BBC News - World of Warcraft maker to end anonymous forum logins
I know I'll get some boos and hisses for posting a story about Video Games in breaking news but I know there are a number of players on the forum, over 11 million world wide, and I think this may be a negative trend that starts heading elsewhere.
For those that don't know Blizzard, the makers of WOW, are coming out with a highly anticipated game called Starcraft II in the next few months as well as the first major expansion in a few years for the highly successful World of Warcraft with an additional game from their other successful franchise (Diablo) set to launch sometime in the near future. In preparation for all this they have moved to a universal login called "RealID" that would allow someone access to any of the games they own when signing into an online account.
No real issues there, nice and convenient.
However, the recent news that is making headlines not just in gaming blogs like Kotaku and Joystiq but even on the BBC is that they're going to be using their RealID system to display peoples real name on their forums.
Now, the argument for this from some is that its a private company and forum whose usage is a privileged. On the flip side of this WOW is not a one time payment system but a continuous subscription with benefits, one of which is supposed to be ability to use the forums. More so the forums are not "optional" if one needs customer support, technical support, bug reporting, and other relatively common functions of gaming customer service. This creates an issue where to even be able to properly report an issue with the game one must sacrifices their private identity to the viewing of every other person playing the game with them.
Unlike a situation like Facebook which also has real names displayed, this is not something you can choose who gets to see it. Additionally one must take into account the interaction that's going on. Like most things on the internet forum discussions can get extremely heated. However add to that a game where much of it is predicated off the notion of interacting, if not fighting against, other real people and you have numerous situations where emotions can take over far more than would be likely from a closed in facebook account.
Blizzard suggests this is to reduce the amount of "trolls" on their forums, hoping to shame them into not trolling by showing their real name. However, accusations are of a more commercial nature. Activision/Blizzard recently signed an agreement with Facebook that would allow for information swapping, thus giving the potential for significant advertising benefits by matching ones real ID to ones facebook account to generate data to use as an incentive to sell targeted advertisements for significant gains. Additionally South Korea recently made a law requiring online communities of over 100,000 people that operate in SK to have to show a users real name. Youtube was the first to be challenged with this and ended up blocking SK posters from making comments until they relieved an exception. Its unlikely Blizzard would do such a thing as SK makes up a significant market base for their upcoming Starcraft II release. The more than a decade old original Starcraft is still played routinely in SK, to the point that there are professional leagues there for it. So it appears to many that the suggested "stop trolling" argument is simply a cover for the company putting peoples privacy in jeapordy in exchange for further profit.
The question is how ethical is this, how legal is this, how likely is it to cause problems, and is this a sign of things to come. Will a greater move to remove anonymity from the internet be made over the next decade, tearing down the 4th wall between the user and cyber space?
To me this reeks of a horrendous idea. With a user base as large and varied as WOW mixed with the potential for heated situations you significantly increase the chance for essentially real life griefing. There are undoubtedly players now that have zero qualms with griefing players that have PVP'ed them, pissed them off on the forum, won an item they wanted, took a kill they were trying for, etc. What percentage of these type of people will take the opportunity to take it a step further if the ability to get the name of the person who earned your ire is readily and easily available?
