ADDED This is what I get for being late to the party and carefully considering how I feel about an issue. As various comments have stated, the policy has been rescinded before it was ever put into place. Someone got smart.

I haven’t really been doing much gaming, lately, and what I have been doing has been mainly Star Trek: Online. Nevertheless, I have enough World of Warcraft players in my world that I became aware of the advent of RealID pretty much from day one. Most of them seemed pretty happy with it, since, among other things, it enables the ability to chat with people on other servers and other factions. This is a big shift in the social architecture of the game, which previously restricted in-game chat to people on the same server and on the same “side” (Alliance vs. Horde).

But a RealID is an e-mail address, which is Problem Number One. Now, everyone can see a player’s e-mail address. Oh, sure, one can probably cons up a free e-mail address that has nothing to do with them in any other context easily enough, and use that in-game only. A lot of people, however, won’t think about that. None of my friends have. And they probably should have.

But now, Blizzard is insisting on a new policy whereby they will only permit the use of real names in their forums. Since you have to give your real name to create an account (at least, if you’re using a credit card, which most people are, I believe), this is rather difficult to evade, and anyway, if it’s policy, then obvious evasions will probably result in banning.

The intention of this is presumably to suppress so-called “griefers” and others trolls and active criminals, by requiring them to stop hiding behind pseudonyms. However, as Scott Lynch points out, all it’s really going to do is give such people a more target rich environment. People who are intent on causing trouble–whether it be merely social maliciousness like trolling or active criminality–will be the most likely to find canny ways to evade the new rules, while ordinary, law abiding folks who just want to play the game and talk about it with other players without getting harassed or stolen from will have no idea how and no real desire to do so. Because they’re not the ones doing anything wrong!

Scott pretty well enumerates all the reasons why this turns out to be a worse and worse idea the more you think about it, so I won’t belabor it further — go chase the link above.

Meanwhile, I think I will not, after all, be getting back into the game anytime soon as I’d planned.

First, read this fun essay by just-announced CONVergence 2011 guest of honor Catherynne Valente: “How SF Prepared Me For The Future“! It’s fun!

Second, CONVergence 2010 was made of awesome and win on several levels. I particularly enjoyed getting to sit on panels with entertaining folks. There was a panel on the evolution of the Klingons from straight-up villains to complex warriors, for example, on which two gents who cosplay as Klingons also sat, and did the entire panel in character, deriding Federation propaganda! And somehow, the Babylon 5 panel was intense and lively despite being in the 3:30p Sunday slot and both the panelists and the audience being badly sleep deprived after 4 days of convention goodness.

My one regret is that I wasn’t really in much of a social headspace this weekend. Which is a bit of a waste when you’re surrounded by 4500 people, all of whom have geeky and fun things to talk about! Oh, I talked to lots of people, but I didn’t go seeking out connections, old or new, very much. I think I need to try to find that groove again for next year.

After one of my panels, I received a head-swelling compliment on my style as a panelist and moderator, including the suggestion that in should do a podcast or something. I’m thinking about it. Other than the fact that I’m clearly sometimes challenged to come up with things to write about here, I’m not sure about it because editing it would touch upon an odd phobia of mine: I actually don’t much like the sound of my own voice! I realize people who know me or see me on panels or in the SCA will boggle at that, given how hard it is to get me to shut up, but it’s true!

But I am giving it serious thought…

Anyway, stay tuned for more actual content soon. It’s time I got this show back on the road!