New Details about Blizzard's Real ID Service

Blizzard has given some insight about how it has revamped the features of Real ID, following the aggressive backlash of the fans in the last weeks. The company still aims to establish Battle.net as a social gaming platform and Real ID, while optional now, will still be available, allowing friends and family to easily connect and play Blizzard games together.

In a Question & Answer document sent to VG247, StarCraft II's developer said that, “It's no secret. As we've discussed openly since we first started sharing our plans about the new Battle.net, one of our goals is for it to serve as a social gaming service for Blizzard gamers. This was a deliberate and open design decision, driven 100 per cent by the desire to create an even better online experience for our players by giving them powerful tools to compete with and stay connected to their real-life friends and family.”

The idea is that the Real ID will store the player's first and last names so that real life friends and family will find each other more easily even if they play different Blizzard releases. Originally, the developer wanted to require StarCraft II players to use Real ID to post on the forums, but a strong negative reaction forced Blizzard to retreat the policy.

Another feature of Real ID that was modified is the friends of friends search that permitted one to look through their friends' contact lists for someone they may know and add them to their own list. This can be opted out of now, making one's profile unavailable for this kind of search. Facebook will also be integrated in this service, so that it is easy to see which of one's friends from the social network also has a Blizzard Real ID.

As it has declared before, Blizzard will not be requiring players to use the Real ID to post on the forums, but will require a character name and a character code. The character name will be chosen at the first StarCraft II login and will be tied to the game license the user owns. A character code will be assigned to that name to allow players the use of any name they want, regardless of whether it is used by another person already. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will be released on the 27th of July on the PC.