Quote Originally Posted by Tonuss View Post
If they manually removed all of the stupid shit, there would probably be five posts left anyway.

I'm ambivalent about this. It's not as if people can't find my name and info pretty easily anyway, so I'm not scared of it. That said, I doubt that I'll post in the forums, at least at first. What really irks me is the amount of misinformation being thrown around. It doesn't surprise me (this is the General WOW forum, after all, and stupidity is the rule of the day) but it's aggravating because it doesn't allow for a reasonable discussion.

On the other hand, a few of the people who are posting "my name is John Smith, do your worst" have wound up regretting it, which is funny. But all this crap about legal issues and privacy rights is being posted by people who either do not understand what Blizzard is doing or do not understand privacy rights. It's painful to read. And that's not even counting the people warning that this will lead to mass blood-letting from deranged e-stalkers.
But part of the problem is that any discussion has been very one sided. People that have said they don't like RealID for any reason have basically been told they are paranoid, Luddites, have something to hide, or wrong for a variety of other reasons. Very few people have accepted that people may just want to keep their names private because they just don't want to use their name in a game.

Now don't get me wrong, I am worried about the privacy implications of this, but I simply don't want to be forced into using my real name for features that have no technical need of my real name. Everything that RealID does in game right now could have been done with nothing more than a character name and a realm. Agree to a RealID friend request and now they can see all your characters. No need for email address, no need for real names.

Do the same on the forum. That level 1 troll now has to accept that you can see all their characters. How does knowing their real name help? If they want to troll, they will get a new account with a fake name and only one character. Nothing changes. Why should I have to share my real name to post on a forum about a fantasy world that is supposed to be separate from the real one? Hell, it's even in the TOS that doing something in the real world can not impact the game world; buying gold is the simplest of examples, but mowing someones yard for in game compensation is just as much a violation.

There is no added benefit to the end users with using their real names. Their is added benefit and revenue to both Activision-Blizzard and Facebook. You have always had the option of telling people your real name. Why would you want or need Blizzard to do that for you on a global scale?

TL;DR: I just don't want to use my real name, that should be enough.

- Souca -