I'm placing this topic under game design because I think that the ramifications of Blizzards decision to use their RealID system on the official forums is a massive change that will set a precedent industry wide.

Let's start off with a few assumptions.  There are two ways an individual can engage content on the Internet, Anonymous and Named.  Facebook is a Named service.  Everyone logs in with their real name and is identified as such when using the service.  Twitter is Pseudo-anonymous in that it's a little bit of both types as the service employs aliases but those aliases are easily connected to their named identities.  Internet based games, have always been the province of anonymity.  Everyone that plays an online game picks an alias and uses that alias for everything they do while engaged with the service.  Xbox Live, Steam, casual game portals, Blizzard's Battle-net and more all use aliases to identify community members.

For Blizzard's Battle-net and the games played through the service, this is all about to change starting with the release of Starcraft 2.  I believe that this will do more damage to the community than it will help even though Blizzard's intentions are noble and good.  Blizzard claims that this change will reduce the amount of trolling and flame wars on the forums and using your real name will most certainly do just that.  My problem is with the side effects this will have; all in the name of snuffing out trolls and flame wars.  For instance:

  1. How do people get into drama on the realm forums where most of the politics of in-game relationships play out?  That's a significant part of any online world.  When people are forced to use their own names, it will have a supression effect on this in-game roleplaying via the official forums.
  2. Will Blizzard let Google and Bing continue to index forum posts?  How long until we see forum posts and in-game communication from athletes, actors, politicians and other famous people indexed and aggregated on a web site?  I give it a day or two.  Some of these people use World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games to escape the madness surrounding their fame.  One post to the technical support forums and the rest of their game-play can be linked to the public.  Game logs, previous forum posts and more could get exposed.  Remember that these posts were made under the assumption of anonymity using the original system that Blizzard is now breaking.
  3. How does Blizzard stop the harrasment of regular individuals that happen to share a name with a famous person.  There's a Brian Adams that works with me.  Imagine now if he logs on to a server and has every Canadian ask him if he is the Brian Adams.  How can Brian Adams the regular person enjoy playing a Blizzard game under those conditions?  Anonymity solved that problem.  Breaking it, reintroduces it to your customer base.
  4. Once people have access to real names in game, how does harrassment in-game not more easily escalate to physical violence and predatory behavior.  The simple act of corpse camping someone because they belong to a rival guild could get you an unmarked brown paper box in your mailbox a week later.  Anonymity prevented this from happening in all but the most extreme cases.  It could become much more common using RealID.

I'm sure there are many more ways that complicated situations will arise from this change.  Those are my initial reactions to the change and I believe it will do more to quell free and open discussion over fear of retribution than it will to remove the trolls and flame wars.

Additional Comments from the Interwebs:

World of Warcraft Forum thread regarding the topic.

Nerfbat's Blog Post
Broken Toys Blog Post
Borderhouse Blog Post
Vicarious Existence Blog Post (Well thought out and reasoned history lesson)