Yeah, because someone who lives 9 hours from the Blizzard offices totally works there.

Except not. This is the wrong guy. Bashiok is presumably unlisted to prevent this kind of abuse, so you're heaping it on the wrong person while lashing out. Great work.

@crschmidt
If you think that this somehow disproves the idiocy of RealID/real name linking on forums, you're not really paying attention.

:P Oh, that isnt my info, like I said, it's from WoWRiot.

You do realize that Adam Holisky has already explained to people in this thread

http://www.wow.com/2010/07/06/blizzards-responses-on-the-real-id-situation/#continued

That "We're not going to allow links to CMs or Blizzard employee's personal info." No point in posting Bahiok's alleged info. Which in comments previous to yours, was said to not be his at all. If that is in fact true (after all who lives 9 hrs away from their job?) a bunch of dickheads just harassed the wrong person, and for what? To prove how awful and ill behaved they can be? Even if it were the correct info, what's the point of harassing a Blizzard employee? This is the second copy pasta'd post that's been down ranked and I hope all the links (for that matter your post) are removed.

The majority of people do not like this situation, and come Cataclysm, if Blizzard still insists on implementing it, I am sure forum posts will drop off. In one of the previous threads about this subject someone pointed out that the new people to the game may suffer the most. Lots of us first when to our class forums to read about what specs to do. As we played longer we discovered, or were pointed to places like MMO-Champ, EJ, etc. Bugs may go unrecorded because people don't want to post with their name flashing for all to see.

styopa: Not at all. But I'm attempting to discourage people from harassing some unknown schmuck just because he shares the name with someone well-known.

I've been saying for the past day that personally, this doesn't affect me, but I understand the concerns, and I don't think it's the right way to go, period. So please don't treat my dislike of attacking random people as support for the decision.

Bashiok is "presumably Unlisted" with what? Every search engine in the world? Please explain for us how that works.

Just because he denied that particular address doesn't mean he doesn't have a real-life affiliation with it (it could be an old residence or a second house, whatever).

That's even besides the point - some of us have names unique enough that we can't pretend "oh that's somebody else".

Forget stalking, pranking can be plenty bad enough all on its own, and for those of us who work in fields that aren't gamer-friendly or have clients or managers who are prejudiced against gamers, the risk to our professional lives gets completely out of hand.

@Jeremy I know that now, and it seems that part of my comment has been deleted :P (They get an edit button!) Cuz I'm European, it was in middle of night and I read that after postin' y'know?

@ crschimdt Yeah, it's not like he's done anything wrong, but by showing Blizz what can happen if they give out our names to everyone on the internet, we can hope to change their minds about this idea of their's

NM: Presumably he is not in the phone book, specifically to prevent shit like this. (His information is searchable on various 'pay us for the address!' sites, but not in the standard white pages that people pulled the other address from.) This doesn't apply to the average person (who doesn't need to be unlisted because they control their personal information), and is not support of the claim that this is okay; this is an explanation of why everyone picked the wrong guy to rag on.

Anuillae: Abusing random people to prove a point is not proving a point; it's just abuse. (If it actually was Bashiok, it *might* be social commentary of some sort, but even that would be pushing it in my opinion.) Giving out real names will result in this kind of stuff, but not in any way that can't happen on the forums right now if people chose to.

Nothing personal Anuillaie. =P After rereading, it was a bit mean sounding. Sowwy.

@ Jeremy: :P No offence taken

@ Crschimdt: Look at it this way; if any major figure in the wow community (say, a major blogger such as Gevlon or Marcko) posted on the forums, then their real names would get out. Then people find their phone numbers/facebook pages. They would get loads of spam, from both trolls and people who want to ask them a question, or who just want to talk to someone whom they regard as 'important'. The Blizz people would get it too. Its best (in my opinion) to give a good, loud shout to them, and make them realise that this idea is a mistake. Because it is.

@ Jeremy: :P No offence taken

@ Crschimdt: Look at it this way; if any major figure in the wow community (say, a major blogger such as Gevlon or Marcko) posted on the forums, then their real names would get out. Then people find their phone numbers/facebook pages. They would get loads of spam, from both trolls and people who want to ask them a question, or who just want to talk to someone whom they regard as 'important'. The Blizz people would get it too. Its best (in my opinion) to give a good, loud shout to them, and make them realise that this idea is a mistake. Because it is.