Changes

Real I.D. is a system [[Blizzard ]] has been working to install through [[Battle.net]], over all of their new games. It provides players with one centralized account through which they can connect to all of Blizzard's games. Real ID is feature-rich and is something that Blizzard clearly spent a lot of time and effort creating. Despite those facts, it's been greeted with a lot of player discord and dislike, since many Blizzard gamers wish to retain some amount of anonymity during their online play and forum activity.

While the real name aspect of things in World of Warcraft had stirred up some controversy, the public outcry really began on July 7, 2010, when Blizzard announced plans to require Real ID for anyone who wished to post on the Battle.net forums for WoW, SC2, tech support, and other games going forward.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/real-id-comes-to-the-b.net-forums/] [http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25626109041]

This ::'''Battle.net Update: Upcoming Changes to the Forums ::Recently, we introduced [http://www.battle.net/realid/ our new Real ID feature], a new way to stay connected with your friends on the new Battle.net. Today, we wanted to give you a heads up about our plans for Real ID on our official forums, discuss the design philosophy behind the changes we’re making, and give you a first look at some of the new features we’re adding to the forums to help improve the quality of conversations and make the forums an even more enjoyable place for players to visit. ::The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID—that is, their real-life first and last name—with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. The classic Battle.net forums, including those for Diablo II and Warcraft III, will be moving to a new legacy forum section with the release of the StarCraft II community site and at that time will also transition to using Real ID for posting. Though cheerfully-worded, the full announcement was perhaps the single most unpopular announcement least popular thing ever made said by Blizzard Entertainment, and . It precipitated a deluge of nearly unanimous criticism for a wide variety of reasons. The biggest single outpouring was in the official announcement thread on the US WoW forums[http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25712374700], where more than 10,000 fans posted in less than a day, the vast majority of them strongly against the proposed forum change. (The thread ultimately grew to more than 2500 pages, at ten posts a page.)

All this was just in the day after the Real ID forum announcement. When all of Blizzard's arguments failed to make a dent, and the Electronic Freedom Federation joined in[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/eff-criticise-blizzards-real-id/] the condemnation, things looked grim for Real ID. When the most influential gaming site, [http://www.penny-arcade.com Penny Arcade ] joined in, fans hoped that the end was nearnigh.

On the morning of July 9, 2010, two days after issuing the original announcement, Blizzard  announced that they were bowing to the wishes of their public, and removing the mandatory requirement[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blizzard-buckles-on-real-id/] of using Real Names on their forums in the future, while keeping their plans to incorporate all of the other planned social upgrades. A partial quote from [[Mike Morhaime]]'s announcement: [http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=25968987278&sid=1]

# And Blizzard quickly buckles under ::It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the combined weight of desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the criticism ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and [http://diablomore.incgamersHowever, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.com/blog/comments/blizzard-buckles-on-net character name + character code, not your real-id/ rescinds 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 names on the forums] requirementname.

July 16The furor died down quickly, 2010: Updated once the real names requirement was removed; a testament to the popularity of Blizzard's games, since this level of brouhaha could have broken the back of many a lesser company. A week later, Blizzard quietly posted an updated, amended FAQ about Real ID is posted, with now non-mandatory a few key changes made to the "real name provisions for Battle.net forum postingnames required" portion.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/answers-to-common-community-questions-about-battlenet-real-id/]