[Air-L] Blizzard Forums will soon display real name

[Nick Lalone]

The forums for FFXI were kind of strange. Allakhazam was strong early on but
around the 3rd expansion most discussion had moved on to Blue Gartr or other
individual linkshell forums or livejournal groups. They moved because other
websites were doing what Allakhazam were doing better but without forums
(FFXIOnline was much more popular than alla for a while). At some point,
Square itself created official forums for linkshells through their community
stuff. Later, the online auction house FFXIAH also had really active forums.
The same thing was around WoW. Forums like SomethingAwful's:
http://grab.by/5lnD are still super active and independent discussion of WoW
for people interested in the "end game" business would go to blogs to
discuss things as well as individual guild forums.

So I suppose to me this boils down to the casual WoW folks who find
community in the official forums as well as those in the WoW "end game" who
probably do not (exceptions abound here). I want to see how that will then
change as the trophy trolls of trade chat and the official forums will no
longer be able to completely hide like they once could. I can also see the
Real ID stuff really mattering for competing end game groups on the same
servers. But even then, Blizzard has minimized this competition through
instancing, cross server looking for group, and other things. So in the end,
I suppose i do not see real issue with the REAL ID stuff simply because
Blizzard has done a lot to mitigate the possibility of internet fury that
might fuel e-stalking and harassment.

That said, I am also sure that for certain groups, this will be problematic.
Women playing Tauren who do not talk on ventrillo or men playing women who
also do not talk on ventrillo who then seduce other male players for maximum
profit. Certain aspects of that culture, I am sure, Blizzard will be happy
to not deal with again.

I have to wonder what new uncomfortable MMO style drama would arise from
this change.

Nick



On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Mia Consalvo <consalvo at ohio.edu> wrote:

> I haven't read the WoW forums much, since I only played the game briefly,
> but the tone of the forums always surprised me for its viciousness (which
> also was problematic in terms of racism, homophobia and sexism being
> present)- I was a longtime reader of the forums for Final Fantasy 11, where
> things seemed much more civil. I don't know if it was the game, the type of
> player attracted, or even perhaps the fact that FF11's forums were *not*
> official-- Square had no such official ones, so players started them
> elsewhere (I read the ones on Allakhazam). I wonder if enough players are
> upset, if there would be greater movement towards 'independent' forums like
> that.
>
> Mia
>
> On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 5:31 PM, live <human.factor.one at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Love what you stated here.
> > Very similar to what Bonnie Nardi of UC Irvine stated in a new blog post:
> >
> >
> http://umichpress.typepad.com/university_of_michigan_pr/2010/07/bonnie-nardi-is-author-of-my-life-as-a-night-elf-priest-a-new-book-on-the-culture-and-gameplay-in-the-international-bestsell.html
> >
> >
> > On Jul 8, 2010, at 8:31 AM, David Jones wrote:
> >
> >  I've grown more and more concerned about the power of companies like
> >> Facebook or Blizzard to dictate what constitutes "identitity" and how
> >> people
> >> manage their online personas. Mark Zuckerberg has used the rhetoric of
> >> "openness" and "integrity" to push Facebook's default stance of making
> >> their
> >> participants' data public. There are all sorts of scary questions about
> a
> >> company like Facebook deciding it has the right -- even the ethical
> >> obligation -- to determine what constitutes an online identity.
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> > is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> > Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> > http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
> >
> > Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> > http://www.aoir.org/
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Mia Consalvo, Ph.D.
> Visiting Associate Professor
> Comparative Media Studies
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology
> 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building  14N-226
> Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
> USA
> consalvo at mit.edu
> 617.324.1868
> _______________________________________________
> The Air-L at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>



-- 
Nick LaLone
Texas State University-San Marcos
Systems Support / Master's Student
www.beforegamedesign.com