It’s a well known fact that Blizzard aims to introduce its new RealID technology with the arrival of Cataclysm, the latest expansion pack for the most popular pay-monthly online game of the decade, World of Warcraft. The innovation will allow individuals to contact each other using their real names, in an effort to allow them stay in contact through multiple games.

For example, you’ll be able to get online in Starcraft 2, and whisper your buddy in WoW, or get on to Diablo III, and let your WoW buddy know how awesome it is. It’s a great innovation nonetheless, but there seems to be a problem.

One would think that a RealID is just a nick that you choose once, and it goes live in all Blizzard games, but how wrong would they be. It’s actually an effort to make everyone use their Real Names (in capital) to chat with each other. In other words, if you’re John McCoy (just took that from a bag of chips), you can be whispered as John McCoy, in case the other party knows your e-mail address and you accept him as your buddy.

And it’s not enough. In an effort to keep trolling, hatred, useless posts and general bad etiquette at bay, Blizzard aims to let this system go live on their official forums as well. Right now, the idea looks like that they’re going to make your real name, the one you registered with, public on the forum. If you open a topic that discusses talent specs of your class, your name goes there. Again, your real name would show on forums publicly no matter what.

If you get involved in a heated discussion about why Blizzard needs to change an aspect or an other of the game, your name goes there. It sounds like a good way to stop those who are shooting from behind the bushes, but it needs to be pondered for a second. Do you really want everyone to know your real name? Even though the character name won’t appear next to your real name in default, your data may be public. Ever heard of Facebook and MySpace? Those are places to get information from, another one is the phone book.

We’ve already seen nerd-rage crimes spurring up in the last two-three years, would you really want to keep your name where anyone can see it? It’s not like it’s the best solution, either. You could be having a randomized real name that sticks to your account when you first post on WoW forums, and stays like that, so no matter what character alterego you’d use, it’d go under that name.

Privacy rights promoters say that it’s the end of net neutrality, but I wouldn’t go that far yet. There’s been a public uproar regarding the issue, and looking at the number of responses coming from people we may see a change in the plan down the road. Just the US board of World of Warcraft official forums got more than 20,000 posts in less than a day complaining about the new change.

It’s four times as many as the most controversial change ever made before. If that’s not something the think tank needs to take into account, I don’t know what is. If there is any truth in the rumor that someone ordered a pizza for an official spokesman active on the forums, I can see them giving this a second thought.

Update: It looks like one of the US community managers gave out their real name, and one day later their Facebook page was deleted, and phone line disconnected. Quite scary stuff this Internet is.

Update 2: I nearly fell of the chair watching this clip.