You will share your name!

Blizzard Activision has just announced that their forums will be linked to their REAL ID system.

Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

Up until now, the REAL ID system was plugged by the Warcraft crowd as a useful tool to keep track of real friends/family while in game.  But now that this system it shows that the tracking system is all pervasive and the perfect opportunity.  The perfect opportunity to live in the future that businessmen such as Mr. Jesse Schell, and others in the tech world, would like us to bend over and take with a smile.

In true California Business Plan fashion the company direction is dressed in faux concerns, such as preventing trolls.  Which is a bunch of pure bullshit.

Obviously the opt-in push for this program was not as successful as Blizzard Activision planned it would be.  At least certainly not enough people signed up for it in order to make it feasible as a marketing cash crop.  So the company needed another way to push Real Id, and that was the forum angle.  Most say that the forums represent a small portion of the Warcraft player base.  But truthfully I don't believe that, not if the company thought it was a large enough linchpin to get the Real Id program started.  As players have repeatedly pointed out on Blizzard forums, all customer service policy questions ultimately lead to the forums.  So any kind of customer service problem will lead to a player having to opt in to Real Id if they want help.

Revealing the names of the players also leads to larger problems of stalking.  This policy opens up problems for female gamers, children/teens gamers and LGBT gamers.  The gaming community at large, is not a welcoming place for minorities.  The last thing the majority racist, homophobic and sexist player base needs is a way to track down the players they don't like.  As for trolls on the forums, I have a hard time figuring out what a troll actually is and what people will unanimously agree is a troll.  Is it a person who posts thoughtfully but doesn't agree with the majority opinion?  Is it a person who debates vigorously on game policies that they like or don't like?  Or is it that ridiculous person who just throws out nonsensical but aggressive gibberish towards one and all?  What I see mostly on forums is people with legitimate concerns being labeled trolls and their speech is curtailed.  The gibberish people are allowed to post at will with no consequences.  There are better ways to deal with the gibberish and they don't include pimping out the real names of the player base.

As of now Blizzard Activision is silent on this new policy.  Which indicates to me that its full steam ahead.  On their own forums and around the blogosphere there are reports that enough people are quitting over this new policy to cause a slow down on their account servers.

But they aren't blinking.  And they won't blink or cry uncle.  Because everyone must realize that we are in a struggle.  Jaron Lanier pointed out that the tech world, as it is now, has debased our culture so much that the only value that can be gleaned from anything is from advertising dollars.  The commercial is sacrosanct in the tech world.  They have barricaded themselves into a corner with the "info wants to be free" meme that the only money they can receive for their services is in advertising.  To get to that cash cow, they will happily sell out the regular people.

Blizzard Activision has a deal with Facebook.  Obviously they think that the masses of Facebook Farmville addicts (most of whom are not mmorpg gamers) are an untapped resource that will gladly move to Warcraft.  That they are enough of a sure bet that these Farmville fans will replace the people leaving due to Real Id controversy.  Since the Farmville people have already revealed their personal information on Facebook, they will have no problem with revealing it for Warcraft.

They are putting this to the test right now.  Because the world that Mr. Schell celebrated is the world the tech companies want.  A world with no personal barriers, in which advertisers can pick over your carcass to send you targeted advertising that will reward you with funny money from the latest game.  Its a no cost world out there for the tech elites.  But we can expect to pay, pay more and pay again.