Epic fail, Blizzard!

[pootlus]

So Blizzard has decided that in the upcoming forum revamp, posters will no longer post under their World of Warcraft characters. Instead, they will post under their real names.

Let's just read that again. Under their real names. No opt-in, no opt-out. Want to post on the WoW forums? You're no longer "Footscraper", you're Jessica Irwin

Comments

[sying]

I know nothing of WoW and how the forums work so I wonder how can they enforce this insanity? Is it not possible for users to fill in a made up name?

From that interview: We all now have our own Facebook pages and we have got a lot of our information on there. We've got our real names and pictures of ourselves on there and so forth.
Uh, no we don't. And to this day there are still people who *do* and get in various degrees of trouble with their employer, family, friends, exes, enemies. People are not getting any smarter about this, are they? I spoke with a teacher a while ago and he complained about his students reading his twitter account... Dude.

OTOH, Prince has declared the internet "completely over" so maybe we're getting all worked up over nothing ;)

[pootlus]

When you sign up for an account, you're required to use your real name - I did when I signed up five years ago (certainly not imagining that this would happen!).

Of course you can use a fake name, but then if your account is stolen (stealing accounts to strip of virtual 'gold' or to sell to other players is BIG money), you can't prove that you're you, so you can't get the account back.

Also, you can't change the name on an existing account without documentation - marriage certificate etc.

The final part of this is that you can't transfer characters to an account with a different name. So even if I created a new account under the name "Noneofyour Business", I'd lose all of my max-level characters.

Of course, the aforementioned Mr Greg Canessa has now had his identity exposed. Someone posted his address and phone number. Good times.

[sying]

Ah gotcha. I figured there had to be more to it than that.

Of course, the aforementioned Mr Greg Canessa has now had his identity exposed. Someone posted his address and phone number. Good times.
He was just asking for it, wasn't he.