You have to remember that Blizzard is owned by Activision. Activision's CEO Robert Kotick has been talking constantly lately about how the future profit driver for the company is social networking and the ability to sell datamined information about its players to other companies.

What we're seeing here is the frist steps toward that. They're trying to get you used to doing everything on Activision through your real name, a little bit more and more at a time.