The first question I was asked, by just about everyone who saw this site, was:
So, you were completely against RealID, but yet now you’re willing to associate your name with your in-game character? What kind of sense does that make?
The answer is the sum total of:
Regardless of what I personally do, RealID is still a bad idea
Of course, now that names won’t be on forum posts and I can block friends-of-friends from seeing my real name it’s not as bad an idea, but while those changes are good, they don’t change the fact that, as originally conceived, RealID was terrible.
Privacy should be something you choose to give up, on your terms, as much as possible. Sure, we can’t prevent every potential problem or hide all information, but companies should strive to put the tools in our hands rather than treating our identities as something to be thrown out without caring about the reasons.
I want to be able to be proud of StratFu
I realized that I had two choices: I either could publicly acknowledge that StratFu was mine, and use it as part of my body of work for my new life as a freelance programmer, or I could pretend it never happened. And while ignoring it allowed me to preserve my privacy, I put a lot of good work into the site and I’d like to be able to be proud of it and show it off without concern.
I want to keep in touch with friends
I met some very awesome people through my work with StratFu and I’d like to be able to keep in touch with them. I can’t do that if I’m not willing to say “Hey, this is my new blog” (which I’ll be doing any day now on StratFu.)
I know this new blog has less WoW, but it will still have plenty of WoW chat, and I hope to still keep in touch with many the people who I met through StratFu.
This also means that I’m willing to RealID-friend people now — so feel free to contact me (the About page here has an email address for me) if you want to be RealID friends.
