Gay kids who don't want to be outed to their parents.
Gay Ugandans who don't want to be shopped to the authorities for jail or worse.
Trans people, newly out to themselves, experimenting with a name that they have chosen, not the mistake foisted upon them by parents who thought they were cis.
Trans people asserting their real names, the ones they use in public every day, in the face of bigoted official refusal to change their paperwork.
And so on.
Edit to add: for what it's worth, playing cross-gender characters in WoW has been a common thread among my trans friends before they came out. So what looks like a playful profile of your elven mage or something, might actually be part of a disguised foray into publicly presenting as the other gender. This is an example of why it's a mistake to force either real names or single profiles per user (though I think it would be OK to internally cross-link all pseudonyms of a given user, so they all take the same hit if any of them goes trolling).
Gay Ugandans who don't want to be shopped to the authorities for jail or worse.
Trans people, newly out to themselves, experimenting with a name that they have chosen, not the mistake foisted upon them by parents who thought they were cis.
Trans people asserting their real names, the ones they use in public every day, in the face of bigoted official refusal to change their paperwork.
And so on.
Edit to add: for what it's worth, playing cross-gender characters in WoW has been a common thread among my trans friends before they came out. So what looks like a playful profile of your elven mage or something, might actually be part of a disguised foray into publicly presenting as the other gender. This is an example of why it's a mistake to force either real names or single profiles per user (though I think it would be OK to internally cross-link all pseudonyms of a given user, so they all take the same hit if any of them goes trolling).