[source: www.mmo-champion.com/news-2/non-battle-net-accounts-offline-on-november-12th/]

Q: What happens if I don’t merge my World of Warcraft account with a Battle.net account?
A: After November 12, 2009, you won’t be able to log in to the game unless you merge your account with a Battle.net account. You will need to log in using your Battle.net account username (your email address) and password.

Q: How can I obtain the penguin pet?
A: Once you’ve successfully merged a World of Warcraft account with a Battle.net account, the penguin pet will be sent via in-game mail to all existing characters on the merged World of Warcraft account, along with all future characters on that World of Warcraft account. Players who merged previously will also receive the pet this way.

Q: Do I need to merge by a certain date in order to receive the penguin?
A: We plan to remove the ability to get the penguin pet at some point in the future, we haven’t determined exactly when just yet.

Q: If I create a new World of Warcraft account, will I receive the pet?
A: Only existing World of Warcraft accounts that merge with a Battle.net account are eligible to receive the penguin pet. If you create a new Battle.net account after November 11 and merge an existing World of Warcraft account with it you will still be able to receive the pet. However, please note that we plan to remove the ability to get the penguin pet at some point in the future.

Gimme Gimme!

battle.net account needed to play wow. What a crock of crap.

So, to sum it up, you will need to create a battle.net account and link it to your WoW account.

They want ppl who have multiple accounts to add them all to the one battle.net account (and will require it it seems) so if someone cracks your battle.net account you loose all your game accounts instead of just one....brilliant.

Oh, and if you're looking at getting StarCraft 2 or Diablo 3 you'll need to have a battle.net account for that too, even to play the single player campaign.

Fun stuff, full of needless red tape, giving way more monitoring power to Blizzard who's already illegally done a hardware spec pull off all our comps about a month ago which is completely illegal since they didn't give an opt out option. And again there'll be no opt out option, get a battle.net account or have your account inoperable but still billed.

Fucking brilliant.

Originally posted by blackthornn

battle.net account needed to play wow. What a crock of crap.

So, to sum it up, you will need to create a battle.net account and link it to your WoW account.

They want ppl who have multiple accounts to add them all to the one battle.net account (and will require it it seems) so if someone cracks your battle.net account you loose all your game accounts instead of just one....brilliant.

Oh, and if you're looking at getting StarCraft 2 or Diablo 3 you'll need to have a battle.net account for that too, even to play the single player campaign.

Fun stuff, full of needless red tape, giving way more monitoring power to Blizzard who's already illegally done a hardware spec pull off all our comps about a month ago which is completely illegal since they didn't give an opt out option. And again there'll be no opt out option, get a battle.net account or have your account inoperable but still billed.

 

Fucking brilliant.

but.... we get a penguin

I think that'll only matter to the achievement whores who NEED to get every one of the useless achievements like "OMGZ I read all the books in Dalaran" and similar.

I think this'll end up costing wow more subs than Aion's release did :P

Originally posted by blackthornn

 

so if someone cracks your battle.net account you loose all your game accounts instead of just one....brilliant.

Just don't let anyone "crack" your account then. Get an authenticator.

And if you know think anything an MMOG company does is illegal, just take them to court. You clearly know think you have a good case. ;-)

authenticator, no thanks, more bullshit for bliz to fuck up

legal - yeah, cuz joe schmo anyone can fight corporate attack lawyers .

btw, strikethru's make you look more foolish than anyone you're replying to.

I have a steam account with probably 12 games on there, L4D,TF2,HL2,CoH, Batman arkam.. if some 1 got my steam logins I mighty lose all those games too.

Why is it wrong when Blzzard want to create one account for all their games?  More blizzard hate me think.

Some times people need to look after themselves and learn some responsibility.

• Don't visit dodgy sites
• Keep ya antivirus/spyware up to date
• Don't click on links in emails
• Keep a clean system
• Don't access your account on a public PC without the autenticator
• Don't share ya account

And if that is so hard to do, there is nothing stopping you making a bnet account for each individual game, so its all a fuss about nothing.

Now give me my penguin!

Hopefully they have all the bugs worked out with the b.net accounts. When I was playing WAR I got an email saying my WoW account was banned for suspicious activity and to get it back I needed to contact customer support. Out of curiosity I called Blizzard up and after telling the guy my WoW account had been canceled for well over a year he laughed and told me that they were seeing many problems with old (canceled) accounts being stolen with the b.net change-over. They were super nice and within minutes had my account reset with a new username and password complete with 21 days paid subscription remaining lol. Since then I have been leery about changing my accounts to b.net.

i have had the Bnet account since they announced it, as long as you are smart about things you will never get hacked, unfortunately most people on the net don't seem to be.

also for 6 bucks pick up an authenticator, they are nice added security.

 Comon guys, merge the damn accounts to have the penguim...

You can even buy a leash and show off your penguim on that space ship they turned in city, Exodar.

Who doesnt like to buy an harley davidson like bike, and then go for a spin on a space craft city showing off your penguim. Groovy

What if your WoW account got banned? can you still merge it?

Wow. Making it more of a hassle to resub isn't going to win me back, Blizzard.

Sometimes, it seems like the devs in the industry are having a competition to see whose customers will take more abuse.

Originally posted by tryklon

 Comon guys, merge the damn accounts to have the penguim...

You can even buy a leash and show off your penguim on that space ship they turned in city, Exodar.

Who doesnt like to buy an harley davidson like bike, and then go for a spin on a space craft city showing off your penguim. Groovy

the leashes are awesome, especially the pretty one, so i can't wait to put it on my penguin, collecting pets is nice and relaxing.

I don't care much for the bikes, but in a way WoW has had that steampunk kinda feel to it with all the engineering n stuff.

not sure which mount i like the best at the moment, i do ride my blizzcon bear alot, it has a cool murloc baby riding on the back =D

Exodar is sweet, i like to do most of my business there since its not as crowded as other places.

Oh! and you can get a cool fetch ball to play with your penguin!

All I want is the penguin. I'll do whatever they ask.

Originally posted by blackthornn

authenticator, no thanks, more bullshit for bliz to fuck up

 

legal - yeah, cuz joe schmo anyone can fight corporate attack lawyers .

 

btw, strikethru's make you look more foolish than anyone you're replying to.

Nice comeback. I tremble. :-p

Originally posted by Dreamagram

Originally posted by blackthornn

authenticator, no thanks, more bullshit for bliz to fuck up

 

legal - yeah, cuz joe schmo anyone can fight corporate attack lawyers .

 

btw, strikethru's make you look more foolish than anyone you're replying to.

Nice comeback. I tremble. :-p

only in anticipation when typing your next stellar post I'm sure.  uhoh, time for you to change your troll underwear again I think you made a mess in those ones

Originally posted by blackthornn

Originally posted by Dreamagram

Originally posted by blackthornn

authenticator, no thanks, more bullshit for bliz to fuck up

 

legal - yeah, cuz joe schmo anyone can fight corporate attack lawyers .

 

btw, strikethru's make you look more foolish than anyone you're replying to.

Nice comeback. I tremble. :-p

only in anticipation when typing your next stellar post I'm sure.  uhoh, time for you to change your troll underwear again I think you made a mess in those ones

Hehe, fair enough, a bit of trolling on my part. I get a bit tired of all the wanna-be lawyers who claim game companies break laws of free speech, privacy, data acquisition and storage, etc. without really having a clue (not saying you don't, but surely you must agree that it is the norm). I think a little poking fun of your (imo) overly snappy response was warranted though, just like your retort was warranted for me.

No vendetta, I hope. :-)

Man, some people will just bitch for the sake of bitching.

So know everyone will have Pengu and not just those of us that ground out rep with The Kalu'ak.   That just blows.    WTF.  

Originally posted by Eben

Man, some people will just bitch for the sake of bitching.

And then there are those who will just bitch about bitching... :roll-eyes:

So, I do Blizzards job of moving my info to the new account and they give me a pixel Penguin?

I only have one Blizzard account, so why can't they just move the info over?

And then give me the pet for having to go through the hassle of logging in in a different way? ;)

Once I read the comment above, I checked outside my window, just to make sure the cataclysm didn't start already.

Just kidding btw.

I'm not exactly sure what Blizzard is trying to do with battle.net. Hopefully they are not trying to create a steam service, so to speak. Whatever they are trying to do, hopefully it'll finish sooner than later. It's delaying SC launch :)

Originally posted by Teala

So know everyone will have Pengu and not just those of us that ground out rep with The Kalu'ak.   That just blows.    WTF.  

LOL at grinding rep, what a boring game mechanic. Have fun playing with your penguin? hahahaha

Elitism over vanity pets, what type of community does this game breed.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Once I read the comment above, I checked outside my window, just to make sure the cataclysm didn't start already.

 

Just kidding btw.

I'm not exactly sure what Blizzard is trying to do with battle.net. Hopefully they are not trying to create a steam service, so to speak. Whatever they are trying to do, hopefully it'll finish sooner than later. It's delaying SC launch :)

Bnet 2.0 biggest feature is the cross game communication, but unlike steam its intergated into the games, steam has an overlay system but in Bnet 2.0 I can be playing Starcraft 2 and in starcraft 2's chat box I can chat to some 1 playing WoW and it will appear in WoW's chat box.  I can check my Friends list in WoW and see that 1 friend is playing SC2, 2 are playing D3 and 3 are playing WoW etc.

theres a video on youtube all about it.

It's true that Steam does not offer ingame chat integration between games. For most games however you can press shift-tab, select your friend from the list and send him a message that he'll instantly view. There is also a notification when somebody comes online. The list also mentions what game the other people are playing.

You need to keep in mind that steam integrates games from different developers, while Blizzard is one big house hosting their own games.

@Xasapis
The overlay system although it works its not very nice, hard to play Lf4 and alt out to type a chat to a friend playing Tf2, so blizzard system is a better system, but yes limited to blizzard games only.

@Zorndorf
Blizzard will be making money from Bnet2.0 with an app style store, people can make maps/mods for SC2 and place them on an online market place store thingy for a small charge (if they want to charge for it) and blizzard will take a percentage.