BioWare Mythic hates Real ID

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 26 July, 2010

"No. Never. Never. No."

On the eve of the release of Blizzard's StarCraft II, Warhammer Online developer BioWare Mythic has told its fans that it will "never" force gamers to use their real names when posting in forums.

Last week Blizzard about-turned on its decision to require and use people's real names for the StarCraft II and World of Warcraft forums.

Real ID, as it's called, "was a deliberate and open design decision, driven 100 per cent by the desire to create an even better online experience for our players by giving them powerful tools to compete with and stay connected to their real-life friends and family," Blizzard said.

Real ID stores people's real first names and surnames so that other people can befriend them across multiple games and recognise their real-life friends.

"No. Never. Never. No," was Warhammer Online producer Carrie Gouskos' matter-of-fact response when asked by Eurogamer whether BioWare Mythic would ever implement Real ID.

"I would fight that tooth and nail. I've had some very personal, really bad experiences in online communities with that. Personally, I’m against it," she said.

BioWare Mythic general manager Eugene Evans added that he was surprised Blizzard went for Real ID in the first place.

"We wouldn't do it. I'm surprised they did it, and for a group that is so close to their community, it was amazing that they misread it that poorly.

"I'm pleased to see them reacting to the community. We should all learn to listen to our communities.

"Their community made it very clear what the right answer is."

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will be released simultaneously on 27th July on PC and Mac.

We're off to London to have a chat with Blizzard now. GAME's Oxford Street flagship store will open at midnight tonight to sell it. Expect chaos.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (10) 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Rizo #1 2 years ago

    As far as I can remember Warhammer Online launched without forums and was a epic fail so i wouldn't pay much attention to this guy..

  • icematt12 #2 2 years ago

    ^ It's a she being interviewed.

  • sneetch #3 2 years ago

    @Rizo

    He's still capable of being right isn't he?

    Eugene Evans wasn't in charge when Warhammer Online launched, Bioware Mythic didn't even exist. He's now one of the unfortunates tasked with cleaning up the mess that was WAR.

  • anomagnus #4 2 years ago

    Blizzard aren't close to their community, nor is the community close to Blizzard. The relationship between the main posters is in fact openly hostile. Ghostcrawler tried to remove himself from the community at one stage, due to the complete break down in civility.

    WoW is basically a very loud, small minority, and a very quiet majority.

    If anyone really thinks blizzard is close to the 4/5 million EMEA/AUS/US player community, they're over estimating the ability of their community teams

  • bdc #5 2 years ago

    ^^^ that's because you're wrongly assuming the official wow forums are the only community around. Blizzard keeps in touch with the fansites (argubly even moreso) which tend to have far more reasoned and civilized bases. There's too many people ignoring the massive breadth and depth of the third party base that follows the game and instead choosing to pin everything on the immediate official forums - of which are frequently parodied and met with derision pretty much anywhere else.

  • Amblin #6 2 years ago

    lol really? are you sure? You see there's this thing they have; a community site.....just sayin no doesn't make it set in stone. If decided by the boss that it's happening, it gonna happen.

    As it is Bioware have a better community so all I can say is this.

    Never say never. EA has a say here too and already have a social site/microtrans business model that will rapidly expand over the next decade. Mythic/Bioware will follow in time or as the market dictates.

    Given that there will be a push by many firms ala actiblizz/ubisoft to make their own social platform to then launch their online microtrans business in full.

    Bioware will be no different, it just takes time and a desire to make a profit by selling extras.

    The problem with Real ID is not a big one. A lot of people link their games to their facebook account. Honestly all this grind over it is meaningless. It will be adopted and once the take up is above XX% the rest will follow.

    The other thing to consider is how many of these companies etc want you to link to thier games BIOWARE! included, to your favorite social networking site.

    I find the whole debacle chuckle worthy.
    Edited by 4 at 26/07/10 @ 13:42

  • Softie2k #7 2 years ago

    LOL anomagnus, why state an opinion when you know yourself you don't know enough to be commenting.

    Blizzard are incredibly close to their community, more so than any other game, past or present.

    "WoW is basically a very loud, small minority, and a very quiet majority. "

    Absolute rubbish, there are hundreds of thousands of fans that comment on forums everyday. Most raiding guild members will look at forums from time to time and much of the discussion goes on IN GAME, which then manifests itself on forums.

  • Luckz #8 2 years ago

    They have "fans"?

  • dagas #9 2 years ago

    This just seems like a desperate attemt at fishing up some WoW people.

  • sonicgoo #10 2 years ago

    Maybe they should focus on making some positive news for themselves, rather than slagging off others...