Update: Blizzard have thankfully decided to bench this change for the time being.
Recently (Activision-)Blizzard has updated the Battle.net service. Part of this update is the RealId feature. RealId is supposed to be an all encompassing profile for all games linked with battle.net (Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo) allowing players to read and broadcast messages amongst their friends. Seems fairly innocent enough, need a 10th player for a WoW raid, grab someone from their Diablo III game, it’s basically Facebook for games (That’s pretty much what they’re aiming for). The implementation is contentious though, the amount of information shared about exactly what you’re doing and who you are friends with is rather over the top and there are no granular controls to change this. This really isn’t a huge problem though – for the most part, people will only become friends with people they trust, alternatively they don’t have to use it at all since it’s voluntary and there are simple alternatives – However, the latest advancement of the RealId programme is rather a step too far. Here’s a snippet from a press release yesterday:
The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.
A couple of quick things about the WoW forums: There’s nothing forcing you to post on there (there are thousands of other sites you can discuss the game on) but it’s widely read, contains very useful guides contributed by the community and allows communication with Blizzard themselves. From late July, every post anyone makes will be under the account holders name. This is Bad. Bad bad bad. Here’s why: