Guess I'm done posting on the official WoW forums...

[Benggal]

Starting with Cataclsym, any new posts made on the official WoW forums will be under your real name.  They say that this will cut down on flamers and trolls.  I say this will probably kill most of the activity on their forums completely.

You can get a helluva lot of information on someone from just their real name.  Even more if you have a hazy idea on their geographical location...like their IP.

So it looks like I'll be leaving that little community behind and posting more at places like MMO-Champ.  Judging from the shitstorm that's going on over there, I'm far from the only one.

[papalovebear]

Wait a moment... your real name isn't Benggal?  My real name is Papa Love Bear...  I've been dooped!

Side note: that's lame....

[Benggal]

Over 1000 pages in the thread about this on the official forums.  Over 20,000 responses.  Seriously...what the hell were they thinking?

[Benggal]

I'm pretty sure this is the longest thread ever in the official forums:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700&sid=1&pageNo=1

You won't be able to read it all.  But you'll get a general idea by scanning through.

They're really going to have to scramble to save some face here, or they probably can't reasonably expect to have enough of a player base left to make an expansion after Cataclysm.

Oh, and one of the blues posted their real name as a show of faith.  You can pretty much guess what happened after that.

[Benggal]

Scarier and scarier.

The page to cancel your account has been down for a while now...apparently it got overloaded.  There are also several reports of people waiting at least an hour on the phone to cancel their account since they're unable to through the website.

I'm hoping this is just all blown out of proportion, but there's a small portion of people, at least, who have decided this was the last straw.

[Tenkou]

Epic Fail on Blizzards part its now up to 1310 pages long

[Beorngar]

1320 and still growing rapidly. Also, still no response from a blue. Epic fail.

[Benggal]

There were one or two responses within the first few hundred pages, but they were both along the lines of "We carefully weighed the chance of us succeeding versus the chance we were doing something really stupid...and we went ahead anyway".

I kid.  They said they thought long and hard about it and are sure this is the path to take.  Which is ludicrous and makes me even more certain they're just repeating what their Activision bosses are making them tell us.

Ah well, like I said before, I won't be quitting the game...I just won't be posting on their forums anymore.  Of course this means you might see more posts from me here asking for Tech help. :P

[Beorngar]

As long as they dont attach your name to the armory. You can't opt out of your amory information. Remember, when RealID first got patched in, that they said that you should only give it to friends and people you trust. Now this announcement about you not being able to post unless you use your real name. Doesn't sound right at all to me.

[Benggal]

That's pretty much been the point of contention from the start.  If it's not optional, it shouldn't be in there.  Of course they say it's optional to post on the boards...

And yes, if my real name became automatically linked with the armory or just generally made public without my permission, then there will be a class-action lawsuit forming with me at or near the front.  I don't think their legal department would let them get away with that, though.  They'd pay through the nose.  At least with the forum-thing you have to give consent when you try to make a post.

[Beorngar]

True. All good points Ben. I hope everyone in the guild is following this news. The implications/ramifications could be huge.

[Benggal]

My wife does not play at all, but she was kind of curious after I mentioned this to her, so she googled it later and read some posts on the European WoW forums.  She finds it irresponsible and appalling as well.  I've heard a few news outlets have posted a couple articles online about it as well.

[papalovebear]

I don't think it's just WoW either.  Isn't it Diablo, Starcraft, etc?

[Benggal]

When SC2 comes out, it'll be used on those forums.  When Cata hits, it'll be the WoW forums.  I think we can assume that when D3 comes out it'll be in practice there as well.  There was some mention that you would have to use your RealID to play online SC2 matches, but I think that's just a rumor.

[papalovebear]

In the beta you don't have to.  But their new patch I heard you could use your real name if you wanted but I understood it more as in the game your name is your avatar type name but on your friendlist people can add and find you by your real name.