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  • Enter at Your Own Rift: Revisiting anonymity in our games

    by 
    Karen Bryan
    Karen Bryan
    03.14.2012

    It seems like ages ago, but back in July of 2010, Blizzard shook the MMO world with the announcement of RealID. You probably recall the firestorm, but the long and short of it is that Blizzard was planning to make all posts in the forums display each poster's real-life first and last name. The protests against it were so loud that Blizzard backed down from the move and life resumed as usual. The intend was to integrate social media into Blizzard games, particularly Facebook, but it became a huge can of worms because it forced everyone who wanted to post on the forums to reveal their true names. But social media is continuing to grow, and there are lots of ways that game companies have made use of it. In this week's Enter at Your Own Rift, let's look at Trion's approach and revisit the idea of anonymity in MMOs.