no, wildcard identify requests don't guarantee that it will be a reply at all. There is no way to solve that. It can fan-out to multiple nodes. These messages can also be dropped. This pull request is only about making a (much) better effort in replying with something useful for wildcard identify. See https://groups.google.com/d/msg/akka-user/qnp_DHpnKIQ/59w8NiY4NasJ for background.