Bullying on FFXIV

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The easiest and best solution to stop cyber bullying is to take the anonymity out of the web. Blizzard's Real Id plan was great unfortunately they caved to the pressure of people suddenly realizing they may have to own up top the things they said online.

It's not all about "people not wanting to own up to things they say online". Some people genuinely don't want their real identity getting out for any number of reasons.

How many times have you heard, or maybe even witnessed someone stalking another player online? Maybe a guy obsessing over a female player, or some other combination? It's bad enough that they have to deal with it in-game, but at least it's kept in-game. Imagine that stalker having access to the player's real name? There are ways of obtaining people's info on the web - unfortunately, even without their consent - and that kind of info would be a huge help to someone trying to do so.

How about someone who hasn't said anything abusive or wrong to someone else in the game, but simply became a victim of someone else who is rather unstable and decided to lash out at them over a simple disagreement, making all manner of threats against them, etc? I've seen that happen as well. Imagine that kind of person having access to your actual info?

How about the very simple idea of people valuing their privacy online and having the right to control who does or doesn't know their real name/identity?

It's easy to be cynical and think anyone against a Real ID type setup is "just trying to avoid owning up to their behavior online". But it's also very lazy and rather intellectually dishonest to do so. It takes very little time or energy to imagine a variety of situations where a person might want to keep their identity private for purely genuine and respectable reasons.

There was an incident a few years back where two arch rivals in the game Lineage 2 met at a real-life meet-up. They got into an altercation, and one of them ended up dead. Over a game. There have been other examples of people carrying out violent acts in real life over in-game dramas or situations. So it's not at all outside the realm of possibility for it to happen.

The solution to people acting like jackasses, or socio-pathic idiots in-game is to have a setup where players are accountable for their actions and behavior in-game. Final Fantasy XI managed this beautifully because it put a high value on community (server-wide community, not "your linkshell"). If you were a jerk to people, your reputation would get around and you'd become unwanted in groups, linkshells, etc. Your actions and attitude would catch up with you, for better or worse. This worked beautifully in XI and resulted in many people either having to clean up their act, switch servers or leave the game entirely. No real names were required.