Real ID Announcement Part of Plan, Says Blizzard

Blizzard says that it had been seeking feedback when it announced that real names would be mandatory on its forums.

Earlier this month, Blizzard surprised pretty much everyone by announcing that in order to use its forums in the future, people would have to use the Real ID service and post under their real names. The idea proved unpopular and Blizzard changed its mind just days later, but senior executive Michael Ryder said that the announcement had been part of a process, and a successful one at that.

Ryder said that Blizzard put a lot of stock into the views of its players, and always sought the opinions of the community before it made this kind of decision. Blizzard hadn’t been surprised to receive feedback, he said, as that was exactly what it had wanted.

Ryder said that the process had been successful in this instance, and Blizzard had been able to take the community’s feedback and consider it along with all the other factors before making its final decision. “Ultimately we decided we would not go in that direction for the time being,” he said. “And see if there were other ways we could address the objective we had, which was to improve the forums generally.”

Source: Eurogamer