Yes, I realize that writing this on a gaming website is probably a good way to meet the banhammer but so be it.

A while back, I mentioned my irritation with the whole "Rosa's Journey" and how the advertising as well as some of the fans of this publicity stunt were lauding her as being "so brave" to go and meet her Facebook friends face-to-face. I found this to be a somewhat irritating thing as, to me, it indicates that we've become so cowardly and socially isolated from each other that we actually think that this is a big deal. Yes, it can be a little nerve-wracking to meet someone new but, from the way people were talking about this, it's as if Rosa was jumping into a burning bus full of C4 to save a kitten while a .50-caliber machine gun was trying to ventilate her.

Blizzard has actually managed to top this.

As has been covered, Blizzard was toying with a Real ID system where you would have to associate your real name with your posts in an attempt to make Battle.net forums a little less of a cesspool. This, to me, struck me as both irrational and legally problematic. If I were to do such a system, I would just link the accounts to your player account. Noone can access any board beyond technical help unless they have a level 5 and up character to do it with. If you get banned from the boards, your character gets deleted. It's neat. It has a varying level of consequences. (Ex: Even if you avoid the banhammer, the person you are antagonizing may gather his friends and kick you around in-game for a day or so.) It allows new players to get on the boards quickly while retaining enough of a requirement to avoid multiple accounts (Running the same quests to make "dummy" lvl 5s would get tedious.)

But it's the reaction from the fanbase that really gets me.

A large percentage of the fanbase kept acting like this system would expose your exact location to any stalkers in the world. Over in Gamefaqs, posters were comparing this to having the Government wiretap your phones, perform unlawful search & seizure, and go through your mail. The irony here is that many of these same people backed a system where you would give your basic healthcare history along with all the personal information that entails to a government that COULD do all of these things. It says something that people are more afraid of some random WOW player tracking you down with only your name as information than a government which has far more personal information and far more power over you but this type of Pavlov's Dog scenario is best discussed some other time.

Speaking as someone who has his real name linked with his Gamefaqs/spot name (I have a Time Crisis Project Titan FAQ) and who has discussed where he lives down to the city (Colorado Springs), I kind of side with Gabe on this one. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/7/9/ I see and even acknowledge Tycho's point but the overreaction of the fanbase strikes me as both overly paranoid and....well....cowardly. Back when the First Amendment was written, the Founding Fathers didn't feel that strict controls were needed because, even using pen names, it was nearly impossible to remain completely anonymous and avoid the consequences of your actions if you were bound and determined to aggravate people.This put a level of civility in public discussions if only because the other party mightpunch you in the face. Now, on one hand, we have people like Fred Phelps who uses the law to shield him from the consequences of his behavior and, on the other, we have people who go into a panic when the slightest bit of accountability will be attached to the behavior that they get away with while cowering behind a shield of anonymity.

I guess, in the end, that's what gets me about the whole thing..... that the Blizzard community has shown the yellow stripe running down their back. Even if you did narrow the person down to the country you live in or even the state and the "stalker" happened to live in the same state (Remember WoW/Starcraft/etc is played internationally), the odds of them being able to find you, travel to your location, and actually get close enough to take a shot at you (much less crawl in your windows at night) are astronomical. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning while getting mauled by a bear. Hell, with the rise of the Smartphone and various apps that allow you to search for someone by picture, it's more likely that someone will take your picture at McDonalds and find you....presuming that you don't already give that information out on your Facebook or through tweets. Yet, for the Blizzard community, that was still too much of a risk for them.

It also makes me wonder if this level of paranoia/cowardiceis unique to the Blizzard community or if this applies to a broader range. It is wrong to characterize every WOW player as an agoraphobic shut-in but this whole thing makes me wonder if the WOW community has more of those. Then again, perhaps this is a gamer thing. Perhaps this is just a reflection of what happens to people who spend too much time on the internet. Maybe this is a reflection of a society that has become populated by timid mice whose lion-like self-image is so easily shattered.

I don't know.

All I know is that the cowardly overreaction of people to the Real ID system just got under my skin. Yes, as I said, at the beginning, there are reasons to not want this system. But, if you honestly think that you would have to live in fear because someone who puts Batman to shame in the detective arena is going to fly over from Korea to track you down over a post you made on an internet message board, then maybe you need to take a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror and step away from the computer......and possibly seek some professional help.

At the very least, maybe you should stop making posts that are just trolling others.