Blizzard just made sure ...

[Kevin]

A lot of things that made sense from a gamers standpoint.

So Blizzard is a business. They want to make money. Even if they are already making gobs of money they want to make bigger gobs, or perhaps gobs that are more gooey. Either way, they want more than they already get.

This is all mostly SWAG, but follow along if you will.

Blizzard is already tying this RealID stuff to ads and marketing. Facebook and Twitter do much the same. So we know this whole thing was money driven. Not having Real Names on the forums would mean adding another layer. The cost of the extra layer is pretty minimal, but there is some cost associated with it, it requires additional database tables and permissions, very minor transaction costs, a bit of extra programming for the API that will do the translation in the apps that need it.

I'm not sure Blizzard can sell the info or sell the ad space as targeted if things are tied to the forum id and not a real name. If it's on the real name Blizzard can allow the advertisers to farm that info without having to provide it. At least that seems to be where the extra money comes from. With real names on the forums Blizzard could say, "sure we'll put your ads in the games and on the forums, but since you can easily get the real names of the folks, you pay us more." Now to be able to do that, they would have to write something in a EULA saying they can sell your name to advertisers.

I'm sure they are looking at doing stuff like Massive Inc already does and like was done in Hellgate London too. But the settings of their games don't work so well for natural ad placement. I really didn't mind the real ads on the walls in Hellgate, it was an environment where it made sense to see stuff like that you would expect to see it. Just like I don't mind some of the product placement in movies, as long as it's not completely in your face. Other companies under the Vivendi umbrella already use Massive.

So I'm not fully sure, but to figure it out, just try and follow the money.