the game). What did that employee do to you that you had to retaliate by posting their information that they may or may not have wanted shared?

But I digress. The point of this post today is not to expose the true nature of these players, as they have made that point extremely clear by themselves. The point is to examine whether of not this new forum change is as big a deal as people are making it out to be.

On the one hand, with the Battle.net merger, and now the RealID, it’s pretty clear that Blizzard wants to position Battle.net as a social network for its players. And really, if you think of it this way, it’s not a big deal at all.

I’d wager that many WoW players already have Facebook accounts, which already takes it one step further and includes a picture as well as their name, gender, hometown, etc. Do people regularly knock down your door and do terrible things to you because you had listed on Facebook that you’re LGBT, or because you’re a different race, because you posted something that was in support of a particular politician, or because you’re a girl? I’d like to imagine that as being highly unlikely. If, because of this change, you’re getting unsolicited, unprovoked visits from your fellow WoW players, then what does that say about the WoW community, which only has a measly ~11 million people compared to Facebook’s ~500 million?

On the other hand, it just may provoke silly behaviour that a minority of the Internet have proved prone to. Shunning, name-calling, teasing, and other such childish antics typically found on the playground of an elementary school. While none of these things are particularly dangerous, it can be just downright annoying. However, it may also give rise to the infinitely more harmful act of stalking, which has happened before, but this change coupled with the fact that many people are downright irresponsible with their personal information on the Internet may just make those predators’ jobs easier.

Probably one of the biggest reasons why RealID was introduced was to reduce the amount of griefing between players and trolling on the forums, and that is completely understandable, but will ultimately prove to be laughably ineffective. Exposing their names will not make those trolls explode into polite, friendly and civil banter. While there may now be an added risk to being a giant douche on the WoW forums, most people just don’t care enough to stop. But I do want to say this: if you are going to be an asshole, be it in the game, or in the forums, you are giving people a reason to hate you, to dig up information on you and use it against you. The old adage “You reap what you sow”.” holds very true here. If your are nice and civil, the probability of people looking up your address and leaving a bloody Murloc’s head in your bed goes dramatically down.

That being said, maybe Blizzard can compromise with the players and perhaps display the player’s first name only or a first name with a last initial could suffice. It still accomplishes the task of uniquely identifying posters, it makes it that much more difficult to find more personal information about said poster.

The bottom line, however, is this: Blizzard doesn’t owe its players anything. The players pay for a service, and Blizzard provides that service. If something changes in that service that you don’t like, speak with your wallet and quit. Blizzard has no responsibility to protect your first and last names, much like how Facebook, Google, and Twitter has no responsibility to remove things you may not want seen. If enough people did this, maybe Blizzard will listen, If they don’t listen, then at the very least you’ve protected yourself.