After feeling the wrath of World of Warcraft gamers for days, Blizzard Entertainment says it’s abandoning a plan that would have exposed the real identities of people who play its popular online games on the company’s discussion forums. In a post on those same discussion forums Friday, Blizzard CEO and co-founder Mike Morhaime said the company has “been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums.” Morhaime’s post caused a change in the Blizzard forums akin to what Cleveland sports fans might feel if the NBA’s LeBron James, on second thought, decided to stay with the Cavaliers after all. Feelings of rage and betrayal over the original plan, which would have forced all participants in discussion forums for World of Warcraft and the upcoming Starcraft II to post comments with their real names, quickly turned to glee.

Blizzard game customers were furious when the company announced their plan earlier this week, expressing concerns on the company’s forums (and on the WSJ’s forums ) that Blizzard’s new policy would lead to identity theft, stalking and embarrassing revelations of otherwise private gaming habits. Blizzard said its aim with the policy was to clean up its discussion forums, which had become larded with nasty, abusive comments by anonymous posters. We’ve asked a Blizzard spokesman whether the company has a new plan to improve the quality of forum discussions, since it has decided to allow players to continue posting anonymously. We’ll post an update when we hear back.