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To the people who think that it is insane to entertain the idea of quitting WoW or never posting again on their forums, I feel you've taken a very narrow and short sighted view of the situation.
Let me introduce myself to the level I'm comfortable with. I'm the GM of a guild. I routinely HAVE to post to maintain recruiting for my guild. I do it on the horde forums and my realm forums. I've posted a few times on the druid forums (my main) and have trolled the Warsong forums (on my main) because the people we encounter from it during randoms seem so incredibly terrible. I've trolled from a level one no more than 1/2 a dozen times but I admit I have.
I'm more afraid of my Real ID getting out when I recruit than any possible trolling I could ever think of. It is a some what scary thing to have my full name out there as the leader of a guild that may occasionally have to make decisions concerning guild membership that may result in dicey situations.
In 2008, a dating couple in the guild broke up. The male of the two was not picked to join a ZA raid one night and proceeded to leave the guild in a huge huff. What followed was something out of pure psychosis. Even though HE had moved back home leaving her place, she was the one that basically called the end to the relationship. After leaving the guild, this man constantly harassed her, me and my entire guild simply due to the ties binding her as a guild member. He would call her or message her that he was coming back to her side of the country to harass her, threatened to come over and anally rape her, called local food delivery places like KFC and ordered huge amounts of food to be delivered to her place. I was pulled into the mess when he posted personal information about me on my realm forums because he used to read her MSN logs. Imagine what he could have done knowing my full name. He would have harassed me in a similar manner to what he did with his ex-GF. I don't want to have to face removing somebody from the guild that decides to enact revenge by calling me, looking up my Facebook, digging up personal info, etc.
You can tell me to just have a member who is comfortable with posting with a visible real ID do the recruiting. What if none of my officers are? I shouldn't have to be concerned about sharing my first name/last name with the entire WOW community simply to ensure my guild remains viable through recruiting. I am many things online. I am a Curse admin. I'm a gaming clan head. I am a GM of a guild. I am a former addon pack author. I am a former admin of many gaming sites such as ProvingGrounds.com, Teamwarfare.com, IGL.com, a YouTube video poster, an XBOX gamer, and many, many more. From one small sharing of my name, you can potentially hop to info about my friends which include single mothers, married couples with children, minors and more. You could discover people who might be leading an alternative lifestyle or support them while not leading one themselves. What if a female applies to a guild and by investigating her real ID, she is accepted based solely on being "hot" or denied for looking like the south end of a north facing donkey?
Forcing real IDs upon people by using it as a toll booth in which to post on official Blizzard forums is trash and a violation of privacy. In game usage of real ID is risky enough in the case of somebody who gets hacked and notice is taken of the names on the real ID list. Blizzard is going to be in for the harshest criticism I think they've ever faced.
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