Real ID on Blizzard Forums

[Lu]

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.

So there you go.

[mikemariano]

So there you go.

Good work, everybody who complained on the Internet!

Now Blizzard can concentrate on the important task of listing to endless complaints about what they'll be changing in Cataclysm.

And complaints about Starcraft II's piecemeal deployment.

And complaints about Diablo III art direction.

And complaints about canceling Warcraft Adventures.

[syntheticgerbil]

And complaints about NO LOST VIKINGS 3!

[elmuerte]

And rock 'n roll racing 2

[syntheticgerbil]

And Blackthorne: The Prequel.

[Luggage]

Good work, everybody who complained on the Internet!

Now Blizzard can concentrate on the important task of listing to endless complaints about what they'll be changing in Cataclysm.

And complaints about Starcraft II's piecemeal deployment.

And complaints about Diablo III art direction.

And complaints about canceling Warcraft Adventures.

Get rid of Kotick and his dollar-sign boxer-short wearing bullies - problem solved! (I know it won't be that easy... ) But they brought this on themselves and despite the questionable decisions made by Blizzard in the last one to two years, I still trust them with being able to differentiate between imbalance whining and resistance against irrational decisions destroying the developer-customer-relationship.

[Forbin]

Get rid of Kotick and his dollar-sign boxer-short wearing bullies - problem solved! (I know it won't be that easy... ) But they brought this on themselves and despite the questionable decisions made by Blizzard in the last one to two years, I still trust them with being able to differentiate between imbalance whining and resistance against irrational decisions destroying the developer-customer-relationship.

A misreading of your first line provided some insight to why I hate the online Blizzard debates. People invoking Bobby Kotick's name remind me of the people that used to bitch about "M$" and Bill gates. Sure the guy's a douche (senior to Señor Super Douche), but it's just blatant name calling without understanding the reality of the situation.

Blizzard has been owned by several companies for years. Since before Warcraft 2, and specifically under Vivendi since the release of Starcraft Broodwar in 1998. People get angry that it's Activi$ion Blizzard, but in reality it's more like Vivendi bought Activision with the largest stake in the merger. If you look at ATVI's org structure, the CEO may be Kotick, but the board is filled with guys from Vivendi and the senior chairman of the board is from Vivendi. Also from the org structure, you'll note that Blizzard is basically it's own entity under the publisher, and from interviews you could find out that Activision does not interfere with Blizzard business. And they'd be fools to do so, because Blizzard brings in by far the majority of Activision's revenue.

Blizzard makes it's own mistakes.

[JonCole]

As I said on my Twitter, good on Blizzard for listening to fans, but a little lame that they didn't pull an Apple and force a paradigm shift in social interaction on forums like those.

[Moelman]

As I said on my Twitter, good on Blizzard for listening to fans, but a little lame that they didn't pull an Apple and force a paradigm shift in social interaction on forums like those.

These are my thoughts as well. I am glad to see them listening to what people want, since the majority of people clearly were opposed to it, but I personally wish they had stuck to their guns as I think that is the direction the Internet should go (real names) and it would have been great for such a huge community to start that trend.

[Luggage]

A misreading of your first line provided some insight to why I hate the online Blizzard debates. People invoking Bobby Kotick's name remind me of the people that used to bitch about "M$" and Bill gates. Sure the guy's a douche (senior to Señor Super Douche), but it's just blatant name calling without understanding the reality of the situation.

Blizzard has been owned by several companies for years. Since before Warcraft 2, and specifically under Vivendi since the release of Starcraft Broodwar in 1998. People get angry that it's Activi$ion Blizzard, but in reality it's more like Vivendi bought Activision with the largest stake in the merger. If you look at ATVI's org structure, the CEO may be Kotick, but the board is filled with guys from Vivendi and the senior chairman of the board is from Vivendi. Also from the org structure, you'll note that Blizzard is basically it's own entity under the publisher, and from interviews you could find out that Activision does not interfere with Blizzard business. And they'd be fools to do so, because Blizzard brings in by far the majority of Activision's revenue.

Blizzard makes it's own mistakes.

While I agree in general, Activision has had a really bad track record in recent years. Now I won't defend the linked article as completely objective and rational, but by the time the merger went through two to three years ago, even well paid managers of the highest ranks with basically no connection to the lowest ranks (the players) should have been well aware, that with the advent of flat rate internet, entertainment companies wouldn't be able to pull off shady moves without their customers noticing. And stuff has been blown up in their faces a few times since then. Of course there were weaksauce moments like the "MW2 boycott", but in general the gaming community has aged pretty well. And assuming there won't be some outspoken community members versed in the legal, economic and marketing field seeing right through your schemes, was pretty arrogant and got them the negative attention they deserved.

This has by no means been limited to ActiBlizz only, which doesn't remedy the fact that I personally feel the biggest disconnection between developers/publishers and customers since I started caring for video games almost two decades ago.

And as of March 30, 2010, the (former?) Activision CFO Thomas Tippl has been instated as COO of Blizzard Entertainment, with Blizzard CEO and president Mike Morhaime reporting directly to him. I won't comment on the following statement from Kotick regarding this organizational change, because it would be pure speculation.

"This is an important change as it will allow me, with Thomas, to become more deeply involved in areas of the business where I believe we can capture great potential and opportunity," Kotick said in the employee memo.

Edit: My personal take on the recent activities regarding Battle.Net 2.0 and this one in particular is that they want BNet 2.0 to become the "Steam" of online matchmaking. The vision would be in a few years Battle.Net has twenty plus million users and they will be able to sell licenses to large and medium scale developers to use Battle.Net as their online gaming solution. The current attempts trying to provide this (e.g. GameSpy) are either outdated or just too inconvenient to use. But in order to make BNet to go-to choice, they have to make it desirable for the players to be part of that community. And anybody, who has chatted with more than a handful of strangers in WoW or WC3 or read the forums, knows that the average community member hasn't passed high school mentally. So I see why they would want some kind of leverage on the negative behavior internet anonymity generates, but sowing an atmosphere of defenselessness, distrust and paranoia is the wrong way imo.

Edited July 9, 2010 by Luggage

[Jayel]

"hey let's make our forums more civil by making everyone feel a bit vulnerable!"

I don't know what kind of reaction they were expecting.

[Forbin]

Edit: My personal take on the recent activities regarding Battle.Net 2.0 and this one in particular is that they want BNet 2.0 to become the "Steam" of online matchmaking. The vision would be in a few years Battle.Net has twenty plus million users and they will be able to sell licenses to large and medium scale developers to use Battle.Net as their online gaming solution. The current attempts trying to provide this (e.g. GameSpy) are either outdated or just too inconvenient to use. But in order to make BNet to go-to choice, they have to make it desirable for the players to be part of that community. And anybody, who has chatted with more than a handful of strangers in WoW or WC3 or read the forums, knows that the average community member hasn't passed high school mentally. So I see why they would want some kind of leverage on the negative behavior internet anonymity generates, but sowing an atmosphere of defenselessness, distrust and paranoia is the wrong way imo.

There was a theory back when the merger was announced that the main reason that Activision was interested in Vivendi was having Blizzard build up an online service. Considering how far behind they were of Valve, Microsoft and even EA they needed some sort of online presence.

[Forbin]

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/12/esrb-unintentionally-exposes-email-addresses-of-people-who-filed/

Delicious irony. I remember the mob clamoring over a thread encouraging people who were upset to take action and contact the ESRB.