Very interesting that tonight, when people using the Mac client were having authentication issues, it didn't affect anyone using a Battle.Net account. That suggests that the two use different servers - or, at the very least, protocols - for log-in purposes.

I believe it was posted that the reason for these issues was an error with the automatic playerbase survey being done regurlarly. The survey is not yet enabled for those using Battle.net accounts so people using those were able to log in normally.

A few of my friends and guild members have been sharing their accounts for various purposes (I'm going to use your Paladin to farm SM for my alt. Or I'm going to use your rogue to herb for flasks for the raid. Or Bob the Tank didn't log on, I guess I'll play on his character so we can still raid tonight). They have been doing so for years now. Then they merged their WoW account to the Battle.net account and bam, three people got hit with suspensions.

Granted I am aware that this is against Blizzard's terms of service and they reserve the right to ban or suspend you at any time for any reason, but take this as a warning for people who share accounts.

I hope this finally allows european players to post into the us boards. Sucks to be a second class player with no direct line to the developers. Also the usage of heirloom items between multiple joined account would be great.

are you saying they merged their WoW accounts to one Bnet account, or they merged to separate Bnet accounts?

It might be unrelated to the merge in either case, you get automatically suspended if too many different IPs log into your account in a certain period of time

I don't know if anyone have noticed this but you can now transfer toons between 2 accounts even if their contact info names are not the same, before you had to have the same last name in both accounts and answer the secret question, now you only need to merge both accounts with battle.net.

Just merged two accounts with different last names and the character move seems to have worked (haven't verified in-game yet). I did get a message on the second merge with battle.net telling me that I should be really sure I'm the only one who plays this account. I'm guessing that's related to the increased suspensions people have been seeing around multiple IPs.

Overall this is a great change for someone who has multiple accounts. In addition to the obvious benefits around subscription fees and bind-on-account items, there are other less obvious bonuses. My 2nd account wasn't active and wasn't WoTLK enabled. That's another 55 bucks I was able to save.

Ever since they switched over to the battle.net accounts, the WoW forums have been showing posts from 2 1/2 years ago as being the most recent. Has anyone else run in to this?

You may want to take a look at this area of the forum and make sure you are sorting right.

Wow, I'm an idiot. I had long suspected it, but now it's cleared up for good.

I never understood why blizzard does not have separate passwords for the main account vs in game account. People constantly use their game accounts on forums, other peoples computers, share etc and is much more exposed than a main account

Confirmed they cannot. A friend of mine has a perma-banned account and yesterday tried to merge and received a "Account not found" message.

So today I tried logging into the WoW forums and it's telling me that my account is inactive. Checking account management shows that my credit card is getting hit for monthly subscription today...looks like they still have some bugs in this system.

I can confirm this, I have the same issue. My payment should go through today as well.

It's probably a timestamp issue, since subscriptions are tracked to the minute, not the day.

Did you get any errors logging into the game client, Welcome to Battle.net, or otherwise?

Nope, no problems logging into the game or account management.

Yes, been like that since game was released. Cancel your subscription and add a new one and you will be able to post. Terribly annoying though, made me switch to 3-month payment plan.

To resurrect an ancient thread, conversion to Battle.Net accounts is going to be mandatory on or before November 11, 2009:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> WoW Battle.net Conversion Coming

I'm wondering if anyone else feels a little uneasy about having to use their email as a user id for login? It seems like this could lead to security breaches, as well as it being a privacy concern. I'd rather just keep the current login instead of using battle.net as a proxy for login. Now not only do you have to worry about possible key loggers on your own computer, but you also have to worry about the data for your account being intercepted by hackers as well.

Yes indeed, i have had the same thoughts about using my email as login. Due to the fact that i keep getting those emails that obviously are from scammers. They go like: "Your account have been compromised, please give us your password, etc". That makes me aware that they actually know my email and they somehow know that i play wow(I suspect either a trojan or the website-maker 'wowstead', because thats the only place i've ever entered my email in wow-related registrations). They(hackers) didnt know my previous login, but now they got my email, and they know everyone is gonna use their emails as login from now on, so that makes it a lot easier to hack the account. Figuring out both login and password combination, i would image is alot more work.

For that very reason i created an own emailadress only for battle.net and wow, and i dont use this adress anywhere else.
It is really easy to change the email adress connected to your battle.net account, so i suggest everyone should think about doing it if they are getting the same emails that i was getting on my previous adress.

Very few attackers will use programs that simply guess a password for a given username. The most common reason for a compromised account is giving the attacker both your username and password (e.g. during a phishing attack). Using your email address as your login does not change this fact one bit. If you're really that concerned, spend the $7 and get an authenticator.

Well, it takes 5minutes to make a new email, and the fact that they know my login makes me feel unsafe about the security.

The authenticators are great, im waiting for it to be supported by my mobile phone. Makes the account safe for sure.