http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/American...unction?gr_i_ni

Some may know I used to play this very, very addictive game. Well it used to be that in game and in their forums you'd play and post behind a character name. They recently made a change to incorporate battle.net into the game so that you could talk to any character on any server/realm/w.e it is. To do this you have to share your email / real name with the people that are to be in contact with you. That's cool and all, completely voluntary, you don't have to share anything. It'd be nice if you could just share the account name like in Diablo 2 or SC or those bnet things.

Well, they decided to expand on that and when SC2 is released, they're making all forum posts display your "RealID" or First and Last name. So instead of posting behind an alias you post behind "First name Last name" with the option to display your alias lol. Sucks to be them. Even if I played, I got permabanned a long time ago so it wouldn't really matter to me anyway? Still, what a retarded thing to do.

Oh yeah where I was going with this post. The link above demonstrates why it's a bad idea lol. One of the CMs (community manager) decided as an act of faith to post his real name on the forums so other people wouldn't be so worried. Instead, as predicted would happen, very shortly after tons of his personal information was posted. Where he lives, info about his wife and kids, the fact that he lives with his mom?, his college roommates, who he hung out with, his myspace/twitter/fb, etc etc etc.

That's irritating. Part of the fun in MMO's and their related forums is the idea of being outside of yourself. At least that was how I felt about it.

You got perma banned?!

Also - sucks about the personal information being blasted. Thing is, you've GOT to know that if you post your first and last name, there are risks.

Well... Yeah I did :) It was stupid too. Of all the things I did there, I got permabanned for joking w/ a fellow troll that I hope he gets ovarian cancer. HE.

:(

There's also the idea that if a future potential employer googles your name and finds all your shenanigans or trolling or even that you're rather addicted to an MMORPG, that might not look too good compared to some guy invisible to the internet.

Sucks for them.

That's a silly reason for a perma ban. I've never been banned myself, though I've had many toons renamed to "Generic <#####>" on several occasions. Stupid stuff. I named a toon "Newb with Bewbs" and it was made generic, for example.

Yeah. I don't know that I'd feel comfortable putting my full name out there in a gaming forum. On ventrilo we often used our real first names, but that's as far as it typically went. Even then, there were some that would insist on being referred to as their global handle.

I can hear pedophiles around the world rejoice.

Isn't that just gonna get more people keylogged?

...no

I think it's a great idea. show them wowfags who's boss

oh my bad

hahaha. when i first read this i was glad i dont play wow

RealID for the forums was shut down after about 1200 pages of QQ.

just wondering.. what makes wow so addicting?

almost forgot, they decided not to use realid

LOL this made me laugh, tis why I do not play WoW, well one of the many reasons. I only played like 2 weeks and quit.. lol

I can't speak to WOW, since I never could get into it but I played City of Heroes (a less popular MMORPG) for 5 years. For me, a great part of the addiction was the comradery. I spent night after night chatting on Ventrilo (which I always liked more than Teamspeak) with folks I would be online playing the game with. I also loved the costume aspect and creating characters. The actual game play was fun as well. I enjoyed the different power sets and I always loved a good task force, which I think is similar to a raid in WOW (but I could be wrong about that).

Sense of accomplishment and yeah, raiding with a guild.

Right now is a burnout time though where all the content has been done, and people are quitting until the expansion.