Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Official Forums

You are talking about Facebook and Myspace. Well on FB my data is protected. Noone sees it, until i add them to friend list. The reason of complaining right now is that if i want to share something on forums with people i PLAY online, why i must tell them my real name. Maby should i tell them my adress? If i wanted so, i would do it myself. One day they will show you'r real name and credit card data to everyone, if they do this right now.

bad idea from blizz personally i couldnt give a shit but giving the choice id rather they wouldnt

that thread is full of rage.
I approve.

Thank god for MMO-Champion forums.

Blizzard has officially gone completely insane.

Originally Posted by Airbuster

Well if you ask me we all just want to live our lives our way so blizz should give us a option to switch between the two......

They are. You are not forced to post on their forums.

Either way I believe this whole thing is a stupid idea.
While probably effective against retards and other trolls it will make
many quality posters leave the forums.

Waiting on home made video of a warcraft player outside that blues house....

I mean SOMEONE has to live near the guy, and I'm pretty sure a video of them talking to his mom would really hit home for the blues.

Some of us have "professional" lives that we like to keep separate from gaming. I'm not some kid. I'm not a troll. Believe it or not, because of this there are going to be people who once provided legitimate advice/opinions who are now going to stop posting.

The scary thing for me is that my profession is licensed and my employer has a prominent website. Do I want people putting my name up on a global forum where everyone can google me, find my license, where I live, and where I work, simply because I wanted to give gear advice, etc. to someone on my realm's forums?

I rarely ever post on the blizzard forumns but once in a blue moon i do. I've never partaken in flames or trolling or any of that sort of thing but to have my real first and last name posted on the forums really bothers me. There are privacy and security issues around that in my opinion. Additionally the one major thing about WOW is that it allows us to escape the real world and become our characters... unfortunately some peoples alter egoo is a forum troll. I will never post on blizzards forums while they have this in place which means I'll have a much harder time getting support from them and the community. This truly is a poor move on Blizzards part despite their good intentions.

Awesome, changing my IRL name to Blizzard Nerfrogues!

Originally Posted by Pitchkart

Another reason Blizz should allow you to designate a nickname on your RealID, instead of letting everyone and their grandma, now, see your full name.

This is the greatest win for the PRC - no longer will they need their 25 million-man haxx0r army for attempts to brute-force hack WOW accounts; now, they need only perform a few simple searches on ancestry.com to get a last element they needed to steal accounts... and identities.

This... Is a bad idea. I'm shocked Blizzard is even considering it honestly. The RealID thing, in and of itself, annoyed me slightly, but was really not that big of a deal. I only share my RealID with people I like/trust who almost universally knew my name anyway. This essentially links my name to my opinions on a game to every person on the Internet and to search engines. I don't want potential employers judging me on my opinions about about the latest Rogue poison changes. I don't troll (really, check my post history if you want), but I don't want everyone knowing my every opinion on every subject.

If your name is Bob Jones, this is probably less of a concern, but my name is really uncommon. My first name is a somewhat uncommon British name, and my surname is an extremely uncommon Slavic name. I doubt there's more than two or three people in the US that share my name, and it may very well be unique. At any rate, searching for my name in quotes produces absolutely nothing that was not generated by me, or written about me, for the first 6 pages of results.

(No I don't regularly Google my name, but I did just now to verify the information above)

don't bother posting on wow forums for the reasons they state but still DO NOT WANT

I think for fan sites like MMO-Champion this is a good change. People like me, who are aware of privacy issues and who do not want their professional career to be tainted by a hobby (I don't really want my customers to know that I play WoW), will not continue to post on the official forum.

In over five years of playing, today is the first time I'm posting outside the official forums, actually (as far as WoW is concerned). Perhaps that is the idea, though, as it shifts the traffic and the responsibility to moderate to the fan sites, and reduces Blizzard's maintenance costs.

heck, first time poster

long time reader...

i figured i may as well start now cuz of you know what

The Cake munching Champ of Azeroth, Does not aprove of this :S

Waiting for the "Rate the RL above you" Threads

I really think this is a poor idea.

All the people that don't mind can keep posting. Considering Blizz initial reply, they will ignore 98% of the feedback being negative and go through with it anyway.

I for one have already prooven to someone on WoW once that I could find out where they lived, just by their last name and making inquiries to the surroundings and putting together pieces from old posts. Though time-consuming, (depending on the clues left) its not that hard. And believe me that 'trained' stalkers will have no problem in doing this more efficiently.

Alot of people have pretty common names, although first/last name combo becomes more uncommon. There are plenty of people that have pretty unique names all around the world. Googling my real name will result in certain sites, which is ok since only people who know me will try this.

I don't fancy random people being able to google me by first+last name and finding out anything about me that they might be able to use for obscure practices of any sort.

I think everyone that doesn't mind should respect the wish many people have for privacy for whatever reasons. Not everyone is a troll and trolls will still find all manner of ways to troll whilst staying anonymous.

Regardless, looking at the US forum post, hundreds of people (if not thousands) are canceling their sub and 98% of the reactions are negative and indicating they will stop posting if they didn't stop playing already, by the time this change goes live. I think thats a good indication to the fact the forums will become pretty dead and a paradise for perhaps slightly ignorant people who don't see harm in showing their names, and people with ultrageneric names and those with ill-intend watching.

This doesn't matter to me. It will stop the trolls. I have nothing offensive or inflammatory to say so I don't mind having my real name posted when I respond to things on the forums.
However I do think this whole thing could have been handled in a better way by simply giving every account a username and then that username is the one that is seen instead of the real life name of the person. This eliminates people posting troll posts on lvl 1 toons just to avoid infant reprecutions for there unintelligent childish tantrums.
I would even rather have a username shown for my real I'D friends in game.
But whatever it's their game so I will play by their rules. Maybe this whole thing is just a way to weed out the bad seeds or something. Lol

Originally Posted by Avantgarde

solution for starcraft II buyers:

1. make a new battle.net account
2. find a cool rl-name like "Robert Kotick"
3. post on starcraft II forum

Damn, I´ll have to buy another authenticator.

There´s something SERIOUSLY wrong with the decision makers at Blizzard not respecting their customers privacy.