I am really not for this at all. I don't post on the forums there at all (i play WoW though and Starcraft 2 when it's getting released) so it won't effect me too much.

The reason i have heard they are doing this is to stop trolling... at the expense of peoples personal information being displayed.

Someone here could easily argue "Oh you use facebook, your personal details are being revealed"

This is quite true but the only difference is that i am the one who is displaying that information and i have control over it. Not a corporation. On saying that it's not clear exactly what will be displayed, is it just your name or is it other stuff as well like your address, age etc? I don't display that stuff on facebook (well i do age it's not that important) like phone numbers, addresses etc.

So if i don't display them and if it's the case that Blizzard will - i will not be best amused.

Oh course even if Blizzard DON'T display those you can easily be found. The internet is essentially a huge database. There are websites out there that can easily track people with just their name and country. Find their facebooks, bebos, twitters, whatever.

Now even though i don't display lots of my personal information i am sure that there are people who do. If i went onto a site e.g.

http://www.pipl.com/ - go on that and type yourself in, you will be surprised that info appears.

and typed the required details in i could find more details about you. So even though blizzard don't supply it, it can be found.

So you ask - "So what?"

You may or may not remember the man who killed another man with a sword because he wouldn't trade an ingame item?

Imagine disagreeing with someone in WoW about ANYTHING, groups, money, loot, whatever. They could just hop online grab your address or house number and harass you.

Now not many people will do this.. but the possibility still exists and has been created due to Blizzard doing this.

Like holy fuck, Blizzard used to be a great company releasing great games. Now they are just a bunch of dicks and i really hope that they will listen to the hundreds of protests about this.

Though i can expect to see the WoW forums becoming a ghost town.

I cancelled my WoW account yesterday just until i see how this Real ID pans out.

I've ordered Starcraft 2 though... i may need to cancel it. I only really intend to play single player though, so i don't know if that will have an effect - i heard to play single player you have to go online like how steam works.

Pandajuice wrote:

Most likely Alowishus; most PC games these days require you to be online. RealID will work the same way in all of Blizzard's games as it will in WoW: Buddy lists will be like Facebook where friends of friends of friends can see your details, and anytime you post on an official forum, your real name will be used. I reckon this will be such a PR nightmare for them though (it already is) that they will seriously reconsider this system at the end of the day. It's turning into a huge debacle and all attempts Blizzard have made so far of calming everyone down have backfired, including a moderator giving his real name out to prove nothing could be done with it, only to see pictures of his address, phone number, and pictures of his house posted in the same thread. I really don't see this ending well for the company.

Well with Steam games you can go online once and then change it to play offline. Hopefully you can do that.

Yeah i saw the thread were the details were posted. Blizzard has just gone to shit. I've been playing their games since Warcraft I, hell the Lost Vikings when they were still Silicon and Synapse. This is just a stupid move and i really hope they pay for it.

I've read concerns from many female players and if i was female i would be concerned due to the stalking that could occur etc.