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This morning, Blizzard (publishers of the popular Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo game franchises) announced plans to require contributors to their online forums to post under their real names. Predictably, this caused the forums to go nuclear.

This is phase two in a deliberate campaign. Phase one was the deployment of Real ID, a feature that allowed players of their games to exchange messages and online status, but only if they also shared their real names and email addresses. There was no technical reason why this had to be the case—no other popular Instant Messaging service requires such disclosure—the messaging and presence features were bait on the “Real Names, Please” hook.

It is a grand experiment (and a big gamble) by Blizzard. The evils of anonymity in gaming communities are well-documented. Blizzard are aiming, as far as I can tell, to make their Battle.net service the first such community where anonymity is the exception instead of the rule.

A few years ago I'd have said this was impossible. A person’s right to keep their online existence separate to their “real life” was not questioned, and in many cases considered a necessary defence against real-life enemies such as draconic HR departments and hiring managers who don't understand that weird Internet thing. The overwhelming success of Facebook suggests that nowadays the vast majority of Internet denizens don't care one whit about their real name being splashed across The Googles, don't care that their on– and offline lives are hopelessly intertwingled.

It's a generational change, and while I don’t doubt Blizzard have called it right, perhaps they might have called it a little too early.