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[IMG News]

Blizzard Entertainment's CEO Mike Horhaime recently announced the company's decision to remove the previously announced Real ID requirement for posting on the company's gaming forums. Participants would have been required to use their real names when posting. Other changes to the forums including the ability to rate posts, highlight based on rating, and improved search functions will still be implemented, as will the option for players to use the Real ID system in World of Warcraft and StarCraft II.

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

Visit the site linked below to read Morhaime's full comments.

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[Thain Esh Kelch]

So sad..

[Jeyl]

While I totally understand why Blizzard was trying to do in making the forums more friendlier and less trolling, this sort of thing should not have been an overall mandatory change. Some comments I've read that were for or against this change just came up with too many contradicting statements.

One podcaster from gametrailers.com said that he uses his real name all the time on forums and in his pod casts, but what he doesn't understand is that he chose to do this from the start, where as players who posts on Blizzard's forums started out using their aliases. He also mentions that he doesn't believe that this will change anything for players who wanted to keep their identity secret because the chances of being stalked are slim to none, but if nothing will change, why bother going to real names at all?

What I found to be most disappointing is the fact that this was going to be mandatory and no player had a choice in how they wanted to be represented on an online community. This was not how Blizzard's forums started out, and it certainly didn't show any signs of falling apart because of the Anonymous nature of the posters. For me, it feels as though Blizzard doesn't want to deal with the constant forum overseeing and therefore planned this change as an effort to decrease not only the trollers, but forum activity as a whole.

After all, they've eliminated chat rooms in in battle.net.