The announcement that Blizzard was about to force its gamers not to be anonymous kicked up a (can I say shitstorm? Yes? Yes.) well, a shitstorm.

The BBC calls it a “row”; CNET calls it a “controversy”, TechCrunch ran a post entitled “When privacy meets hypocrisy: Blizzard Real ID edition”.

Isn’t it time we all grew up?

This move is long overdue. The days when it made sense for the Internet to be anonymous are over.

A lot of mileage has been made of the battle (and I’m hugely disappointed about that Blizzard has now backed down from implementing RealID).

Here’s what went wrong. Blizzard announced the policy and a whole bunch of childish, Internet trolls hid behind anonymity and pretended it was terrible. A forum moderator who rejoices in the unusual (and highly Googleable) name of Micah Whipple said he was happy to use his real name, and within minutes people had Googled his name and discovered all sorts of personal details on the web.

And who were these people who released personal details on the web: cowards hiding behind anonymous names.

Don’t they get it? This is what Blizzard were trying to stop. The only reason these overgrown children could behave petulantly is because Micah Whipple outed himself before everyone else was outed. So they could bully him with privacy issues while hiding behind anonymity. Take away the anonymity and the stalker can be stalked, the bully bullied, the troll… – well actualy, if you have sense, the troll will just be ignored.

But to do this, you have to take away *everyone’s* anonymity, not just some people’s. And that’s where this got out of hand.

To be fair, I don’t blame Blizzard for backing down given the shitstorm. It’s important to listen to your customers, and lots of customers hated RealID.

But for me the Micah Whipple example doesn’t say “anonymity is good”. It says quite the reverse. Anonymity is bad, and partial anonymity is the worst of all.

Rob Fahey, over at GamesIndustry.biz (registration required) argues the opposite: that anonymity helps those who need to explore their identities in a safe environment (or just not get hit on all the time) by being anonymous. I sort of get that, but think that the downsides outweigh the benefits.

So I was hugely excited by Blizzard’s huge steps to end the anonymity of the Internet, and am deeply disappointed by their retraction.

But what do you think? Is anonymity a good thing for the Internet, or do you believe, as I do, that the faster our real identities are the same online and in the real world, the better the Web will be?

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This isn’t strictly about the business of games, but I’m excited by it.

Blizzard, Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures have announced that Sam Raimi is to direct the Warcraft movie.

Raimi is the acclaimed director of Spider-Man, and was also responsible for the The Evil Dead.

I’m sure that Legendary and Warner are hoping for a repeat of Spiderman’s success (which, according to the press release “which has broken box-office records around the world and garnered five Academy Awards nominations”).

Personally, I’m hoping to see Bruce Campbell reprise his role as Ash from Army Of Darkness – Evil Dead 3.

Groovy.

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To lose a million users may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose 6 million looks like carelessness.

World of Warcraft may be in imminent danger of losing its crown as the largest massively-multiplayer online role-playing game in the world, as its user numbers fall by 50%.

WoW’s Chinese servers are down, according to blogger Tobold, and have been for a month. And the Chinese market represents about six million Warcraft players.

Of course, these users are not that profitable for Activision Blizzard. Chinese rules mean that they have to operate in partnership with a local company which takes most of the revenue.

The current issue may be political. Activision Blizzard ended its relationship with former WoW operator The9 due, I believe, to EA’s 15.8% stake in The9. But it is also geopolitical: the Chinese General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) has to approve the release of “an electronic publication belonging to an overseas copyright holder”. Marbridge Consulting reports that:

So perhaps unsurprisingly, The9 has brought four lawsuits against Blizzard in Shanghai. And the Warcraft servers stay down. I’m sure that competitors are swarming to attract former WoW players to their own MMORPGs even as we speak.

The financial impact for Activision Blizzard is likely to be small. Chinese players do not spend anywhere near as much per head as Western subscribers. But the prestige impact of no longer being the largest MMORPG in the world is likely to grate on Bobby Kotick.

Oh, and the stigma of “failing” in the Chinese market if they don’t resolve this issue quickly.

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