Activision Battles 'Trolls', Backs Down on Privacy Fears

Trolls are pretty common in the online game “World of Warcraft.” Unfortunately, they’re pretty common on the game's message boards as well.

Courtesy of Activision-Blizzard A large outcry emerged from 'WoW' players recently over the game maker's plans to reveal user names in public forums.

Trolls, slang for people who haunt Internet forums and rip into other posters for seemingly innocuous statements, tend to ruin the fun for other players, who are sometimes seeking help or looking to start conversations.

Earlier this week, Activision-Blizzard

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[ATVI  Loading...      ()   ] announced its plan to rid the Blizzard forums of these troublemakers; beginning later this month, all posts would be made under users' real names, not their online aliases.

Three days later, though, the company reversed those plans, battered by an onslaught of opposition not just from the troublemakers, but from more courteous players as well.

A large part of the outcry came from players concerned about their privacy. Trolls—on any public forum, including comments on news sites—hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, knowing they can never be held accountable for their comments. Having their name publicly attached to them was not an appealing prospect and they quickly howled.

Others, though, were more worried that anything they wrote on those message boards could be easily found with a Google

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[GOOG  Loading...      ()   ] search—and an off-the-cuff comment made online could have repercussions for them in real-world relationships.

“In a world where employers typically do Google searches for people's names prior to hiring them, this will exclude me from posting since my name is too unique,” said ‘noxiousegg,’ a user discussing the changes on Shacknews.com, another gaming site.

“Even though I'm not a troll, usually, I don't want an employer to render arbitrary judgments based on the content of my posts on a game forum, or worse, on the simple fact that I post at all,” the user also wrote.

Still others were concerned that with access to their real name, other players could dig up additional information about them, including photos, addresses, phone numbers and more. Some female players said they feared harassment.

“Not only do I not want to be petitioned by random people for cyberlovin while I am playing a game, but more importantly I do not want to be a target offline,” wrote user ‘Quira’ in the Blizzard forums.