No more anonymous forum trolls?

[uthas]

Get off my lawn.

[Itanya_blade]

Get off my lawn.

Squatter's rights

[Illithias]

I was going to write up another long, detailed post on my thoughts regarding the current situation, but instead I had a better idea.

I discovered the solution, you guys, and it's pretty easy.

Change your IRL name, via deed poll, to your main character's name.

And then you'll be able to keep posting on the forums without a worry.

It's brilliant.

I'll let you guys know how it goes.

[Lansiron]

This is starting to hurt even more. The more this goes on, the more legitimate concerns are raised. I have a feeling it's going to take someone actually getting hurt because of this to sway the decision--if even that will do it.

However, regarding cancellations: I would only ask that people consider how much impact that the official forums have on their enjoyment of the game as well as your ability to enjoy our thing here. It's always gonna be your call what you do with your money. Where I come from in saying this, though, is that far more than any nerf, redesign, or crazy gameplay swerve; losing this circle would kill it. I know I'm not even on as often these days, whether or not this affects the weight of my words, but to me, playing WoW is hanging with all you guys. I would imagine that's a big part of the draw for a lot of us, here.

In the meantime...hell. Continue to send feedback, contact news organizations, anything. Heh, if you can actually get them to change the name on you Bnet account to that of your main character? Do it!

[Gryphonheart]

I like how the article Beltar linked states:

Blizzard is also assuring gamers that the moderating team will be more vigilant than ever when Real ID is being implemented, trying to limit all the incidents that can arise from the use of real world names on a gaming forum with a player base as big as that of World of Warcraft.

As if moderating the forums will do anything at all to mitigate potential real-life consequences from posting when ANYONE can still read them, even if they don't have a B.net account.

[Israia]

This is starting to hurt even more. The more this goes on, the more legitimate concerns are raised. I have a feeling it's going to take someone actually getting hurt because of this to sway the decision--if even that will do it.

However, regarding cancellations: I would only ask that people consider how much impact that the official forums have on their enjoyment of the game as well as your ability to enjoy our thing here. It's always gonna be your call what you do with your money. Where I come from in saying this, though, is that far more than any nerf, redesign, or crazy gameplay swerve; losing this circle would kill it. I know I'm not even on as often these days, whether or not this affects the weight of my words, but to me, playing WoW is hanging with all you guys. I would imagine that's a big part of the draw for a lot of us, here.

In the meantime...hell. Continue to send feedback, contact news organizations, anything. Heh, if you can actually get them to change the name on you Bnet account to that of your main character? Do it!

At this point, I think for a lot of us, it's a matter of principle. I simply don't want to enable a company that can throw away the best strength of the internet- the fact that here, your argument matters, not your identity-and then try to tell me it's a good thing.

I'm really not okay with that.

[Lansiron]

I hear you, Israia; it's that for a lot of people, and from an impartial perspective, that's really how it should be. But, it sucks no less to lose people.

Musing on it further...I don't consider the forums integral to my enjoyment of the game. I can only speak for myself there, but if I'm paying the $15 a month, it's going towards the upkeep of what I still genuinely believe to be the single greatest online RPG that there is. Outside the game, the aspects of the community I really prefer to reference fall largely outside the scope of Blizzard's official site--stuff like MMO Champion, WoW.com, Elitist Jerks, numerous blogs, and of course, us here.

However, the forums could be a great resource, if care were taken to moderate it better. Coming to think of it, none of our thing would have really gotten off the ground, I don't think, if not for the early activities on the Feathermoon server board back in the day--to cite at least one good thing that's come of them.

It's going to be some time yet before the aspect of this that encompasses WoW goes live, since it's with Cataclysm's release. I'm not huge on SC2 (though not for lack of enjoyment of the game), but it's gonna be interesting to see what happens in the SC2 community, since that's what this is going to hit first.

We've not yet had the final word on things. They'll probably want to see what happens with SC2, for one. For another, I'm going to give them some benefit of the doubt in that they really do consider the feedback as important as current blue posts have stated. The response has been unanimously negative from us, fansites, and the blogosphere; even big-name news organizations are questioning it (no denying the cultural relevance of gaming), and at least one of those articles has had some vague secondhand mention that all is not in agreement on the matter within the Blizz ranks anyway. It would be truly absurd if they just tried to gloss over this.

I suspect that more information is forthcoming, but they just have yet to figure out how to formulate it. In the past, Blizzard's reps have demonstrated that they're aware that much of their audience (at least, the vocal portion, minority or not) isn't easily susceptible to PR-smokescreening and ambiguous blanket statements, so I can only hope that when we do hear more about this, they're transparent, honest, and directly address the real concerns that this announcement brought up.

[Shad]

Lans--

I appreciate what you're saying, but I think you're missing an important part of the picture. The forums are already a great resource. I would argue the forums are a large part of why this game is so great. They allow us to communicate directly with Blizzard, to have a discussion with them. The UI forum? Directly improves the game. People post there about their addons. People go get those addons. And eventually, Blizzard incorporates the best of those addons into the game. Without those forums, a lot of that won't happen, or it will be splintered. Without those forums, where do we give our opinion to Blizzard? Sure, we can write them emails. But we lose the discussion with other players. And that's important, because a million heads are better than one. Even if seven hundred fifty thousand of those heads are moronic trolls? It still makes a huge difference.

This game is awesome, and has such steadfast fans, because Blizzard took the time and effort to give us routes to be part of its creative process. By telling us that they don't care if we don't post in the forums--and they did, almost verbatim (we know some people won't post, and we're okay with that? yeah)--they're telling us they don't care if we don't participate anymore. That's what bothers me; the message that the players are no longer an important part of this game.

No longer an important part of Blizzard.

I know it's a fantasy RPG. Maybe that was just part of the fantasy. Maybe it's the corporate takeover. I don't know, and I don't really care to. All I do know is that I don't want to pay a company that will say, baldfacedly, that it doesn't care what its consumers think.

I also know I'm incredibly weak and it's making me nauseous to consider canceling my account. (I've tried several times, and either the server is overloaded or the comments box has a character max that makes the page error and reload instead of submitting. Also, the phone queue is full.) This may speak to what a good thing it is that I'll have to, or it may speak to the fact that I'll miss my characters and my friends more than I yet know.

[Aelflaed]

The comments box for canceling your account does have a character max. It may be 400 characters? it's small.

As for the rest of it? This isn't /just/ about the forums for me. It's blatantly disregarding the privacy and security of their customers in an attempt to,and I quote, "create a social gaming service that players want to use.” This isn't about making a better game. It's not about making the most awesome expansion, or Starcraft II, or Diablo III. It's about capitalizing on Facebook, and in game advertisement (yes, that too - Blizzard now has a deal with Massive (see section 16) for in game advertising as well). I don't want Facebook in my WoW. I want to, as Shades of Grey said, kill internet dragons. Because of Facebook, and possibly also because of the new Korean/Chinese posting laws, Blizzard is requiring we use our real names, and I find that utterly repulsive and irresponsible. And likely dangerous. And also minimizing to anyone who doesn't have a male, western-sounding name. (How'd you like to be a guy named Osama, or Mohammad?)

Yes, collateral damage (whatever it turns out to be) to this community will suck. But Blizzard has already stated, flat out, that they're OK with destroying community over this (we know some people will no longer post, and that's OK). This is their "vision" and it's about capitalizing on social media, attracting "casual" players to WoW, and integrating Battle.net with Facebook.

And I can't come down on that, OR on the idea that I should plaster my name all over the internet willynilly, just because someone said it'd be OK, any more strongly than to cancel my recurring subscription. Which I have done, my account will "expire" on August 14th or so, unless I re-up. Which I may still do, depending on what happens between now and then. But right now, the only thing talking is money, and the only Blizzard comment I've seen about it (outside the forums - from the link at the top "and I quote") says "we're listening, but we're going to do it anyway."

The best part is, Blizzard has also stated that RealID is just the beginning of their integration with Facebook. And I don't want to know what Step 2 is, because I have a feeling Step 2 is ????? and the end result is PROFIT (at our expense).

[Aelflaed]

Also, I can't stress highly enough how good Shades' post is - An Open Letter - if only for the INTERNET DRAGONS.