Battle.net Fears

I saw this blog post on WoW.com today and feel a bit of a need to respond regarding the purpose and eventual impact once WoW requires all players to bind their accounts with Battle.net.

Overall the author is concerned that Battle.net integration is essentially foisting features that are unwanted and will impair or otherwise diminish their gaming experience. Personally, I am a fan of Battle.net integration for no other reason than the fact that when I was setting up my account I was able to enter in my Diablo 2 CD keys and get fully updated and downloadable copies of the game despite the fact I was missing one of my Diablo 2 CDs. Regarding the arguments in the blog entry though. They are speculative and largely uninformed. Here are my counter points...

Reason 1:
The author's concern here is related to disciplinary action on the part of Blizzard. The fear is that if a disciplinary infraction occurs in one game it will lock them out of other games. The implication is that if a player is banned from WoW for 3 days they would not be able to play anything else that is linked to Battle.net. I have not read any specifics regarding Battle.net disciplinary policy but it wouldn't surprise me if you got banned from WoW for 3 days that Blizzard would take you offline from Battle.net Starcraft or other games. To my understanding a similar policy applies to Xbox Live. Why doesn't it make sense for Blizzard to do something similar?

Would this mean you couldn't play Starcraft at all? No. I do not know of any game (outside an MMO) that prevents you from playing offline if you got an infraction or banned outright online. Steam games run fine locally when there is no Internet access. You can play Xbox games despite being banned from Live. Blizzard is not so far out of the mainstream that I imagine they would do otherwise.

Additionally, if your concern is that you might not be able to play one game because of disciplinary problem in another I don't think that your ability to play games should be a priority. Perhaps some behavior modification should take precedent. Personally I'm fine with a troll being banned in WoW and then unable to find me (by accident or on purpose) if I do a quick game of SC2 on Battle.net.

Reason 2:
Fair enough, but is that a reason NOT to merge your account? If you don't care what people think of your achievements from an Armory look up now, what difference is this going to be?

Reason 3:
If you are opposing features merely on the basis of how a segment of the community might respond you might as well just shutdown your PC and toss it out the window. The nature of our hobby (video games) plus the anonymity the internet provides makes trolls and other intellectual stupidity unavoidable (see PAs Greater Internet Dickwad Theory).

Again, going back to the author's second reason attitudes of others regarding your play style and accomplishments are unrelated to actually having a Battle.net account. It not that hard to click on a character name on the WoW forums and mock a poster now. Perhaps the author is also opposed to the Armory? Making is somewhat easier to see how good or bad you are at a game is unrelated to the benefits that Battle.net provides (unified authentication for Blizz games, downloadable clients, easier support, etc).

Reason 4:
This is perhaps the only argument that has any merit and I agree with to a degree. Personally I sometimes want to play WoW with a character that no one else knows about just so I don't get the usual "please heal", "please tank", or "please run me through this low dungeon". Sometimes I just want to be left alone and do new things without being bothered.

Having said that though I imagine Battle.net will have some feature that in some fashion that hide your status from people playing in different (e.g. non-WoW) Battle.net games. Within WoW it maybe unavoidable, however I am speculating much like the original author so it's difficult for me to properly argue the other side. Until we see exactly how Battle.net works its not worth opposing integration based on preconceived ideas of how it will work.

Reason 5:
I don't like having to enter my username and password into e-mail. I don't like having to swipe the card pass at the gate for the parking garage. There are many small inconveniences in life that we deal with because we have to or we want to. I imagine the author had to enter a username and password to get into WoW before. It's still the same behavior, you'll just be typing a few more letters. Again, is this sufficient to oppose Battle.net integration?

The author's solution is interesting...
What I find particularly amusing about this solution is that is adds even more inconvenience to the process than the Battle.net integration would introduce on its own. Plus it won't fix much. It would really only solve the problem described in Reason 1, which shouldn't be a problem unless you are prone to break terms of service. If you have a friend who has everything wrapped in one B.net account who has friend every account in your games what has changed? They know its you and the only thing is that's different is that if you wanted to join them you'd have to login with a different B.net account. Additionally this solution would only aggravate concerns address in Reason 5.

In conclusion the author does not give compelling reasons to avoid or otherwise resist B.net account integration. Will the system be perfect? Of course not. Will there be new problems? More than likely. However, from what I have been able to glean thus far this system will give Blizzard a more cohesive online presence that is clearly working for other companies like Microsoft and Valve. Given Blizzard's track record for good software I feel confident in sum B.net will be a good thing.