Originally Posted by Cralor
"Ultimately we decided we would not go in that direction for the time being, and see if there were other ways we could address the objective we had, which was to improve the forums generally."
No, they will not do the same thing.
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"For the time being" carries the strong implication that they will, in the future, go in that direction.
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Honestly, this affect should not lead you to stop playing the game. (Unless you no longer enjoy playing the game.) But if it makes you happy, do what you want.
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I can't understand why this shouldn't make me stop playing the game.
Blizzard has a large number of nice, concrete, examples of ways in which the proposed change would lead to real risk (albeit remote) of physical harm to their customers. After considering all the clearly documented ways in which this would result in such risks, they... backed down only because so many people were mad. And have now explicitly stated that they have backed down "for the time being", which is a statement you don't normally make without specific intent to change things later.
They have 11 million players. Something bad that only happens one time in a million would affect eleven people.
Fundamentally, this means that Blizzard's customers are now a secondary consideration after their facebook deal. It means that if I continue to pay them money, I'm funding their development of screwing people over when "the time being" is up. It means that it would now be not merely a bit undercautious, but
stupid for me to trust them with personal information of any sort that might legitimately be considered "private" under other circumstances.
It makes the game no longer fun, because the game is now known to be run by people who don't care what we think, and don't actually care what we say, just how many people were saying it. They "listened" only to the number of cancellations, not to the reasons or explanations. They have not given the risks or problems any thought. Once "the time being" is up, they will move in that direction anyway -- because they don't think it's a big issue.
So I don't trust them anymore, and that makes the game unfun.
I used to be friends with this guy, until I found out he was an utter, total, jerk to women he slept with. Then I stopped being friends with him. Sure, I could have gone and done stuff with him, his behavior wouldn't have changed -- but I no longer liked him as a person, so it wouldn't have been fun anymore. I used to like Blizzard. Now I don't. That makes the game unfun.
And yes, I read that. That is one of the other things they will do
for the time being.
They have not acknowledged, at any point, that there were actual problems with real names, other than that a lot of players complained. They haven't admitted that the complaints had any kind of underlying validity. They haven't acknowledged that these problems are inherent and fundamental to the idea of forcing people to be identified by real names, and that means that, no matter how cool the other stuff they do is, they're still people who think it's okay to put their customers at risk in order to get a better marketing deal with facebook.