Battle.net Accounts Becoming Mandatory For WoW 234
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
And if one account is banned, you lose online on all your games. So smart people will make separate accounts.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
or just abide by the rules like really smart people
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:1, Insightful)
Really smart people usually prefer to figure out how not to get punished for breaking rules harder than they would be punished by abiding by the rules.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Buggy (Score:1, Insightful)
At least come up with plausible bullshit if you're going to troll.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:And still... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
The parent post is so naive and self-centered that I can't believe that it was modded up as insightful.
The poster's logic is that buying gold and using bots doesn't hurt anyone and helps me out so it isn't really cheating....
Let me help out out. Blizzard says those two activities are cheating and, like it or not, Blizzard is the Dungeon Master. There's your definition right there. Not to mention that they can ban you if they catch you doing either one.
You say that your cheating doesn't hurt anyone... what about the other fair players that have to invest 10 times more personal time in the game than you to get to the level cap and make enough gold to equip themselves? What about the people your "purchased" gold was stolen from? What about the items your farming bots took that could have been given to actual player-controlled toons in the farming areas farming the area at the same time as you? In all cases, you are inconveniencing real life humans because you are too lazy or greedy to play fair.
You need a real world analogy to drive the point home? It's like buying a term paper off the internet, copying test answers off the guy next to you, or paying someone to rob someone else. You're staying competitive with people who are working harder than you by sucking off them so you can have more free time for yourself.
You're acting unfairly to gain an advantage over other players: That is the definition of cheating. And remember that time is money, friend!