Good lord, Raven, do you spend all your days coming up with crazy conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios? Yes, the world is ending because of RealID.

After following this development, I think it's reached the pinacle.  A concise write up can be found here.  Anyone who doubts the authenticity of this event is welcome to read the thread on the offical World of Warcraft forums here.  It was created at 11am on July 7, and by 12:30pm it stands at 26 pages.

A Blizzard employee posted their name on the offical World of Warcraft forum in order to somehow prove that the RealID was not a bad idea. What has occured afterwards is exactly what was supposed not to happen.

A few internet searches revealed the employees Facebook page, twitter account, criminal history, wife, family members, their addresses, etc.  Within a matter of minutes his Facebook was shutdown and his twitter deactived.  Some reports can be found, I won't post them here, of people sending Pizzas to the man's house and calling his home phone.  Apparently his phone is now disconnected.  Obviously some of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt, however the point should stand as more than obvious.

Facebook and the like are optional services, I can control who can see my information and what information they can see.  The Battle.net forums are a publically accessible forum that requires no account to view.  With little more than a country of origin and a name, finding a Blizzard customer thanks to the RealID system pathetically easy and violates the most basic and logical warning we tell children: don't give someone your real name.  This system cannot be opted out of: if you want to participate in Blizzard's online community, you need to use your real name.

The RealID system is obviously not designed to remove trolls, rather to ensure accurate details.  World of Warcraft players who pay via credit card subscriptions will most likely have the card holder's name attached to their account, for example.  Like Facebook and Google, who use their vast database of personal information to generate advertising revenue, Activision Blizzard seem to have discovered a method for making a profit on what has always been free: the community.  Participate in the community, they get your accurate, personal details.  The advertisements will follow, and the money will flow.

Today is the end of an era, for me at least. Blizzard did the unthinkable and merged with Activision, and yet I held true to my favourite developer: the makers of Diablo II and Starcraft earned the benefit of the doubt through their sheer dedication to gaming.  Today, I saw the greatest fall;  Activision have done what no one else could: they brought down Blizzard.  Diablo III, Starcraft II and all future Blizzard products are on my "Black list" along with the entire catalogues of EA, Ubisoft, Activision and non-Valve Steamwork enabled games.  I cannot support a company who doesn't value their customers privacy - my privacy.

The problem with RealID has another side to it. I personally don't like social online portals like e.g. Facebook & Co. I tend to take care of my social contacts in real life by writing or talking on the phone or writing an E-Mail. Many people second my opinion, especially some of the "older generation" of gamers (30+)

The point to it is there are so many people out there who like to get AWAY from daily routine by playing computer games. Apart from who they are in real life or what money they earn or what group they're in or whatsoever.

BUT if the gaming industry starts to form "interest networks" around computer games like e.g. Civilization network will do with Facebook or Blizzard starts with RealIDs those people will be automatically redirected into their real life situations. They will be subjected to questions from their real life, like...

How long have you been playing? For how long have you been online last week? Why didn't you join us? You started to play World of Warcraft again? Why did you cancel your subscription? ......

Simply put - those are all questions many players don't want no part of. But with which they're likely to be confronted when using a forum that uses RealID. So the individual can choose whether to join or to stay away!

I appreciate the approach of ZehDon... these are said days.

Oh, they do realize it. If they didn't, they sure do now.

The real story is more about Facebook integration, but posting that link on the official forums gets your post deleted.

Personally, I filed a complaint with the ESRB's privacy people.

Except that it is. What they're doing now is just a step towards that. The long term goal is the integration.

Funny thing is that Blizzard employees will now apparently be exempt from having to show their name when posting, because of what happened in the first link I posted. So the privacy concerns everybody has are proven justified, but they only care about protecting their own. It's a far cry from the company Blizzard used to be.

You've named facts that are not necessarily relevant to the deal, and made the assumption that they are. The actual fact is that Vivendi was Blizzard's parent company, and they're the ones that merged with Activision. Implying that Blizzard had a hand in orchestrating the deal is pure speculation without a shred of proof.

Which is largely irrelevant as by all accounts save more unproven speculation, Blizzard is still independent.

Just like there's absolutely 0 indication that Blizzard had anything to do with the merger, there's 0 indication that Kotick/Activision Blizzard had anything to do with RealID, Facebook integration, or anything Starcraft 2 related.

Edit: Before you reply with the link to that TeamLiquid thread, it also contains nothing definitive. Just a bunch of random and vague quotes that don't give any details. Again, linking that to RealID and whatnot is still pure speculation.

It's not always the parents fault...some kids are just worthless and that one is a fine example.

Uh, isn't Stardock allowing you to log into Reactor with facebook? The key difference is that Stardock's implementation is optional, but is not different in terms of privacy concerns if you do choose to use facebook.

Also, no one is forcing you to post on the Blizzard forums. That's they key point everyone seems to be missing. If you don't want your name out there, don't post on the official forums. No one blinks an eye when you see the "Real Name" badge on Amazon.com reviews; it adds authenticity to the review. The same can be said of any future posts to be made in Blizzard forums.

If it's not worth revealing your real name over, don't post it. If Stardock forums required my real name, I wouldn't post in Stardock forums. It doesn't mean I'd stop playing Stardock games.

Edit: Double post

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

While I REALLY like RealID in that people will FINALLY have to face the music when they talk crap on the forums and ingame, and also have to realize that you have to be STRONG enough to hold your own and can't rely on the authorities (police) to protect you, the bad thing about it is that since I'm politically active and are politically incorrect, I open myself to serious risks.

No, it'll be more like this:

Jane: Hi, I'd like to see feature X

Bob: OMG a gurl!

Jim: Pics!

Steve: r u hot?

That kind of nonsense happens all the time in game when people find out an actual female is playing in a PUG, and the forums are the same group of players. There were an awful lot of concerned women who were afraid of posting on the forums if this went live (not to mention minorities, can you imagine someone whose name is Mohammed posting there?).