When Blizzard announced its [now repealed] plans to show real names on our official forum posts, I was in the camp opposed to the change.

In addition to communicating my unhappiness on the official forum thread, I also cancelled my second account (nothing speaks louder than money) and briefly noted in the comments box that I was unhappy with the shift in philosophy that was represented by the intended change.

One could argue it was a pretty toothless move: it was just a second account that I rarely used anyway and only activated on occasion (it just happened to be active at that time) and I had no intention of abandoning the game entirely. The truth is that, although I was vocal about my concerns, I would have just simply stopped using the official forums when it came time.

Although I did hope that the rise in cancellations — as many others did similar — would speak to the company in the kind of way a bunch of whiny gamers could not, I also didn’t really expect them to read the comments box on every single closed account. However, they obviously did, because today I received this email:

We Heard You!

Greetings []!

We noticed that you recently cancelled your World of Warcraft® subscription for account []. The comments you left with your cancellation mentioned the new policies we had announced for our official forums, so we wanted to make sure you were aware that we have changed some of our plans with regard to the forums and our in-game Real ID system as well.

One of Blizzard Entertainment’s core values is that Every Voice Matters, and feedback from players like you is what helps drive our direction and decisions. After considering your feedback and that of other members of our community, and weighing it against our goals for improving the forums, we ultimately decided not to move forward with the plan to require real names to be displayed when posting on the forums. Blizzard Entertainment CEO and Cofounder Mike Morhaime made the official announcement of this decision here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?
topicId=25968987278.

In addition to changing those plans, we have also listened to player feedback regarding the Real ID Friends-of-Friends feature. We understand that not everyone is comfortable being displayed on friends-of-friends lists in this fashion, so we are developing an option to allow players to opt out of this feature. The full announcement and FAQ can be found here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?
topicId=26137024221.

We hope that this will allay some of the concerns that led to your departure from World of Warcraft. Your characters are waiting for you, and you can renew your subscription at any time through Account Management at this link: http://us.battle.net/account.

If you have further questions or concerns, we’d love to hear from you. Simply e-mail realidfollowup@blizzard.com, and we’ll have a representative respond within 10 days.

Thank you for giving us this opportunity to talk—and best wishes to you!

Regards,

Customer Care & Loyalty Team
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com

It’s a form letter, but it’s a form letter they obviously had to make specifically in response to the Real ID drama.