Leveling Pt. 2

From yesterday's post:

4. Looking for Dungeon: Randomizer. The best thing for leveling since sliced bread.  Actually, using the dungeon finder tool will get you leveled up a whole lot faster than doing quests.  And its no effort trying to get a group together.  Just queue, and eventually you're in.  While waiting, you can do quests. 

Random dungeons also give you extra experience and a bag which yield blue quality items that you can use to round out your gear.  Instance only drops cuffs and robe?  fear not! my awesome Satchel of Goods will give me gloves and belt.  yep, awesomeness. 

 

5. Heirloom Gear is purchasable by all 80s and can be sent to Alts.  Not only are Heirlooms gear pretty cool and sometimes offer stats that are superior to what you'll find in dungeons, the shoulders and chest piece give extra experience.  that’s 10% extra from the shoulders, and +10% extra from the Chest/Robe. Total is 20%.  Who can complain?  And since you're probably never going to switch out the gear, your enchants will stay on the item for a good while.  I mean where it matters most (level 1-60 anyway). 

I just wanted to continue today about leveling today as compared to leveling two years ago.  as you know, I've already gone through several of the changes that make leveling easier (less exp required, lowered level requirement for mounts) and those do have a significant impact on leveling both at level 20 and at level 60.  But what I think is probably the biggest boost to leveling has got to be the next two changes that I will be discussing:  LFD and Heirlooms.

Although we are able to do dungeons in our own server with random people we find in our level range, blizzard has added a nice little feature that allows us to queue up for dungeons and party with people from various servers.  The great thing about this is that there is no effort on our part to attempt to form any parties and entering dungeons requires a wait time. heck, you even get zoomed to the instance.

the old dungeon system had people sign up for various dungeons and wait.  if someone was willing enough to form the group, they would look at the signup list and find several (usually DPS) waiting for a group and would ask them if they would want to join the group.  The usual slowdown involed finding a healer or a tank.  of course, sometimes it would take too long to find a healer or a tank, or both, and one or both DPS would drop from the group.  This caused the party leader to have to find more dps as well.  Now this system worked somewhat, but it does fall to a lot of abuse and prone to fail.  

Oftentimes, myself included, I would have my own criterias for inviting people to join my own group.  when I used to play as a druid healer, I would make sure there are no other druids in the party, since I would like to eliminate any competition for certain drops.  As a dk, I made sure I was the only dk.  heck, I try not to include warriors or paladins as well since they would roll on plate gear against me.  I would also make sure I have two ranged DPS and one Melee dps.  I would always pick a ranged over a melee.  I would pick mages and warlocks over hunters because the chances of getting good dps from mages and warlocks are far better than for huntards.  I would always pick a shaman to join.  always.  but the picking is slim because at any given time, there's always a page and a half of deathknights waiting for an invite.  there may be a few rogues too, but that's because their class is often missunderstood (they're not great AoE specialists, so their dps may be lower usually).

Regarding LFD

Now, with the "Looking for Dungeon" or LFD tool, there is no need to profile.  Blizz already did that already.  Notice how every group has a good mix of people.  Two ranged, one melee, and usually there are no duplicates unless it’s they're playing two roles (ie. two warriors, one dps, one tank.  or two shamans, one dps, one heal).  I have been in parties where I guess blizz couldn’t find anything better and left us with five, yes FIVE paladins.  hey, we rocked the instance.   You'll hardly see a group with two locks, two mages, two rogues, or two of anything. 

Not only has the LFD tool taken cared of the whole profiling and selection of characters for you, it also has a bigger population base for these things.  being that each battlegroup (or cluster of servers) is about 10 to 15 servers big, there's plenty of people to match up with.  sometimes you'll get people from your own server in these random groups, but most of the time, you'll see people from different servers.  Not only does this help people in low population servers find groups fast, it also gives classes that are in low demand (ie dps) a chance to party as well.  although there's 3 dps per group, there seem to be an overabundance of dps in the gaming world.  I've played dps and I have to tell you, it really does feel like a double edged sword. 

So LFD makes it easy for people to find groups to dungeon with.  It takes care of the low population server problem, especially running low level instances and it takes care of the DPS abundance problem on all servers. but what it does best is this.  it gives you the sense of a true "one night stand", or "no strings attached" feeling when you zone in.  don’t like the tank? vote to kick.  you'll never see him again so who cares?  don’t like the dps doing crap damage? vote to kick.  don’t like the whole group? drop party.  are you vocal? voice your opinion that the tank sucks.  no one will bug you after the party because they're not on your server and most people wouldn’t care to make an alt on your server just to harass you.  you go into a dungeon, beat on things, roll on loot and get out. that’s it.  thank people and leave. that’s basically everything that goes on.  problem is, what happens when you actually find people you do like to party with because they're actually really good or fun to play with?  well we're all SOL. 

In any case, since LFD makes it so easy and almost painless to run dungeons at low levels now, I see a little less requests in trade chat to boost others.  Boosting is this.  when I low level asks a very high level (usually a level 80) to go to a dungeon with them and kill everything for them.  this is often compensated with gold or by returning the favor at a later time.  Low level characters are actually "playing" through their dungeons and actually contributing during the dungeons.  This does promote learning in some ways.  although most of the time I do see blizzard and rain of fire spams, I still see people doing well and learning to play their class.  sometimes different specs and spells are applied during the dungeon to test out how viable one spell is over another.  I see lower level paladins use Lay on Hands way more often now (and I do believe they should all know where their cooldown spells are anyway), but this is due to the tank running ahead and pulling large groups while the healer is trying to drink.  lessons are learned this way and I find that its much better that these lessons are learned at level 30 than at level 80. 

Overall, LFD has helped many who would otherwise be questing all day to run a few dungeons, thereby learning how to perform in groups and using some spells that they would probably never use in solo play.  this will lead to better performance overall in later dungeons and even raids.  although most dungeons will not punish those who "stand in bad" they will at least have developed some of the tools necessary to play in end game content.  Leveling is sped up, people are learning to play together, and the monotony of leveling has been reduced.  what more can you ask for with LFD?  oh yea, a buddy list that crosses servers.  yea.

And last of all, Heirloom Gear.

The mention of Heirloom gear will be shorter than LFD since there isnt much to say about it except that, whether they are the pvp variety or the pve variety, they're both viable for pve content as their stats will benefit the bearer.  resilience is just a bonus.  The easiest to attain would be those gotten from stone keeper shards, or pvp heirlooms.  although they might not have all of the pve stats, it does offer a better alternative than some of the quest or instance gear you might find while leveling up.

Whats most important about the gear is not that they offer better stats so that you can quest/instance easier, but that two pieces (shoulders and chest) offer a 10% bonus to your experience gained.  This means a mob who would offer only 100 exp will give the wearer 120 exp.  10 more if he wore the shoulders, and 10 more if he also wore the chest… totaling 20 more exp. 

as you can see, not only are you geared well as you level up, you're also getting buckets of extra experience points to go with it.  What's else? you're passing up on shoulder and chest upgrades that you'd normally "need" on.  instead, passing the items to alts who do not have great stuff. This helps everyone level, I guess.  but oftentimes I think that perhaps it helps us level way too fast and the end result is a person who only knows marginally how to play his class at 80 and will have to learn the rest when he does play more after level 80.

My Point

Ever since the change to experience points was given, I wanted to understand the path blizzard was taking and what their plans might have been at the time.  I figured this much, that old content, although not necessarily bad content, is outdated content.  meaning, although the stories, lore, and whatnot are fine, the execution of telling those stories through quests need improvement.  at level 60, we see less and less of those "gather odd mats from all over the universe, one at a time" quests to more of the "go to dude in the field, he'll have 10 quests for you, when you're done, I'll show you to another dude in another field" type questing.  this makes things much easier to deal with. 

not only do things make sense, traveling to get to your quest destination/objective requires less walking and more doing.  take, for instance, the warlock pet quests.  the simplest is the voidwalker.  however, the felhound requires several trips to various places and back again.  same with the succubus.  oh how annoying.  there's also the shaman water totem quest.  omg. did I mention this before? yes I did.  annoying as fuck.  in outland,  everything somehow made more sense.  I see whats going on in the environment around me and and not asked to go to three different continents in order to solve a problem that's right in front of me.  you guys rock!!  now someone fix the druid flight form quest… please?  oh yea, its trainable now.  nevermind.

Anyway, my point was that the execution of low level content needed an upgrade.  instead of changing the quests so that we don’t have to travel everywhere, gather odd materials, or do several unrelated dungeons, we're given many tools to allow us to skip some of these boring content.  HOWEVER, some class specific spells and items cannot be skipped like shaman totems, warlock minions, or warrior stance.   So there, blizz offered a solution to their very poor initial questing and leveling design.  of course, this was great when the level limit was 60, but now that the level limits have increased to 70 and then to 80, and soon to be 85, it would only assume that leveling from 1-60 be changed.  the content is dull, drab and boring.  the landscape consists of 50% desert.  if you include the barrens, I can list all the deserts: barrens, thousand needles, tanaris, silithus, burning steppes, searing gorge, blasted lands, desolace and that dam place where uldaman is.  some zones where its just as desert-like: westfall, redridge mountains, stonetalon, and maybe even the plaguelands.  arathi basin is like a desert, but green.  dun morogh and winterspring is like a desert, but white.  All of these zones need a makeover.  all of the quests require a change.  and frankly, most of us are sick of doing the same quest for the 10th time on the 10th character. 

So with all these changes to leveling, it actually has given the player quite a few options on leveling. we do not have to deal with looking at undeads in WPL to level up.  we don’t have to deal with running through the barrens to level up.  we don’t have to enjoy ganklethorn vale like we did before.  its completely optional!  and we learn to do instances along the way.  we actually learn to do that stuff!  neat!!

This leads to phasing out content.  it means that the low level "story" is no longer important.  MMOs are always changing; it is the nature of the beast.  so when I see changes like this, I feel that there's often something coming.  but I do realize that maybe its already been announced and I just needed to connect one and one together to make two.  its all to ready us for cataclysm.  I see the lower level content and I don’t like it.  blizz sees our desires and gives us options to level through it easier, faster, and with as little pain as possible.  and then blizz decides to make 1-60 just as engaging and up-to-date as outland and northrend.  how? by wiping everything out…. come cata, of course. 

The other idea is that blizz wants us to play together at 60-80.  out comes the death knight at 55 (funny how all of azeroth gets skipped? hardly) and he takes the forefront of this idea.  almost everyone makes a dk and plays outland and northrend content together.  at 60 and up, it becomes a lot harder to "boost" anyone through content. and with the LFD tool, everyone can easily find groups to join so that they can actually participate in the group. 

The game today is not Azeroth.  It is Outland.  It is Northrend.  It is NOT azeroth.  sadly, azeroth is just a barren place to farm herbs and minerals.  levelers do not want to level through it, well most of it anyway.  levelers want to play with all their friends as well. and what best place to play with their friends than at 80?  at 80 there's a whole slew of things to do together.  dungeons, rep grinds, profession mastering, pvp and raids.  why 80? because they cant level further.  of course, gear desparity may be present, but at least we're all level 80. 

right now, my girlfriend is four levels ahead of me in levels.  what this means is that there's very few instances we can do together.  I'll have to catch up.  she's currently doing SM:Cathedral and im still going through Library.  Cathedral is red to me while its yellow to her.  she wouldn’t want to queue for grave yard, and I wouldn’t want to queue for cath, so we're stuck with library and armory.  see how that limits us?  at 80, there's no real "limit" unless you want to consider gear.  but even at a high gear level, doing lower level content like heroics or naxx do yield useful items, so the geared do have encouragement to run with less geared people.

This is like killing several birds with five stones.  Though im sure there's more stones.  These are just the main ones I can think of.  Others include RAF and Exp in BGs.  RAF are special cases and EXP from BGs cater to only certain individuals.  Although BGs are great, leveling speed pales in comparison to dungeons.

So yea. Killing birds.  with stones. er… with rockets.  yea.  that’s better.

On Leveling and Progressing Pt. 1

I've been thinking recently about the whole leveling process as it is today compared to what it was several years ago and have come up with some conclusions that may very well be an optimistic view of leveling come the next expansion.  Now I know I havent talked about the expansion at all, and I really do not intend to based on two reason:  it is not expansion time yet so I wont spoil anything and there are a wealth of info on the net about the expansion already.  you are free to look elsewhere for people's blogs, reviews and videos on Cataclysm.  As for me, I am perfectly fine living dwelling in this current world we now live. 

So with that said, let me just list some of the major points in leveling that has changed the face of, well, leveling in wow. 

1. Experience points required to level has been decreased.

Needed a million experience points to level?  no, not anymore!  you only need 990,000 points instead!! yay!

2. Ground mounts are accessible at level 20 instead of 40.  Epic ground mounts are accessible at level 40 instead of 60.  All for much less gold than before.

This change actually makes sense.  Back in the days where level 60 was the highest level, getting an epic ground mount was useless for leveling, since you've already leveled already.  see how it makes sense now? kinda.

3. Flying mounts are purchasable at level 60 instead of 70.  The cost has been reduced as well.  Epic flying is also purchasable at 60.  Cost can be reduced based on reputation with Thrallmar or Honor Hold.  Cold weather flying can be purchased and learned by level 70s to fly in Northrend. Earlier flying always lead to faster questing.

4. Looking for Dungeon: Randomizer. The best thing for leveling since sliced bread.  Actually, using the dungeon finder tool will get you leveled up a whole lot faster than doing quests.  And its no effort trying to get a group together.  Just queue, and eventually you're in.  While waiting, you can do quests. 

Random dungeons also give you extra experience and a bag which yield blue quality items that you can use to round out your gear.  Instance only drops cuffs and robe?  fear not! my awesome Satchel of Goods will give me gloves and belt.  yep, awesomeness. 

5. Hierloom Gear is purchasable by all 80s and can be sent to Alts.  Not only are Hierloom gear pretty cool and sometimes offer stats that are superior to what you'll find in dungeons, the shoulders and chest piece give extra experience.  that’s 10% extra from the shoulders, and +10% extra from the Chest/Robe. Total is 20%.  Who can complain?  And since you're probably never going to switch out the gear, your enchants will stay on the item for a good while.  I mean where it matters most (level 1-60 anway). 

Now let me try to analyze all of these changes the best that I can.  After all, I am an analyst for a bank. I figure I can be an analyst for change in leveling for a game.

Less is More

The first change is the reduced amount of experience needed to level up through to 70.  This change allowed for faster leveling but did not offer a change in the game play as it did with other changes.  this simply made it so that several quests can be skipped, or zones even.  For example, at level 40, there are basically three zones where you can go to level up which included Feralas, Tanaris and Hinterlands. Now Hinterlands does have an area with level 50 mobs, but for the most part, these zones are all accessible for the brand new level 40 player.  Before the change to experience, I remember going through all three zones and doing quests in all three zones and still was not able to level out of those zones after having done everything.  yes, everything.  okay maybe.  first I was in tanaris and feralas with trips to hinterlands.  eventually, I completed practically everything in feralas, tanaris and half of hinterlands.  eventually, when I got the quest to kill preistess hex, I was level 48.  she was level 50.  it matched perfectly. almost.  but today, if I simply quested, I can completely skip feralas and just do tanaris and hinterlands and be level 50 by the time I am ready to kill priestess hexx. that make any sense? I hope so. 

Because we are able to skip zones, the leveler will then be able to decide for themselves which part of the content they actually want to play.  Some folks do like killing pirates and ogres in tanaris.  others prefer the lush green forests of feralas and hinterlands.  Others still, would prefer to finish out the late level 30 regions and try their luck at the early level 50 regions once they hit late 40s, but will try their best to drudge through hinterlands just to get there (Do people level in Burning Steppes anymore??).  Level 50s have the choice of going to Felwood, Searin Gorge, Blasted lands, UnGoro Crater or Western Plaguelands.  You'll only really do two of those areas.  Then at 55 to 58, you might just touch Silithus, Eastern Plaguelands, or Winterspring.  Then off we all go to Outland.  And then Half of outland is basically optional as well.

With the choices at hand, I am sure someone in the background is taking logs of the patterns each and every individual is exhibiting.  This will go well towards designing future content, im sure.  Although the general idea is clear, offer good rewards, don’t make us travel through five different zones picking up five different items and then going through 3 dungeons we don’t have interest in doing just to get us to do a quest, the players habits and choices in doing content speaks louder than words as to what we are willing to do.  We are basically telling blizzard that this zone and this set of quests are preferred over that zone and those types of quests.  see how that goes?  helpful, no?

So the side effect (by design or not) is that we end up with more choices in our leveling experience through level 70.  And even in Northrend, there really isnt one way of going through the zones.  Instead, many find that once they hit 80, only half of the zones in NR have been discovered.  I've played several characters to 80 and have still to exhaust all of the quests in all of the zones (albiet lately, I've been using the dungeon finder tool way more than before). 

Because Elwynn, DunMorogh, the Barrens and Darkshore are effin huge

Honestly, when I was a level 8 mage running to the tower of azora in elwynn, I was hating every minute of it.  the walk was ridiculous.  then I had to walk everywhere else.  it was annoying.  flight paths make things faster, but in all honestly, 50% of my gametime was consumed with walking.  exciting. I know.  especially when im trying to avoid mobs.  hey, that is a game in and of itself.  If I were a warrior, I would charge at critters to shorten the walk. honestly I would.

When I finally hit 40 I purchased my first horse ever.  I was on a human mage at the time and loved running around theremore with the slow ass horse.  yes, it was a slow ass horse but it was my horse!  not to mention the animation sucked, and it looked a little stupid riding on it, but still.  it was my horse and my level 40 "reward".   and then I stopped playing my mage.  it really felt like hitting level 40 was the highlight of the game.  end of game!  but nowadays, the reward is cheapened by the cost of the mount and the level in which it is attainable.  This doesn’t take away much from the game, because the real "reward" has shifted over a bit to the flying mount.  specifically, the epic flying mount.  

With this change I am able to travel back and forth to my quests a whole lot faster, especially when they want me to travel to three different places to get certain items that only exist in those spots (the water totem quest that I've done recently is a perfect example of a waste of time trave everywhere quest at level 20.  get a quest from the trainer to go to questgiver1. qg1 tells me she needs something that only qg2 can offer.  off I go to qg2.  she tells me I need item1, return to her.  then she tells me I need item2, return to her.  then she tells me to go to another contenent and get item3, then return to her.  then she tells me to go back to qg1.  qg1 tells me I have to return to the other continent and do a quest, then return to her.  I do the quest, return to her. then bam!! I get my effin water totem, tyvm. 

see all that running? I hope quests like those die in a fire.  I wanted to falcon punch qg2 so many times. why not just tell me all the ingredients so I can just get them all at once??? anyway, with mounts, traveling back and forth becomes a little easier and ridiculous quests like these (especially REQUIRED quests like these) can actually become bearable.  I got the quest at level 20 and didn’t even complete it until I was level 25 since it took so friggin long just to travel. 

I actually like this change.  I actually wanted shoe enhancements only for low levels that would help us run faster back when mounts were attainable at level 40.  I actually wanted something at level 20 (like a skateboard) that would increase my run speed by 40%.  but im glad we got ground mounts now.

Because Outland is just as big as Elwynn, Dum Morogh, Barrens, etc.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the change in level requirements for ground mounts does not change the style of play, or the "game" of leveling at all. it does make things faster, but it doesn’t change the game we play all that much.  When we reach outland and are able to purchase flying mounts, the game changes.

Because people are able to fly in outland at level 60, this makes questing infinitely easier, especially when everyone can skip mobs by flying over them and head straight to the quest mobs to kill.  I've done this with a character already, and although he only had normal flying, flying helped him to skip the riffraff and focus on getting to what he needed to get to.  I don’t have to fight my way through an area, hoping that I can kill the questmob without trouble. because if I die even once, I might have to deal with respawns on the way out.  dropping down to kill the questmob or grab some sparkley thing without having to go through the mobs protecting it makes the game quite different.  the challenge may be a little different, but the tediousness of having to get there has been removed. 

There are still quests where you do have to kill things, and quest objectives inside caves do require you to actually walk through the cave and kill things along the way.  This part of the game has not changed.  

I will have to make part two.  be back!

Forum Trolls and real id

Before i begin, i just want to say that thsi post is related to RealID. So if you're sick of reading about RealID, then you can stop here. but if you want to hear what i have to say about this, then sure, feel free to read on.

As many of you may know, there has been much outcry about having our real names out in the official forums (if you post in the forums, you will post with your real id) and bliz has responded by changing their minds. now there has been a lot of theories as to why bliz even did this and one of them is that it will reduce forum trolling since real id, in a way, removes a layer or several layers of anonymity from forum posters. those who would spend their efforts trolling others will have to think twice about trolling.

I would like to take it a step further and say that everyone has the ability to troll the forums, in-game, or anywhere else for that matter. the reason i think this is true is because i do believe everyone is evil. come again? i think everyone is inherently evil. we are not "good' by nature. we are evil by nature. so how do i kinda prove this to myself? consider the popular formula depicted below. it shows a "normal" person (whatever that is) that's given two things and he turns into a monster. Anonymity and an Audience.

Many of you may have seen this before, so i will not go into too much details about the diagram. but i will say that there is something missing from the equation. namely, the left side. what? well there's something missing from it that makes the normal person "normal". would you guess it to be societal rules, values, mores, taboos and all sorts of other sociology term that i've learned.

but lets get straight to my point. that normal person wouldnt be there if it werent for teaching, discipline and fear of being outcasted or rejected by his own society. but i would say that it is mainly, 99% mainly that the fear of being rejected by his own society is what keeps him acting like a "normal" person. because, after all, normal means being like everyone else, acting in a way to fit in. and you cant fit into a society where people are respected, treated well and given preference at times by being a "Total Fuckwad". So take away these boundaries (by adding Anonymity and adding an Audience... see what i did there?) and you will get a person that exemplifies what a human being is meant to be. a total fuckwad.

This brings me back to my original thought, which is that people are inherently evil. to all the people that say kids are awesome, kids are great, kids are lovely.... i tell them to have their own damn kids and tell me if they think kids are awesome, great, lovely, etc. they are not. they are monsters. from the very beginning, they know how to be selfish, how to grab at things, how to cry to get what they want, and when they realize they can cry some more to eventually get what they cannot get initially, they will do it. this is the reason my own daughter throws a fit, especially when grandma is there, because she has a higher chance of getting what she wants if she does throw a fit. and she will almost certainly gets what she wants if she throws a fit when grandma is there. and she knows it. she takes advantage of it. she's evil.

Lets talk about the word "inherent". it means something like, instinctual, having a quality built-in, or its nature. webster.com gives is a consise definition. what this means is that the quality we are talking about is, indeed, built-in and whatever it is we are talking about cannot exist without that built-in characteristic.

So when i say people are inherently evil, i mean they do not need to learn evil to be evil. nor do they need to be encouraged to do evil to be evil. humans just are. humans are taught from a very early age (most i know at least) that what they do is "bad" and that they need to stop doing it. they are then taught to do "good" things as imposed and rewarded by society. children are always taught to say thank you and to share. they do not need to be taught to be selfish or to take what they want. Kids arent obeying, honest and selfless creatures we see in the world. teachers and mothers know better. they are monsters who sometimes follow the rules. we enforce these rules through a punishment and reward system. so kids comply and when they grow up, use these same principles on their own monsters.

Again, i'd like to reiterate the point (i know, that was redundant), that people are inherently evil. now you see my point of view and how i justify it, you ask yourself, what the hell does this have to do with realid? well it doesnt. it has to do with people's perception of solving the "troll" problem in forms and the fuckwad problem, in general, on the internet. it is not to remove the layer of anonymity. anonymity only removes the possibility of being "punished' personally for being ourselves. and to remove this anonymity, we open the fuckwads to the possibility of being "punished" in some way. and since this possibility of being punished is out there, the fuckwads will have less incentive to post trollish things on the wow forums. this is probably the thinking. but this is definitely not the answer. fuckwads will remain fuckwads. they will just unite under another banner. they will be the fuckwads, patting each other on the back for their douchebaggery and enforcing "evil" on the internet by rewarding each other. people's inherent nature will always be inherent to them. after all, that is what makes us human. someone said "to err is human". i say he's ignoring the true statement, that people are evil, and evil actions will be considered an error.

the ideal solution would be to teach everyone to be civil to each other, treating everyone else like how you'd want to be treated. then, tell everyone that their character is what matters most, and that being douches on the internet shows a lack of character. then make them all believe that. and eventually, we'll have a society where everyone shows kindness and respect to one another. sure sure. ideal. the other ideal solution is to ban offenders. but even with banning, there has to be a standard. who's to say one statement is deemed offensive and another isnt? this gray area is what really makes it difficult to offer this soluiton.

in the end, in order to keep the good, we also take it with the bad. thats all we can really do when it comes down to it. because, after all, we believe that people are really good people and sometimes do bad things. but this isnt my argument. see the difference? in any case, forum trolls and innocent bystanders rejoice!! blizz will not throw the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes!

in a nutshell (or in internet lingo, TL:DR) real id in forums will not fix the real problem. it only fixes the manifestation of the problem. to fix the real problem, you have to dig deeper and change each person individually. this, however, is an impossible feat.