Company Interference: Anonymity Versus the Blizzard Forums

Blizzard seemed set to change the fundamental structure of the official forums for both World of Warcraft, when the expansion named Cataclysm hits, and Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, when the game comes on July 27, introducing a requirement that posters use their real names when posting. Predictably the announcement generated a furious reaction in the community of gamers who are using the forums, with some posting personal information on a Blizzard community manager in order to show how the initiative can get out of hand. Blizzard has therefore retraced the Real ID initiative but indicated that it will try to improve the environment on the official forums through other initiatives.

One of the big battles raging on the Internet at the moment is that of anonymity versus responsibility and the official Blizzard forums seem like a central new battleground. The company is saying that using real world information will weed out gold sellers and trolls and will make the people talking more civil with one another. The public is answering that huge categories of gamers will no longer post on the official forums, which might mean important player oriented resources will never be updated again and that the bug reporting process might slow down. There's also the issue of how certain categories of gamers, from minors to women to minorities, might be more open to abuse under the new Blizzard policy.

Unfortunately the position of advocating complete anonymity on the forums for a company which makes multi million selling games like Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft is no longer tenable. There are marketing, security and game related issues that were probably well considered at Blizzard before they began their move towards accountability. On the other hand it's not realistic to ask all forum users and players to use their real names, especially considering the temperament of the gaming community.

Blizzard is walking on some pretty shaky terrain where the level of complexity linked to how real world information is treated on the forums will keep increasing as more rules are introduced, exceptions are accepted and then rules for them are created. The forums might see less people participating while other fan sites will benefit from an increase in attendance. With the two extreme positions of anonymity and Real ID use apparently untenable the middle ground is the only option for Blizzard but the company needs to treat every move it makes very carefully so that it will not trigger another public backlash.