Not long after, World of Warcraft owner, Blizzard Entertainment, beat a hasty retreat on the policy - and Micah Whipple receded into publicly inaccessible corners of the internet. This picture, apparently of Micah Whipple, circulated in forums and blogs in the weeks following backlash against Blizzard.

Forum users combined their amateur sleuthing powers to find and share as much information as they could glean online about 'Micah Whipple,' including personal Photobucket pictures, links to a Facebook page plus information gleaned from it, a Twitter account and the apparent phone number of his mother's house where he was living. 'Micah Whipple, at your service,' it said. The stated reason for the dramatic change: to oust 'trolls' who were disrupting the chatrooms.Ī community manager who interacts with players, Whipple decided to show support for the new company policy and wrote a short post under his forum moniker, Bashiok, that revealed his true name.

The young man became a scapegoat for gamer outrage earlier this year when the owner of the massive multiplayer game announced it would require users to post their real names in official forums. Micah Whipple may not be a familiar name to the online masses, but in the World of Warcraft sphere, there's no greater symbol of the need for privacy.

A screen shot from the latest 'World of Warcraft' expansion, 'Wrath of the Lich King.' ((Courtesy of Blizzard))