I think if they wanted to achieve that a more hardline stance from the moderators would be all it takes. If people started getting banned for a set time(or permant if they have offended multiple times) from their battle.net accounts for acting like dicks people would quickly stop the trolling and flame wars.
I love nearly all the games blizzard have made to date sinse warcraft 1. So your not the only one but its getting harder to be a blizz fanboy with the direction they seem to be taking.

Nah. Then you get a case of the Steam forums, where if the mods step in at all people start screaming about how the mods are "nazis" and that if you say "a single bad thing" you get banned (ignoring that said "bad thing" was a death threat that involved Kotick's home address :p).
And I am not saying people should be Blizzard Fanboys or anything. But they make good games (at least, I liked Starcraft, and people seem to like their other things). I would probably be more concerned if I got into the MP aspect, but whatever.

How exactly do they verify your real name with this Real Id thing? I can claim to be any real-sounding name, how would they know the difference? Especially if I don't have a credit card attached to a WoW subscription or whatever.

I had the same feeling when they announced that WoW will have monthly subscription. But after playing the game on and off for nearly four years now, I can say it the money I gave was well worth the stuff I got.
Blizzard are back to their best with Starcraft 2. I was/am in the multiplayer beta, and for sure can tell you that the game beats the crap out of nearly every one of today's multiplayer RTS games. It may be boring and somewhat "same old thing, just new graphics" for some people, but I've had lots of fun with every online match that I've played so far. There is lots of thinking involved, lots of rushing, lots of scouting, lots of learning what every unit is good for... Its going to be a massive game once it hits stores!
Plus, many people said how bad is going to be Battle.Net for playing games. Well, I've never had any issues with it whatsoever, and I've surely played way over 200 matches, both with friends and strangers. The service still has some problems that do not effect the gameplay, but I'm sure they'll be sorted out before the release of the game.
On another note, my respect for Valve has been going down for quite some time now, it seems that with every update, they unbalance their games and break the crap out of them, destroying mods, introducing more bugs than fixing, and so on. I hate it when a game being played by a few million people and recognized as one of the best multiplayer shooters ever made, gets all fucked up because of Mac support and new casual stuff. I think you know what game I speak of.

And that's a problem because? ;)

That thing pisses me off whenever I go to check out something. Speaking of things...my brother paid me to buy him this. *Shudders...*

I'm certainly disappointed. While they may be wanting to try and cut down on trolling, it wouldn't be a problem if the moderators did their jobs and actually worked on offensive posts in the first place. My real name has nothing to do with my gaming.

Does now, kind sir. =(

Bad news. You shouldn't be required to register with your real name when playing a game in this age of googledom. I don't want people to go googling my name and finding out I've played 734 hours of Starcraft 2 the past 6 months, or whatever. If it were just for the forums It'd be OK, but the complete lack of privacy will have their own very real issues. Such as somebody tracking you down over a lost game.
This puts a serious dent in my plans to play SC2 online.
http://wowriot.gameriot.com/blogs/Americans-are-bad-at-games/Real-Names-on-the-Official-Forums-New-REAL-ID-function
Nuff said.

Wow...Poor guy...

Blizzard are overhyped, overrated, and lame.

worst idea ever

Fixed.

More fixed.

You can count me in as a third.
Still - I'm not fond of the idea. I'd rather go by my nickname IRL :].
Then again - I'm not enough of an egomaniac to think that anyone will give a damn about my "true" identity, so - w/e.