Update - Added a clarification, your real name will not show up on old forum posts. It will only be displayed on the new forum system.

Oh and since a few people asked, now, I have absolutely no plan to do that on MMO-Champion forums. (And that's not sarcasm, I really don't like the idea of real names on a gaming forum)

Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Forums
Your real name will be displayed on the official forums now. You'd better think twice before you troll a bunch of angry ... trolls.
[blizzquote author=Nethaera source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/25712374700/battle-net-update-upcoming-changes-to-forums/]Recently, we introduced our new Real ID feature - www.battle.net/realid/ , a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players -- however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

We also plan to add a number of other features designed to make reading the forums more enjoyable and to empower players with tools to improve the quality of forum discussions. Players will have the ability to rate up or rate down posts so that great topics and replies stand out from the not-so-great; low-rated posts will appear dimmer to show that the community feels that they don’t contribute effectively to the conversation, and Blizzard’s community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

In addition, individual topics will be threaded by context, meaning replies to specific posts will be grouped together, making it easier for players to keep track of multiple conversations within a thread. We’re also adding a way for Blizzard posters to “broadcast” important messages forums-wide , to help communicate breaking news to the community in a clear and timely fashion. Beyond that, we’re improving our forum search function to make locating interesting topics easier and help lower the number of redundant threads, and we have more planned as well.

With the launch of the new Battle.net, it’s important to us to create a new and different kind of online gaming environment -- one that’s highly social, and which provides an ideal place for gamers to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships. All of our design decisions surrounding Real ID -- including these forum changes -- have been made with this goal in mind.

We’ve given a great deal of consideration to the design of Real ID as a company, as gamers, and as enthusiastic users of the various online-gaming, communication, and social-networking services that have become available in recent years. As these services have become more and more popular, gamers have become part of an increasingly connected and intimate global community – friendships are much more easily forged across long distances, and at conventions like PAX or our own BlizzCon, we’ve seen first-hand how gamers who may have never actually met in person have formed meaningful real-life relationships across borders and oceans. As the way gamers interact with one another continues to evolve, our goal is to ensure Battle.net is equipped to handle the ever-changing social-gaming experience for years to come.

For more info on Real ID, check out our Real ID page and FAQ located at http://www.battle.net/realid/ . We look forward to answering your questions about these upcoming forum changes in the thread below. [/blizzquote]
[blizzquote author=Bashiok source=http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/25712374700/battle-net-update-upcoming-changes-to-forums/]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. [/blizzquote]
This article was originally published in forum thread: Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Forums started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 2071 Comments
  1. Gihon's Avatar
    Being that I'm a high school teacher, with an extremely unique name, Blizzard has just guaranteed that I'll never use their forums again.
  1. mmoc433ceb40ad's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Imaginary View Post
    This is a great change.
    Wait until I Pizzabomb you for wanting to Nerf my class.


    I was going to complain about this feature too, until I noticed that I already used my real life name here -_-
  1. Deos's Avatar
    Is this some king of sick joke? The forums will be dead. May as well close them altogether. Not only the trolls will stop posting but also any kind of pepople intelligent enough to never share their real name with GOOGLE and WHOLE THE -WIDE- INET in relations to entertainment like online games and its subculture. This is insane. The only people would stay are clueless housewives, kids, etc which is not any better than trolls and would bring zero value to forums. Or people would try and never use real names in their accounts anymore causing all the kind of issues for themselves and blizzard.

    What the heck. The answer to combat trolls is dumb-easy. Make so that you can see all the posts made from that ACCOUNT, that would kill trolls just as good but leave HEALTHY anonymity.

    Whole the real-id shit was unnecessary, unasked, stupid, for no other reasons but advertising, but this has gone too far. I hope people will give blizzard a whole meaning of flame hell and whatever snake came up with the ridiculous idea will crawl back into the mud hole it came from.

    Man, and here i heard people complainign that real-id would put them in danger of RL harassments already.. They would probably cancel subs now Blizzard is f'n gone insane..
  1. Tsimp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Swizzle View Post
    and? if i actually cared or was worried, i wouldn't have it listed. could it be that i really doubt someone is going to take the time and effor to find a random dude from a forum about a MMO? possibly. could it be that i know that i could probably handle anyone who WOULD try and come after me? highly likely.
    lol kk bro, but when you start getting mail and phone calls from gold sellers, don't go crying to blizzard...
  1. anti-wow's Avatar
    Bye trolls.
  1. Konkwista's Avatar
    Considering that ive been banned from the forums for 3+ years for making 1 post that broke none of the rules, doesnt really affect me lol.
  1. rkma's Avatar
    This is going to be a huge disaster. I'll get the popcorn.
  1. Tactical's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Ansible View Post
    For all the people who are scared of their first and last name being made public, go Google your name. There are over 6 billion people in the world.

    YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN THE WORLD WITH THAT NAME.

    And even if do have some one of a kind name, there's not a whole lot you can do with it. We know plenty of celebrity names and quite a few of the blizzard developers names, and nothings happening to them.


    Every person who is complaining about this change is just upset that they won't be able to troll anymore.


    Oh and my name is Bob O'Connor, get at me.

    Nearly every link on the first 2 pages when you google my name refers to me. REALID on the wow forums? No thanks. You'll be losing another veteran poster.
  1. frott's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by dotSeed View Post
    Stop posting shit that's associated with your real name then. When there are actual repercussions for posting things five year olds would find childish, maybe the tone of conversations will rise above that of a goddamn cesspit.

    Worst comes to worst, you stop using the official forums. There are plenty of other places to discuss WoW.

    This goes against your point. My real name is attached to business information that is publicly available if you dig for a few minutes, but is secure via obscurity. If you type my name into a search engine to "look me up" you find castlevania strats from 15 years ago, amazon.com reviews, and all of my contact information for my current job, not to mention hundreds more which again if you look hard enough end up with white pages directories that have address/phone numbers and links to family members.

    Now please explain why I would ever want those connections open to a public viewing pool of millions?

    If the community was so fucking immature in the first place that mommy blizzard decided this was a good idea, who the hell will use it? They already have account stealing running rampant, an authenticator that actually locks the user OUT of their account since the people stealing it know how to get around it, and one of the largest toilet forums on the net. So now doing this will give them LESS headaches?

    Sorry but this move has squarely put them as the laughing stock of the modern era. Being one of the largest websites in the world bears a bit of responsibility in asserting standardization, and OpenID and other protocols are much more secure and maintain privacy... not this garbage.
  1. Tyrianth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Nyn View Post
    You people are MAJORLY unimaginative.

    Do you KNOW what Social Engineering is? All I have to do is engage you in a conversation and get your reveal ANYTHING about yourself that helps me zero in on which Aaron Poulin you are. Are you the one from New York that lives at 239 Broad St.? Are you the one in school in Arizona? How's the weather in Memphis? And I didn't even really try. Seriously, the only way to put less effort into what I did, would have been to not do it at all.

    And there is MUCH more than Google for tracking people down.
    You see, if your so concerned about your anonymity you wouldn't be revealing anything about yourself to an online stranger. And just an FYI, I'm not any of those Aarons.
  1. MusikDisaster's Avatar
    I despise trolls and have no issue with people seeing my real name, but this is a little out of hand.
  1. Tsimp's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Gihon View Post
    Being that I'm a high school teacher, with an extremely unique name, Blizzard has just guaranteed that I'll never use their forums again.
    Nice, the great Gatsby avatar makes since now... Senior English?
  1. Fujisaw's Avatar
    [QUOTE=krasgoth;8259111]The only people who could possibly be against this change are as follows:

    - douchebag forum trolls.
    - Internet privacy nutjobs.
    - people with a bad Internet rep.

    real trolls still wont care and just demote your posts to piss you off anyways
  1. volescue's Avatar
    Why don't they just start being stricter on no-trolling rules? They can suspend/ban your account from the forums. Do it enough and people will finally learn and stop doing it.
  1. molinator's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by sicness View Post
    Except this is exactly why they want to implement this. They want new players to visit the forums and not be intimidated by jackasses who have nothing better to do than make fun of them. The official forums will no longer be a breeding ground for anonymous trolls and flamers so find your entertainment elsewhere.
    Yeah it'll just be breeding ground for stalkers and murderers.

    A FINE EXCHANGE.
  1. Demoncrash's Avatar
    Real Name --> Google --> Facebook account --> Photo --> Photoshop --> 4chan.

    What could possibly go wrong?
  1. Doddilus's Avatar
    meh, you get a lot more results on google that are me by typing in my user name than my real name.
  1. Draquiden's Avatar
    Worst....Idea....Ever!!!!
  1. Arklay's Avatar
    you guys know that if you don't post at all on the forums, your real name will remain anonymous?
    no one will have to read your crap and you won't get killed
    everyone winz
  1. Sammonoske's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Sakashima View Post
    I suggest those of you who dislike this put your name or email into Spokeo.com so you can see the reality of how much of your information is probably already on the internet. You think these WoW forum changes are bad somehow? Most of you clearly have no idea how much of your information is already accessible to the masses.
    According to that site I don't exist, yet. I am happy.

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