The Point of RealID and How to Stop It.

The Point of RealID and How to Stop It by pokute

If you want to stop RealID, you'd have to first understand the reasoning behind its implementation. Activizzard is not the least bit concerned about consumer privacy nor trolls. What it does care about is money, mountains and mountains of it.

Blizzard's strategy in at least the last five years have been in large part trying to recreate their success with Starcraft in South Korea in other regions (most notably China and United States). China's a bit off topic, so I'll skip it. Starcraft took the form of competitive sports in South Korea, so Blizzard tried to push WoW arena as a competitive sport when WoW attained the popularity potential in the US. Even Blizzcon is marketed as a pop culture spectacle instead of the usual "convention-style" marketing.

What Blizzard didn't anticipate fully was just how deep the cultural trench against video games is (it being a thing for young boys to play in America and nothing more despite all evidence to the contrary). Even though millions of Americans were playing WoW, not enough were openly discussing and mindlessly praising WoW to truly bring it into the mainstream, often due to players' fears they would be looked down upon, or even jeopardizing their social life and careers.

The point behind constructing battle.net 2.0 was to bring all of their customers under one banner, and the next step would be to firmly plant that banner in social networks. While this may seem like your typical superfluous Facebook integration, the key difference is that Activizzard understands how social networks work.

While some of us may idealize social networks as tools for making new friends and sharing new experiences, the reality is much more... stupid. The main mass of that social networking ball that determines its current obsessions and direction are composed of pathologically vain and codependent individuals, basically people who love to think themselves as leaders when they are followers in every way. This group generally operates on two primordial principles

1. us versus them
2. monkey-see-monkey-do

By bringing the big three Blizzard franchises of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo under BNet 2.0, Activizzard has created, without a doubt, the critical mass of players needed to generate the initial wave of buzz. All that is left is to ensure the visibility of this massive following.

Now THIS is where RealID comes into play. Activizzard is planning to make it virtually impossible for you to hide the fact that you're playing on BNet 2.0. By publically outing its entire player base, the goal is to blur the us versus them boundary on Blizzard games. Imagine as people who wistfully shook their heads at video games suddenly find their relatives, friends, trusted employees, colleagues, and bosses to all be playing on this newfangled "BNet2" thing. With sustained releases of Starcraft 2 followed by WoW: Cataclysm, then SC2 Part 2, then probably Diablo 3 and so on, Activizzard can keep BNet tag alive and kicking on social networks for years to come. As the appearance that "everybody's on BNet" spreads, monkey-see-monkey-do will kick in without fail.

There was a submission a while back about some Facebook user defending Farmville as "not a video game" so "it's okay to play." While this may seem like hypocritical nonsense to anyone who's not a blithering idiot, it is also the type of blind cultural acceptance Activizzard hopes to engender for BNet 2.0.

I must admit that I didn't check into whether or not that particular post was true or made up, but from my experiences on social networks, I find the story quite believable. In fact, I would say it is incredibly common to find arguments and individuals of this caliber on Facebook. Unfortunately for us, these are also the people that BNet 2.0 aims to bring into the fold.

I know some of you will feel this sounds like a conspiracy theory. All I can say to that is that brilliant pieces of mass marketing often do sound like that.

So what does this mean for people who want to stop RealID? Well, you better start working very hard on a massive scare compaign against BNet 2.0 for Activizzard's new target market. Quitting the game, angry e-mails, posting on forums and news aggregate sites will make no difference. Only a successful first strike on BNet's reputation on Facebook will give Activizzard pause. Even then, I'm not sure how long it'd be before they sneak RealID right back in. They've already made firm investments in this endeavor.

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