Blizzard Retracts Real ID Initiative, Will Aim to Make Forums Better

Blizzard, through the voice of Mike Morhaime, Chief Executive Officer of the company, has announced that it will not be implementing the real names policy it has announced for the forums, linked to the launch of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. It seems that the company has listened to the sometimes angry feedback coming from the community and has reacted to the breaches in privacy that have affected certain Blizzard employees since the new initiative was announced.

Real ID was meant to eliminate anonymity on certain Blizzard forums, with the aim being to introduce a higher level of responsibility and to eliminate trolls and gold farmers. Gamers were not happy to hear that their identities will be clearly visible to all those who accessed the Blizzard forums and threatened to quit the official site, meaning that bug reports would slow down and that popular character and skill guides would go without updates when expansions and patches hit. Some Blizzard fans have also used the occasion to post information on Blizzard employees as a way of showing what the new policy can lead to.

Mike Morhaime stated in a blog post that “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.”

Blizzard have two big launches coming up this year, with real time strategy title Starcraft II coming on July 27 and the Cataclysm expansion for the World of Warcraft MMO set for later in the year. Both launches would have probably been affected by a backlash if the Real ID policy would have been kept.