New Battle.net ties in World of Warcraft with other Blizzard games
by Seraphina Brennan 
Mar 20th 2009 at 4:00PM
Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Business models, Launches, MMO industry
...or did it?
Blizzard has finally released their account merge, only you're not longer merging your account with your Blizzard shop account anymore. You're merging your World of Warcraft account into Battle.net, allowing you to use one login for all of Blizzard's current and future titles.
As a side benefit to all of this, the new Battle.net allows you to link any of your Blizzard games to your account, including World of Warcraft, and be able to download the game from anywhere, much like Steam. Since this is the case, and since Blizzard has been offering downloadable upgrades for World of Warcraft, will we be seeing the rise of a Blizzard version of Steam via Battle.net?
All future titles will be utilizing Battle.net, so it only makes sense to log in now and get your logins all converted over. All you need to do is sign up on the main page, and the website walks you through the rest.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Justin Shaw said on 5:43PM 3-20-2009
I think the best part of it is being able to download games if you have the key for it.
Now im going to go play starcraft.
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CindyL said on 5:46PM 3-20-2009
I'm not a Blizzard fan by any means, but this sounds quite, quite cool!
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Jack said on 5:49PM 3-20-2009
Battle.net accounts rock :)
Oh well they are pretty useless right now! But there will be a time that when the other blizzard games come out it will be usefull. Blizzard will be able to trace you in all 3 games and reward you in WoW for something you did in Starcraft 2 and the other way around also the chat system can be rebuild so you can chat and invite your friend not matter the game he or she is playing (so long its a blizzard one lol).
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Evi said on 12:41PM 3-21-2009
When achievements were implemented, they discussed making them account-wide or even across multiple games. I think this is the beginning of that process.
Jack said on 12:24PM 3-23-2009
Hope so
Psychotic Storm said on 7:55PM 3-20-2009
Playing Starcraft without needing a CD worth it.
don't really care about WoW or its achievements, don't like it, don't play it.
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Zaniac said on 2:17AM 3-21-2009
So far I think this it the most moronic idea Blizzard has ever had.
For one reason only.
I do NOT want to have to use my email to log into a game.
I have a nice account name that I use to log in.
Other games use email to log in as well, and it is annoying as hell.
Why would they annoy their customers to force them to log in to the game using a text string 4-5 times the length of what they are currently using?
... And what about people with several accounts? How do we log into any other accounts than the first one we bind to the email?!
- I see only two equally dumb solutions:
Dumb solution #1: Create several battle.net accounts.
- Yeah, that kinda defeats the whole purpose there, doesn't it?
Dumb solution #2: Create a secondary login page, where you have to select between your accounts, once you've logged in using the battle.net email.
- Oh great. An even more cumbersome login-process.
*sigh*
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Token said on 3:08AM 3-21-2009
While I can almost agree with you, I see this as one of the greatest things Blizzard has done.
If only for no better reason than I've lost the CDs for Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo but I still have the CD-Keys lying around.
And how is logging in cumbersome? Its a 3 (4 with authenicator) step process. I do like your idea of logging in with battle.net account and picking which WoW account you want to login to.
Calarius said on 1:19PM 3-21-2009
I'm with you on the having your account tied directly to an e-mail. Maybe it could be strongly suggested to Blizzard (by more people, the better) that they consider allowing users a "universal" account name rather than force using the e-mail address.
Lea said on 8:10AM 3-21-2009
Great! Another app to install! O_O
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Jack said on 12:24PM 3-23-2009
There is no app!
Jhonathanr said on 2:16AM 4-01-2009
I agree with the posts of people that don't want to use the e-mail to log in its anoying to have to type your email in everytime such as us that have more than one wow player in the house hold,
sure for those of you that have 2-3 accounts and ur the only person that plays wow in your house well the e-mail thing is not a problem just click remember button and ur done
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pcheek said on 10:14PM 5-09-2009
Blizz pisses me off alot but this takes the cake.
i never made one of these accounts and yet when i try to log into wow,
it says that i need my battle.net login info.... that doesn't even exist!!
for you guys complaning about the e-mail part, well atleast you can get on to your account....
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