World of Warcraft vs. The Real World

There has been a lot of controversy lately concerning Blizzard's announcement of Facebook integration into their Battle.net system, called Real ID. Apparently, people don't want their real names associated with their World of Warcraft/Starcraft II/Diablo III avatars. It makes sense to me because people tend to play games to escape the pains and the trials of the real world. One person's post about why WoW (and pretty much all MMO's) should remain anonymous pretty much sums up all reasons everyone makes in the 2500+ pages of posts in the official Blizzard forums.

However, I'm not writing about the controversy. Enough people have done that for me. What I'm talking about today is the issues presented in Nattie's post. I'm pretty disturbed at the thought that the collective community of gamers can act in the way described. I mean, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory makes perfect sense, but I would like to think that the majority of gamers are actually good natured people. Unfortunately, anonymity brings out the true nature of most people...

When we went to PAX East, I was so happy because I felt like I was in a place that I "belonged". I joined together with a group of people who were JUST LIKE ME! Nearly every single person there was genuinely nice and well-mannered people. When the gamer crowd was united together, we could be ourselves. At least, I felt that we were being ourselves. Unfortunately, hearing about the racism and stalkers and harassment of females slapped that apparently unrealistic view of our community that I had!

Now, I'm not a WoW player. I have never played the game. I don't see the fun in grinding for levels and loot. I imagine that it is a lot like Diablo II. The game was fun at first, but then it became a continuous loop of Fight Bad Guys/Heal/Fight More Bad Guys/Grab Loot/Heal/Fight Even More Bad Guys/Town Portal/Sell Loot/Upgrade Weapons and Such/Repeat. I got kind of tired of it. Now add other people into the mix. Blizzard tried to do this in Diablo II in small groups with Battle.net. I never did that either. I guess it's because I prefer to play games on my own. I've never been a cooperative game player. Does WoW have a lot of players who are from the mainstream community? Are the the type of people who go to conventions like PAX more of the extroverted personality? Is this why I had such a "rose-colored lens" image of the gamer community?