Real names will not be used on the official WoW forums or any other of Blizzard’s gaming forums. You can read the full post here. I think for most of us this is awesome news. Also in their post Blizzard mentioned some of the things they’re going to do to improve the forums in general.
Honestly if trolling and spamming is their big concern then might I suggest the following.
- Require players to have a single forum handle that is used for all of their posts. Folks will still troll, but they’ll be easier to spot now.
- Reduce the number of forums. Get rid of things like Guild Recruitment – Alliance and Guild Recruitment – Horde. Heck I’d even go so far as to remove the profession forums, class forums and role forums. Do it like you are for the Cataclysm Beta forums and have just one class forum.
- Enforce the ban hammer. Maybe they do this now, I don’t really know. Keep posters on a very short leash.
- Create a single announcement forum where only Blues can make topics. Put all of your important stuff in this forum.
- Have Blue tracker (yes, it exists now) where folks can see all of the official responses.
To be honest I rarely post on the WoW forums. I do check the “Blue Tracker” and I am reading the Official Cataclysm Beta forums daily. Beyond that I tend to steer clear of the WoW forums.
