◊ Vectivus

Effective immediately, World of Warcraft accounts can now be "merged" with the new Battle.Net account system. Eventually, the existing WoW account creation system will give way to this new system.

Supposedly, this will allow Blizzard to offer new features to holders of multiple WoW accounts, as well as allowing you to manage your portfolio of Blizzard games from a single, centralized source.

Link:
Welcome to Battle.net

F.A.Q.:
The new Battle.net Frequently Asked Questions

 

Daenerys

I just logged into the official forums and was greeted with a new login screen. One thing I did NOT enjoy was putting in my authenticator code to log into the forums...that is going to get really tedious really quickly. Should be interesting to see how this changes things.

 

Malan

Oh yah, I can see that can causing some issues for compromised accounts.

[e] Along these lines, here's another piece of account related news.
Authenticator app coming to iPhones, iPods, and other mobile devices

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• Jeffonious

Anyone else unable to login?

 

Torrential

Means I need to carry my authenticator around if I want to log into the forums from work I guess. Which I really don't want to do. The less my authenticator moves the less the chance I'll lose it and end up in a terribly messy situation.

 

Valerian

This will be very nice considering actual authenticators have been sold out for I don't know how long, let alone the ones that can ship to Canada. Presumably if its a one time connection thing, there should be no issue as to the "limit" on these.

 

Desik™

I merged my account and now I can't post on the official forums, all my characteres have have this:

Looks like they still working on it.

d o n t

 

FalseMyrmidon

Hmmm, I can't even login to the account management screen now. It just shows me the login screen again with the password field blank (no error about invalid password or anything). Don't think it's just affecting the forums.

 

Gaj

Not sure if this matters, but for Wrath Beta I had to merge my WoW account into Battle.net. My avatar was my old character before I did a paid name (and sex) change.

Logged in ok, but the posts are all old and out of order. Anyone else see this?

 

NCH

Anyone knows what happens if you alredy have a battle net acc?
I played W3 in Bnet so i alredy have an acc.

 

◊ Vectivus

Only available to Korean carriers right now. US/EU are flagged as "coming soon", but who knows what that means.

There's also no mention of the consequences of changing between mobile devices, but a clever person can piece together that if you don't log in and delete the authenticator from your account before you switch mobiles, you're effed, and get to spend a lovely hour* on the phone with Blizzard billing.

*day

I like the overall trend, though, and the game management system for multiple titles is awesome.

I was able to log into Welcome to Battle.net, WoW account management, and the official forums using mine. Could be you're experiencing some kind of other, unrelated login error.

Not quite. For the Wrath beta, you created a "Blizzard" account - this is a "Battle.Net" account. It's the evolution of the same concept, but your Wrath beta account is not tied to this system in any way.

This is a totally new, separate thing. It has nothing to do with Battle.Net "1.0" accounts for previous Blizzard titles.

 

Zedd

Sounds like Steam of some sort.
And It makes the gossip about SC2 and Diablo3 Online needing payment seem more likely.

 

Cuer

The official announcement:

 

supplicium

I don't think that's intrinsically true. More so I believe they want more accountability online. There was a post somewhere that was linked to me earlier today via IRC, that was discussing the ToS for SCII and DBIII that all, I repeat, all whispers/chat/messaging will be logged for use in harassment cases/inquiries. Having a B.NET central account gives the player more accountability. If you were to be banned from SCII for some sleazy chat, and that ban effected wow, and Diablo wouldn't you try to watch your tongue a bit more.

On the other hand, blizzard is a company and that company doesn't exist with out cashflow, and there is a good chance of some sort of fee for online play, though I would guess it would be substantially less for sc or diablo do to the lack of complex data that exists in a game like WoW.

 

Kissmyaxe

If they plan monthly fees for SC2 and D3, then I would be up for paying a single monthly fee and be able to play any Blizzard title online. Rather than keep track of 3 separate subscriptions, having only one at a discount would be much more appealing.

 

Ryanb

But it is a business. And if I recall correctly, the vast majority of Blizzard's profit margin comes from account subscriptions. And I'm sure there are millions of players out there who play Warcraft 3, Starcraft, and Diablo that never played World of Warcraft. And not to mention the current WoW subscribers that would probably still pay for a Diablo 3 subscription. Huge potential for more subscription profit.

 

Enova

This is a bit anecdotal, but Blizzard can make money out of just selling games, rather than subscriptions. A few examples come to mind here: The Frozen Throne made up for 25% of Vivendi's income for the year it was released; Starcraft Battle Chest was in the top 10 best sellers for a good few months after they announced Starcraft 2 - and that was a 9 year old game at the time.

But, anyway, getting back to the Battle.net account. It sounds like a good idea, but as it is right now, it's a very buggy beta. When some of the problems already mentioned here get fixed, I'm planning on converting the WoW account myself. I just hope they don't make it mandatory before they tune it a bit more.

 

Putts

They've had the digital download feature for Blizzard's backlog of games in place for close to a year now...the way that it works is that you can "register" your cd-keys for your old games to your Blizzard/Bnet account, and then it generates a new, unique key for you to use with the downloaded version of the game. Your original, physical CD key is not displayed on the site anywhere.

So even if your account is compromised, Blizzard could simply generate a new electronic key and disable the old one, so that you can still play Starcraft/Diablo/WC3 online if you wanted to (just speculating here).

 

Ishtal

For those that have merged multiple WoW accounts, has anyone tested transferring an heirloom item between them? This would save the $25 transfer fee currently needed to move an heirloom item over.

 

◊ Repeek

Any idea if a WoW account that is perma-banned from the WoW boards can post with the merged battle.net account?

 

Ryley

They're unable too.

 

Sayessa

I believe that you still need to enter a real cd key when installing a downloaded game, entering the key on the site simply enables you to download said game. They obviously don't want you to download a keygenerator somewhere and get "free warez" from their site.

 

slant

True, but at least they extended forum timeouts. I logged in from work six hours ago, and I'm still logged in. So you'll only have to do it once or twice per day.

 

Putts

This is incorrect, you actually receive a new CD-Key that is explicitly for use with the downloaded version of the game. Trying to use a physical CD key when installing a downloaded copy of the game will not work. In Starcraft's case, your physical CD key is 13-digit numeric, while the digital copy key is 26-digit alphanumeric, and is prominently displayed above your download link.

 

◊ Vectivus

This suggests to me that direct digital download will be their primary distribution method for SC2 and D3, since it would have a directly proportional effect on their revenue share (similar to direct-to-end-user music sales, etc.).

Retail box copies will still exist and be plentiful, but who in their right mind would go through the hassle of midnight releases, etc., when you could have the client pre-downloaded and just wait for your authentication code to materialize at 12:01 a.m. the day of release?