Slashdot Mirror
Battle.net Accounts Becoming Mandatory For WoW
An anonymous reader tips news that Blizzard will be requiring all World of Warcraft players to use Battle.net accounts to log into the game starting on November 11th. After that time, players who don't switch will be unable to play the game. Some time after the transition is complete, players will be able to "participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, and communicate across different games." More details on the new Battle.net and what it will do are available in our Blizzcon wrap-up and interviews from August. Naturally, the idea that the new Battle.net is getting closer to deployment has sparked speculation that the StarCraft II beta might come along soon.
It means your WoW guild leader can see that you are online playing Starcraft II instead of being in WoW during raid time. And that is 50 dkp minus.
And if one account is banned, you lose online on all your games. So smart people will make separate accounts.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
WoW players the world over cried out in anger over yet another small change.
Bullshit. Really smart people just don't cheat because they are smart enough to understand that it ruins the experience for all involved, including themselves. Noob.
Yes, because there will be no false positives whatsoever. And because all the rules are fair and deserve to be followed. And because with LAN play you can always choose to use an alternate way of networking for SC2.
Nope, I'll just be making a new SC2 only account.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Basically, Blizzard is creating their own Steam-like competitor. You need a AAAAA level game that people are willing to register a new account for (like Valve did with Half-Life 2). Some people might bitch about it, but if you drink the Steam-Kool-Aid (like I do) it creates a better community atmosphere for those who play particular video games 10, 20 or even 80 hours a week. But enough about the community aspect, this is really a push to create Blizzard's own digital distribution network, similar to Valve's Steam. Valve pioneered the idea of building a D.Distribution network on a AAAAA title, and Blizzard is following their buisness plan step for step, by requiring people to register a battle.net account for Starcraft 2 (and WoW). Between the two, they'll have how many tens of millions of registered customers ready and waiting to buy games through their digital distribution channel? On day 1 no less. Pretty cool, and damn smart. Whoever the executive was that pioneered this (at the cost of delaying SC2) is getting a phat performance bonus next year
One can only hope (dream?) that battle.net and steam will have some sort of interoperability down the road. Fenced gardens are great, but people aren't going to want to juggle Battle.Net, Steam and Games for Windows Live buddy lists.
moox. for a new generation.
Q: Do Battle.net accounts work with the Blizzard Authenticator?
A: Yes. If you use a Blizzard Authenticator, you will need it when merging the associated World of Warcraft account into the new Battle.net Account. The Authenticator will automatically transfer to the Battle.net Account during the merge process, and you will still need it when managing Battle.net Account information and logging in to the game. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment offers the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, an application for mobile devices that players can use to protect a Battle.net account and any World of Warcraft accounts associated with it. In addition, Blizzard Entertainment offers the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, an application for mobile devices that players can use to protect a Battle.net account and any World of Warcraft accounts associated with it. For more information on the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator, visit http://eu.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_GB&articleId=35970.
this is really a push to create Blizzard's own digital distribution network, similar to Valve's Steam.
It'll be nice to see some competition. Having one company control the distribution channel will cause issues over the long term when they get too comfortable. Blizzard's one of the few publishers that has the weight to compete.
I doubt they'd be quick with the friends list integration though. Third party tools will probably pop up long before.
Whoever the executive was that pioneered this (at the cost of delaying SC2) is getting a phat performance bonus next year
Dear Mr. Hadlock
In the future, please refrain from requesting performance bonuses on public forums.
M.Morhaime.
P.S.: Your bonus will be based on your Arena ranking, as every other director's.
Bullshit. Really smart people just don't want to get locked in because they are smart enough to understand cross-game data-mining and the fact that they can no longer gift/sell a used game if they are all tied to one account.
The change was announced about half a year ago and the deadline was announced 31 days ahead so I have no idea what you're on about.
Since when did WoW players have real-life friends?
Says the guy posting on Slashd-
Oh, nevermind.
The way Battle.net accounts are currently set up, if you receive a suspension on a World of Warcraft account attached to that Battle.net account, it has no affect on any other World of Warcraft accounts that may also be attached.
Source: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20464488049&pageNo=2&sid=1#39
Yes, but the really, REALLY smart people...
Oh, nevermind.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There are a few myths stated in the comments I wish to clear up:
/2 and you won't get banned.
1) Battle.net accounts are actually more convenient, a single login for all your Blizzard titles will make things easier.
2) As far as I know, unless your guild leader is on your battle.net friends, they won't be able to see you play Starcraft 2.
3) If you get banned from World of Warcraft, it will NOT ban your from other games, including other WoW accounts on your battle.net account.
4) Don't bot, cheat, scam people, stay stupid shit in
5) You can add multiple World of Warcraft accounts to a single Battle.net account. You'll get to choose which account you want to use when you login. If you goto another computer (multiboxing, letting your GF play, w/e) and use your battle.net login, you can choose the other account and be online at the same time (you've still gotta pay 15 bucks a month for the subscription, per account).
6) Alarmists ARE indeed funny to read.
Blizzard + Steam = .... Rain?
It depends what you mean by "the rules". If you want to be a really successful criminal, it almost always means joining or founding some form of organized crime (and before people start, I'm including being elected to political office). Organized crime is simply a replacement trust network for society at large, and while they break society's rules, they don't break their own very often, since the penalty for doing so is usually far worse than anything society metes out.
In order to live almost any kind of life that could be called a "success" you have to form and sustain trust networks with others. It's just unavoidable.
Sometimes you can get away with breaking the rules, but this is quite uncommon. The only reason we don't think this is so is that we are so used to following the rules that we don't tend to notice when we're doing it.
There's also an unexamined assumption here (yet another example of Christianity's baleful influence on our culture) that people can actually choose to be good or bad. I'm not sure that this is the case for most people. Good people tend to be pained, shamed and distressed if they do bad things, so for such people there really isn't much of a sense in which they'd be "better off" breaking moral rules. Bad folks don't seem to care, so that's not a problem for them. Given that by the time most of us are old enough to ponder it, our moral characters are already formed, the idea of a "choice" is somewhat senseless. Ask yourself how many people you know who have radically altered their moral character. All such cases I know have involved some traumatic event, like going to jail, being the victim of a terrible crime, or some sort of head injury.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
In WoW's case, the cheaters forced Blizzard to push out the Warden to everyone.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
When asked at Blizzcon, they stated that the battle.net account would be banned from all games, they made a joke about how that would be 'real' punishment.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
The ability to track a person across different characters/games is a serious problem Blizz is going to have to look at. A lot of people have non-guild alts so they can play the game in a non-social way when they want (to escape guild infighting, to unwind after a stressful day at work, to avoid stalker-ish people). Take that out, and the game loses value.
Remember, as penny arcade put it:
Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad
Without anonymity, responsibility exists, and a game where you have to act responsibly all the time is far less fun (it's real life by a different set of rules). Sometimes we just want to be fuckwads.
That's what the swirly thing between continents is!
What you fail to understand is where a significant number of gold suppliers get the gold that they pass on to you - by compromising the accounts of others, robbing the character blind, disenchanting everything they can't flood the auction house with, pulling everything they can from any associated guild banks, then setting up the character as a gold/resource farmer and shuffling all the rewards over to a 3rd party account until the actual owner of the account realizes they're not in control any more and contacts Blizzard to go through the dance of character restoration. Heck, the less moral ones will even go out of their way to target players that just made a purchase from them, because they know they'll have a better return on investment. By purchasing gold from gold suppliers, you are directly impacting the experience of other players in a way much more severe than most people realize.
That's an awfully big assumption you are making...
"When it comes to powerleving and automation that means the cheater now has 5 level 60 avatars when he really should have one"
Years ago, I used WoWGlider to automate my game play. I didn't use it build an army of maxed out level 60 characters....I used it so that I could keep pace with my friends who had more free time to play the game.
"We're going to play on Saturday - going to do the deadmines, want to come?"
'The deadmines? What level are you? I'm only 12'
"12? Dude - we're all 19. Why didn't you play last week?
'I had to go to work man'
"Bummer. Well, if you get up to 19 or even like 16 you could totally come with"
'Okay, I'll see what I can do'
So, I could run my bot while I did house work or something and keep up. The net result was no different than my actually playing the game.
And even with a bot, you'd level significantly slower than you would with refer a friend.
For all of my cheating - gold buying, bot using (the fish bot I wrote myself, I've also used WoWGlider and WoWBot (I think that's what it was. It went open source and was written in C#), two boxing (which isn't considered cheating by Blizzard, officially) I've never even hit the level cap. My highest character is 60-something (the cap is 80 last I checked).
I'm just not willing to invest large quantities of time into the game; but the game is still more enjoyable to me if I cheat than if I don't.
Claiming that all cheaters are destroying the game seems awfully overzealous to me.
You might as well say 'Quitting your job and playing 80 hours a week is cheating!'. People like that advance through content faster than expected then have nothing to do. They are more likely to grief lowbies. They have more gold and better items. They can out level everyone who doesn't have 80 hours a week to play. It gives them an unfair advantage and they get top pick of all the raid groups, the best gear, the best guilds, the best pvp ranks, etc, etc...
Basically, what it comes down to is being successful and having an enjoyable experience in WOW is about how much time you can devote to it. More time = more stuff = better character.
If you use all of your time to play WoW - that's considered fine; even though it introduces all of the same problems you've talked about in association with cheating.
If someone has more spendable income than time and is willing to use money to avoid hours of grinding in the game...he's a dirty cheater.
I'm fine with the title of 'dirty cheater'; but I disagree with the idea that my cheating negatively affects anyone else.