I can’t not – not post something about Blizzard taking back their plans for real names on forums.
But well done internets. Take a bow – you have won. For now perhaps, but at least a reprive.
I feel like it was a bit of a flash in a pan though.
They announced it. The interwebs exploded. They backed down.
Good on them for doing so, however I can’t help but feel that there is more to come.
Companies don’t make grandiose changes such as this, and not run this by group of people affected by the change. I’m sure market research would have told them already what the internet had to say so loudely.
So did their market research group fail to represent us the people who play? Or did they already know that the fall out would be, and were willing to take on the risks?
I’m betting they knew, so it seems for now the risks outweigh what ever benifit Blizzard could have received.
Blizzard also realised that when you do get an issue and personal identifyable information is made available it doesn’t just affect you – it ‘s not just information about you – it’s your family, your children – your workplace. You are not an island.
I don’t necessarily agree with what information was made public about the people they reseached. I would hope now that the point is made, it goes away, except with the internet nothing ever really goes away.
But it will be interesting to see what compromises come out .
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I found it impressive, to say the least, that it wasn’t the usual CMs or Devs who announced the cancellation – it was Mike Morhaime himself.
Having streamed a few Blizzcons, Mike Morhaime is a quiet spoken, genteel seeming kind of guy. Yet even I can imagine, given the amount of worldwide press exposure, him getting fired up about this.
Mike is one of the guys who founded Blizzard and who still takes an active part in the company as CEO. Blizzard is very much his baby and it was being panned by customers and the media alike.
That it took Mike to post the back down, and not one of the CMs or Devs indicates to me that the dev team really screwed up. Really screwed up. You don’t get Mike posting that often. In fact, apart from Blizzcon and game announcements you rarely hear from Mike.
I for one, am very pleased about the back down but like you, I wonder what the next piece of the puzzle will be. Obviously the real IDs was for a reason. Who knows what they will cook up next?
I think this was a massive publicity win for Blizzard though. And the best part, Mike Morhaime looks like a hero and he sublety furthers the legend of Bobby Kotick being a villain.
It’s pure win, because of the PR and the exposure/advertising.
I am glad they backed down, but it’s also kinda meh they come off as a massive PR-win too. Even a simple blog post like this right here (and heck all of our comments) demonstrates how much of a win it was. It’s put Warcraft back into the minds of everyone.
The whole stunt probably stole a good bit of thunder from Star Wars and FFXIV.
There is no way I would ever post on the WoW forums if this was implemented. Hopefully the idea is gone for good, but I have a feeling it will be back someday.
Nick
http://arcaneexplosion.blogspot.com/
I wonder if their focus groups were picked from facebook users in Blizz/Activision’s target demographics, as opposed to WoW players?