So what happened to Parts 2 and 3? Wee, the WoW Community happened.
Hello everyone,
I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.
It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the 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 conversation threading, the ability to rate posts up or down, 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.
I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.
In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.
Mike Morhaime
CEO & Cofounder
Blizzard Entertainment
I’m so happy right now. I know we shouldn’t need to be in a position to be happy over not having to post our real names, but that they took the point from the thousands of users and went back to Every Voice Matters. It makes me so happy. Well done WoW Community. And thank you, Blizzard, bowing to the wishes of your users.
That is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Fantastic, even. Just, yeah, wow.
[tinfoil hat]
I almost wonder if this was forced down from Activision and announced by Blizzard precisely to generate pages and pages of angry community response to take back to Kotick and say “hey, look how many customers we’ll lose over this!”?
[/tinfoil hat]
Maybe we just won an ideological battle between the two parties, or maybe that’s just wishful thinking. But thank you Blizzard.
Charles´s last [type] ..My perspective on RealID
A bit of me does wonder about that. Some of the early replies were so hostile and dismissive that they enrage some of us even more. I’m going to have to give myself some time on this before I round up on the meta-response to what’s could happen in the future.
[...] Finally it’s shown me firsthand that the power of fans is still there, and that when the community speaks clearly that companies tend to [...]
You should still post your original Part 2, since it’s clear there are many people who still don’t understand why others were so upset over RealID on the forums, even now.
Pai´s last [type] ..We Are Not the Customer Anymore
Well, good to see Blizzard still listens to their community
I guess many would still prefer the lv 1 trolls provided they themselves can stay anonymous, too.
Aeltyra´s last [type] ..Cataclysm Beta Screenshots SPOILERS
“hey, look how many cus tom ers we’ll lose over this!”?
About 13k at most (per Bashiok’s post with statistics about the RealID thread)? If Activision were behind the decision, which I don’t believe they were, they would have laughed at that number.
I know 30 people who actually cancelled their accounts but didn’t contribute on the forums (just from my FL). Like I said – I think it was a combination of cancellations, good, constructive posts, world wide news coverage, internal pressure from their own employees, and appeals from some folk that the Blizzard teams highly respect.
Pewter´s last [type] ..Pseudonymity and Visibility