As is often the case, many have made comments regarding the “overreaction of the community” to a highly controversial planned change. While I’ll get to why that is a bit of a folly in logic in a moment, I want to also emphasize that the change was, in fact, rescinded. In a post on the official forums, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime stated:

Hello everyone,

I’d like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It’s important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it’s clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you’ll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard’s success from the beginning.

While this is certainly good news, I want to take a moment to respond to the others who will now point to this action and say “See, I bet you feel foolish for getting so worked up now, don’t you!?”

In a word: no.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that this change was not pulled, even amidst the outcry of the community explaining why this would be such a bad idea. Let’s even assume many threats of account cancellation were made, as is quite often the case with any change. Imagine the RealID system was implemented on the forums after all, and instead of seeing a large number of cancelled accounts there was simply silence on the forums. Whether that silence would be generated by people finding alternative locations to post or by simply refusing to participate in the forums anymore is irrelevant for this example.

Who wins? Certainly not the consumer, since their concerns would not have addressed. Blizzard would have, in their mind, achieved what they set out to do with the change even though it would have driven a number of customers away from the forums. Without opposition to the changes, whether planned or implemented, things could have certainly turned to the point where Blizzard thinks “They may cry out, but look how fast things blew over!”

This leads me to why I say there was not an over-reaction on the part of the community:

Words Mean Little Without Action

It really is that simple. Without proving that you are willing to take action against a change, planned or actually implemented, your words have no real meaning to them in the eyes of many. Don’t get me wrong, voicing opinions is vitally important, but when perceived by the other side as merely the buzzing of flies that will pass quickly then more than just words are needed. This is why the action of canceling an account (in the context of this particular issue) was certainly an ideal way to show that it was not something that would just go away if ignored.

Time has proven that those with some control of a situation (i.e. Blizzard in this case) are not afraid of testing the waters with ideas, and unless met with serious opposition (note that this could have simply been a vocal outcry and the resulting high-profile publicity, though taking it a step further and “putting your money where your mouth is” to send a message is certainly a way to prove that the opposition to the change was serious).

A Lesson

I no longer trust the Blizzard/Activision conglomerate. While this particular change may be halted, at least for now, it doesn’t erase the concern over other potential changes (especially with the known link between Activision and Facebook) that may occur. Further, any group that considered this type of change without first conducting some solid research into the effects of the change (something that even common sense could have told you was a bad idea) does not deserve my trust.

While this does mean I’m tentatively willing to accept supporting Blizzard again (i.e. I’m back to watching for the release of Diablo 3), I’ll be far more cautious of any changes coming from the company than I was prior.