RealID On Blizzard Forums, A Good Idea?

As we reported yesterday, Blizzard has announced that they will be introducing the use of real first and last names on their forums. That this has led to a huge outcry will not be a real surprise. Some of the events that took place since did shock us a bit.

Blizzard Poster Bashiok decided to answer the question “Will Blues also post with their real name” by saying: “Yessir. Micah Whipple, at your service.”

The reactions at first were quite positive, as people were pleasantly surprised that a Blizzard employee would share their real name as well. There was some doubt that this was his real name however, and with a name such as Micah Whipple, how can we not doubt!

Puntable’s response on the second page of the thread is quite hilarious:
“I was going to report this because it 'contains personal information about another player'as is against the TOS, but apparently you can't report blues :)”

All still in good fun, but the shit started to hit the fan for Blizzard on page 3 when poster Issakk started getting personal with Bashiok:
“473 Avenue B, That part of your address? I also found the rest of the address and a phone number. That was just using google for like 3 minutes.”

Preview took it to a next level:
“So, does it bother you knowing that because your name is so uncommon, I just found your Address, age, race, whether you own or rent, a front door view of your home (since you live in a place that google did a street view), your income, the projected value of the homes around you and the number of people in your home?

THERE IS NO WAY you can be OK with that....right?”

On page 9 it goes a step up again when Giygas gets anonymous involved:
“So do we have his personal info on 4chan yet?”

Micah (as we can now call him) responds:
“My name has been out there for a while, I get friend requests all the time from random people. No, it does not bother me. I don't add them.”

So, the community seems to think this level of privacy breaching is unacceptable but Micah seems to hold up pretty well all things considering. This is not the last chapter of this story yet, that is for sure!

Blogger Zeroday seems to think that this change may be pre-empting a lawchange in South Korea:"

 

"I’m going to make the suggestion that South Korea’s Real Name System. In 2009 South Korea’s government created a law that was meant to curb online defamation by insisting that all users who comment on sites with greater than 100,000 users per day must use their real name.

Given these facts it might not make sense why South Korea might enforce the Real Name system on Blizzard."

Keep discussing this topic on the OnRPG forums!