I am disappointed again.

You would think, with how I express my displeasure at certain game directions or designs, that I wouldn't be playing Warcraft anymore. I mean, why play something that makes you mad? Yes, I am still sad they are changing tree form to a cooldown. And the direction of healing. I have already told my friends that I may have another two years left in the game before my degree requirements take up more time than allowed to be a raider, at which point I will either be seriously casual or quit out of jealously.

With that looming in my mind, I do want to make the most of my gaming time with quality over quanity. Which is why I get angry over certain announcements. Recently, however, the Real ID changes raised a dangerous red flag for me and I have already posted on the official forums expressing my distaste for this direction.

What I am referring to is the move to make our real names visible on the forums in a thinly veiled effort to inhibit trolling and flame wars. The other half of this reason is to be a cutting edge, Facebook-like environment. There are many reasons why this is a horrible idea.

I refer to this great post by a respected community member:

This bears mentioning again:

A bully will continue to be a bully, a troll will continue to be a troll. There is no way any logical train of thought can result in the assumption that an undesirable poster will decrease their undesirable activity when they are still provided a certain degree of separation from their intended target.

Arguments against providing real life names aside (which are valid) - [Cairneey] still remains as anonymous to me as [Joe Schmo] - and [Joe Schmo] knows this and will continue to act accordingly.

In short - there are no more repercussions for undesirable posters with this new system than there are now, given the above.

In fact, just as much would be accomplished if all forum posters were relegated to posting on one and only one character, with the option to show (but not post on) other characters on their account with the click of a button on their avatar.

There is no need to use real-life names, even if creating a larger social network is what is intended. If someone sees me on the forums and wishes to talk with me in game, there is already an avenue for that. If things go well and we mutually decide to ramp up our relationship to exchange personal information - including real-life names - there's already an avenue for that.

So the challenge, I guess, is explaining to everyone just how having real-life names will offer any improvement at all to the system already in place. 'Lifting the veil of anonymity' is not an argument and is hollow at best. Providing a more social environment is also not an argument, seeing as how we have the ability to do so right now - at our own pace and at our own discretion.

¸..• '¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.•' .•'¨¨)) Frejya -:¦:-
((¸¸.•' ...•' -:¦:-

This is right on the nose. This change is not about accountability, as there are no real repercussions to the abusers. The idea to use psychology in an effort to modify abusive behavious is commedable but is a weak solution. It may just inhibit constructive dialoge instead.

(edit for clarity)

Social Networking and MMO's are similar on the surface but are two different creatures. Both use the internet to connect people together in avenues they would otherwise not normally be connected. Both can enhance one's experiences with the other person, or degrade it depending on the cirumstances. But, and this is a key thing for me, WoW is a separate world for me. Sure, I place Facebook games with my Facebook friends. In that, it is akin to playing Warcraft with my Warcraft friends. The realms are separate. Which is why I have not opted to allow my game annoucments to be broadcasted on Facebook. It's bad enough I have Zynga games spam and my friends don't need to see the other stuff.

With Starcraft II, they are merging the two styles in a bold and an agressive way. We are seeing reminantes of that in WoW.

This has been in the works since May, and shame on me for not catching this sooner. This is taken from a USA today article on May 5th:

I would assume that the Facebook relationship would be used to draw more casual game players to Blizzard's games.

Absolutely. Our goal and vision in this partnership is to really to cross-populate the social networks and to easily find and add your friends from Facebook onto the new Battle.net service as the first step and extending it to other features in the future. … Later on, of course, we have lots of things we are talking about with Facebook. We haven't announced anything specific, but we have lots of ideas about ways to cross-populate and share data between the two services.

The line has to be drawn somewhere, but I am afraid I can't be sure who is holding the chalk.