Now, I am not all that paranoid of a person, but the new Real ID Blizzard forum announcement just reinforces the fact that I have no plans on ever posting on the WoW forums ever again. All though I am not overly concerned about my real identity there are many WoW players who are and with good reason out of concern for their profession, their families or out of concern for internet stalking: Military personal, medical professionals, legal professionals, government workers.
First of all: I do like and have always liked the idea that all relevant characters on a single account should be visible on any forum post from that same account. Though there are a couple of good gems on the WoW forums most of that shit is either a level 1 trolling or a level 80 trolling about the level 1 not posting on their level 80. If you are that ashamed to post on your main just don’t post it at all.
But that said, I definitely do not feel comfortable with having my real identity attached with my forum account. I have always made some sort of an effort to keep a division between my personal life, my professional life and my gaming life. I am already iffy on Real ID’s in general but this change just steps way over the creepy line. It is unrealistic and I hope Blizzard realizes that sooner than later.
I would have very much preferred if the ID’s were based off of a global avatar, linking your WoW alts and gaming accounts together while retaining anonymity in regards to your real identity. Since it is probably not all that feasible to have several million people picking unique avatars all at once with out uuuh some collusion occurring, what about binding your Real ID name to an existing gaming character? Like for example, Keiya <Proudmoore>. I wouldn’t mind that being my ID across all Blizzard games. There needs to be some sort of middle ground to prevent trolling, something between what we have now and what is proposed.
Edit: Since posting this, Blizzard has responded to a couple of concerns. Article at WoW.com. Also, can we blame Facebook? I am sure that the extreme rise in Facebook usage is at least partially responsible for this decision be it direct or indirect.