Changes coming for 'World of Warcraft' players

i agree i think you should bring the WoW community together and do more updates and stuff. But i dont think you should make players find another way to Azeroth keep it the same and dont change it. The way you have is easy and simple just takes awhile i think you should just speed it up.

Looks like a Steam to me!

i agree with white wombat but u should atleast give players a little longer time before they have to make a change.

battlenet on diablo and diablo II was secure LOL.

Well it's kinda the same as is. I merged my account when they first offered it a couple weeks ago and the only thing that has changed so far is just the username whenever you log into wow. Instead of having your traditional username, you have to enter your Battle.net account info which is your e-mail address. No biggy. Really don't think it's that big of a deal as in annoyances but it definitely is a positive step forward to bringing the whole community together. Good work Blizzard!

Really now – changing peoples usernames to their EMAIL ADDRESS. That's super secure, because its not like thousands of spammers and former friends dont have access to this information.

Smooth move Blizzard, I cant wait to see the outcome of this move.

Oh, and the Blizzard Authenticator is an option that was available before this move, for $6.95. Its not an added feature just for battlenet.

$6.95 x 11 million accounts? You do the math.

This article is written as if this 'change of account' is something that is of major impact. You create a Battle.net account, register your World of Warcraft account to your Battle.net account and that's that. You now log in with that account. Big deal.

@ Cody: Blizzard has been telling people this for months now that by Nov 11th they were required to have a Battle.net account. They have had plenty of time, and the whole process takes about 2 minutes to complete so there's no real excuse.

@AB: Diablo and Diablo 2 were nothing at all like World of Warcraft. Diablo characters were stored clientside. WoW characters are stored serverside. You could hack Diablo to crap and play it, sure. But you can't hack you WoW toon when it's not even stored on your computer.

actully the server was hacked about 2 to 3 months ago and alot of char passwords were taken from my server Kael'thas and other servers.Me mentioning diablo is me just saying I have little trust on Blizz security ideas. The authenticator is a good idea but IMO it should be provided with the game. I mean the 15 dollars a month should go to profits yes, but it should also go to security upgrades (authenicators) and server upgrades.

@Daniel

Blizzard has stated SEVERAL times that the Authenticator costs are offset by the material to create them and shipping. They are not making ANY profit from authenticators.

FYI, the Battle.net account has been available for ~6 months.

The fact that it wil be required has been posted at the logon screen for at least a month.

It took me less than 5 minutes to make the switch myself.

Anyone who tried to get the Mountain Dew pet changed to battle.net entry anyway. So for the most part, everyone I know had already changed months ago. And every day it has been posted on the entry screen. At least for the last two and a half weeks (right before All Hallows Eve) when I started logging back in.

The great part about a one time generator fob is
the battery dies in like 6 months and you have to buy it all over,
until you get that new fob you cannot login.
It is so secure sometimes even you can not login!!!

hey now, I like steam. didn't when it first came out and I had to connect to counterstrike through it but now they have worked out their issues and I actually enjoy it. I bought GTA 4 and recently left4dead through it.

Interesting but there could be a serous outbreak of un-happy players beucause they can't take 5 minutes out of there no lifes to change it

i find it rather silly that Bilzzard spent all this time/effort/money trying to force us all into battle.net when in game has many more issues. It now takes over 3 days to get any problem addressed on my server.

@Tyler

With any monthly service charge that is lower then the material and shipping cost there will break even point, after which almost everything collected is profit. Not to mention reduced support staff costs for having to deal with hacked accounts in investigating and restoring lost items/characters. A lot of companies realize the saving in support more then offsets the cost of the key cards/dongles and offered them for free. At most there should be a one time charge for any hardware requried.

this change is great once in place everyone will be able to chat with people from different realms and send mail to different realms also the cross realm hero daily can be done with this. wow.com ftw

Maybe Blizzard should institute a whiney gamers fee, they could get rich off that.

Pointless article is pointless. We all knew about this, not anything new.

After several years of playing, I upgraded my login to the new Battle.net system and not two weeks after my account was hacked.

This'll be a great change... especially with the authentication aspect, as not everyone can afford an authenticator keychain right now.

But yeah, just like steam and NCSoft's launcher.

Come on poeple the move takes 5 mins and you even get a free pet
( be it a creepy little penguin ) but it's free, Also on the key gens my girlfriends acc. was getting hacked all the time about 3 months ago so she got one and it's stoped it's 6.95 and no shipping or tax (omg no supermeal for the raid)

I think they should include an authenticator in every boxed copy of the expansion they sell.

they should also force all accounts to be bound to one.

once that is done any "hacked account" is an account shared within the household. Key logging would be worthless for WoW accounts.

the amount of gold gold sellers can accumulate through hacked accounts would be 0.

Powerleveling services? done. out of business.

What's the problem here? Are you all that lazy? It takes 2 min to go to battle.net and attribute your WoW account to a battle.net account then you just use your email address as your login. You spend countless hours in WoW itself but you can't spend 2 min to do this??? The ultimate in laziness, lazy lazy lazy lazy, and if you can't figure out how then take your computer back to the store and tell them there's a problem, the problem is that you're too stupid to own one!

This is just a way of keeping people from trading or selling WoW accounts. Once all of your logins are the same, you won't want to sell WoW because you'd also lose the rest of your registered game.

I gave away my account last month after not playing much over the previous 9 months. It's just recycled content now with new color schemes.

It's any easy change. There is no reason to extend the deadline. People complain about security being weak but they do not want to make a simple change. It takes no time at all and the only thing that changes is your login name being your email as default. It doesn't slow anything down and it doesn't make the game itself any less stable. Stop being lazy and stop whining. Jay has it right, 2 mins, your account is merged, it's done, and you go on playing.

I love how nobody raises the point that the new system is actually less secure, more prone to compromise. By requiring you to use your registered E-mail address as your user ID, Blizzard is opening the door to even more abuse. Add in the fact that passwords are not case-sensitive, and you have a security nightmare ready to happen.

Anyone who plays WoW, please go to the official suggestions board and either make or find and bump a demand for case-sensitive passwords. Blizzard should give us a level of security that just about every other online passworded application out there has by default.

I have five Characters ALL maxed out in levels and I am BORED with Wow. have NOT played in a couple of Months. I want them to Come up with an additional 20 LEVELS. Blizzard is treating Us all like we are expendable.

The Authenticator is optional and free if you download it for your mobile phone.

Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) has been offering a one-stop package for some time to their gamers. Personally, I love paying one fee a month for access to multiple games, and having everything in one place.

But, on the other hand, my previous experiences with Blizzard–and WoW–really make me wonder how smart, how safe, and how secure any of this is for their gamers.

Been playing for 4 years and I too have finally gotten bored with it. Not only do they need some new content -Thats NEW content, not the same ol grind stuff- but WoW also needs a visual overhaul. It's graphics are severely dated. Thanks Blizz for a great game (seriously) but enough is enough. The same old grind has finally lost its luster and besides, you've gotten plenty of my money. I'll find something else to do while waiting for another Star Control or Wing Commander game on the PC...something worthy of my 9800gx2.

The offer to merge was out before they decided to force players to do so.

The option for mobile phone is a great idea. However it is not offered for my droid on T-mobile as of now. I paid the 6.95 for my authenticator and I like the idea that my account is now that one step more secure. obviously case senstitive passwords would make things alot better but I can take it one step at a time.

Was the phone version of the authenticator free? I can't remember but it would be good for anyone moaning about 6.95 to look up that option.

The idea of cross server chatter is intriguing. maybe we can have cross server premades?

My God, you would think Blizzard was asking for their first born. It's a game people. Don't like the game, stop playing. I love WoW, but OMG the community is full of some of the biggest whiners. If this change makes you upset, you should probably take a step back and prioritize your life. I would hate to see how some of these people would react if they got in a minor car accident. Life's too short to let adding a domain name to the end of your logon cause this sort of backlash.

This is for "Wow is No Wow". Blizzard treats you like your expendable because you are. In case you didn't read the first half ot he article, they have "11.5 million" subscribers. You maxed 5 characters and gave them a bunch of your money. Anything else after that is gravy. If your new to the game, WoW is awesome. Been playing forever, then its ok to get bored and play a different game. Blizzard expects that. Always rememebr, Blizzard is a company. They're not here to give it away. If you where in their shoes, you wouldn't give it away either. BTW... you'll be back. They always come back.

I hate steam, it has always been buggy and slowed down my system. That is why I don't buy any games with Steam mentioned on the box.

I've just returned to WoW after a 7 month lay off and man I'm happy that I did! Roll on cataclysm

i have the authenticator and love it. i have been hacked twice and that is what drove me to obtain the authenticator. it is easy to get your account updated to the battle.net. i have played wow since the beginning and what makes it fun and what still drives me to play, is the people i play with.

The change was no big deal, it barely took up any of my time and I got an ugly in game pet for it *shrug*, To be honest I changed to battle.net a while back after a friend got hacked (the flash keylogger that hit many a while back). The people who hacked his account migrated it to a battle.net account and he didnt even know till he read an email saying he had migrated.
I decided to migrate myself before someone decided to do it for me O_o

I recently had my account hacked. Due to being part of the battle.net system, my login was the same as the email Blizzard sends notifications to. Yes, the password to my email and my battle.net account were the same – big mistake.

The hackers deleted the emails referencing the account change. I know this because they forgot to empty the trash – so when I checked them, I found them.

This exposes a big security flaw in this system. Honestly, who doesn't have many of their non-critical passwords the same? How many are willing to keep a book ( a security flaw in itself, if an offline one ) of their logins and passes? How many, like me, are married and multiple people logging in causes even more confusion and the need for uniformity?

I like the battle.net idea, especially the ability to talk cross realm in my particular case. Still, battle.net should not use emails as logins – emails are certainly required, but using something else – a login name, code, whatever, would be a more ideal solution.

To Jake Talahan:

Only a moron has the same id and password for their email account and their battlenet account. You yourself caused your account to be less secure.

Get the security authenticator. You won't regret it.

The new BattleNet is great. I always have multiple copies of Blizzard games because the whole family plays. No more will I have to figure out which CD ID I used on which computer so we can all play. I can now tie them to a battlenet account instead.

@Wrel

Diablo 2 did not store online characters client side. They did however give you, the gamer, plenty of options. If you wanted to play on the internet with a character that you created for singleplayer, that option was available. As you mentioned this allowed for manipulation of these files as they were stored clientside.

However Diablo 2, as an online game, stored no character files client side. This difference was refereed to as "Closed Battle.net" & "Open Battle.net". Diablo 2 now is just as hackable as WoW. I botted for four years on WoW, and I used MH/Bots on Closed Diablo 2. In an effort to prevent hacking with ALL of their games Blizzard has since implemented Warden, their anti-hack program.

As for Diablo 2 being similar to WoW, its not worth my breath to list these similarities. Because you've shown you're not familiar with Diablo 2 enough to understand them.

Ignorance is not bliss, so how about a little more research before you open your mouth next time.

**** "Oh, and the Blizzard Authenticator is an option that was available before this move, for $6.95. Its not an added feature just for battlenet. $6.95 x 11 million accounts? You do the math." ***

Uh, yeah brainiac, I just did the math, and since it doesn't cost a dime to join BattleNet, the answer I get is $ZERO times 11 million accounts = ZERO.

Re: Goodbye WoW

You've been playing for 4 years, and just now are starting to grow bored.

Tell me one other game that's held your attention that long? Halo, GTA, EQ, anything?

Re: Jason

I'm afraid I can't name one. Like I said, they made a great game! Sure I still go back and occasionaly play the ones you've mentioned but no, nothing has gripped me as consistently as WoW. I'm sure I'll miss it from time to time. (I haven't yet and I didn't leave on a sour note or anything) but I'm also confident that something greater is coming. (Don't ask me what, I have no idea but it's coming!) Blizzard has had a good run. Now give WoW a visual makeover or give us something new entirely!

Cmon Blizzard, Activision, or EA give us a great space RPG!! Even if that means reviving one of the old great ones as mentioned in my earlier post.

I was wrong, battle.net is great. You are all wrong about the categorized municipalities of the fireplace at Trisfal Glades Inn. They have a mediocre turn down service and there elven massages don't offer a happy ending.

@ ab, you're nuts, no ones about the secret portal in the fireplace in Menthil Harbor. May the worlds collide and the demons wreak havoc on your wooden ship of Taurens. Taura loo, taura la, la la loo, fra, fra fra. Gnomes need to breed with Elves. That is the only way to fix the buggy problems in WOW. WOW, really, wow, yeah.