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.
Buggy (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Legal? - Depends where you are (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And still... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, but it's still annoying. It's just another way for Blizzard to mine customer data and spamvertise more. In the end, it's really just five minutes of my time wasted filling out a form so they can try and sell me more crap. Anybody who plays WoW only gets exactly zero benefit from this.
That said, you'd think WoW players would be a bit more concerned about, oh, I don't know, the constant server crashes, rolling restarts, major patch bugs (how the HELL do you break an entire MMO by putting a typo in the credits.txt file!? Oh, right, you release the checksum for the rolled up patch file WITHOUT the typo taken into account), and just generally utter crap technical quality of the game. But the same people who will cry and moan for hours about five minutes of form filling for this are the same fanboy idiots who will go onto the forums after a whole day of downtime and make up endless excuses for Blizzard's failure, even though no other modern MMO suffers anything close to that level of technical dysfunction.
I guess what I'm saying is, what more would you expect? WoW players aren't really known for being particularly blessed by common sense. They're paying $15 a month for one of the worst maintained games out there, and they're HAPPY about it.
I like WoW and all, but the way Blizzard runs it since the Activision merger, anybody who's still paying for their awful service is an imbecile.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure Valve is immune to the heat generated from some of the other DD services. Direct2Drive's recent per-week sales are now over. The buzz generated on slickdeals and the gamer forums I frequent was pretty high. I log in to steam last night and lo, they've got an extremely similar per-week deal going. It's even THQ games, which were what most people, again in my circles, were excited about on D2D. Titan Quest/SupCom/CoH/foo.
I can't believe that's coincidence. If hope blizz does get into it, I want more ridiculously cheap games.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:2, Interesting)
The difference is Blizzard currently has no delusions of destroying the game publishing companies like Valve did. Battle.net 2.0 is more like their own version of Facebook for their own games only.
I wouldn't expect to ever be able to buy a non-Blizzard game on Battle.net, and I wouldn't expect any more interoperability than Facebook and Myspace currently have (i.e. none). I could always be wrong, though!
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
Oversimplification is overly simple....
Cheating is awfully subjective and the consequences felt by other players from cheating varies from 'not at all' to 'a lot', depending on what is being done.
Some cheating violates the mechanics of the game. Cheats that let you fly or make you impossible to kill. Yes, you being invulnerable is one of those things that could negatively impact other players....but only if you PVP. If you spend the entire game, from 1-80, playing alone, in instances; who have you hurt? But that's a pretty extreme cheat....
A lot of cheating doesn't violate the mechanics of the game. Buying gold is 'cheating', but what does it really do? Arguably, it increases inflation. The counterpoint is that high level toons on old servers cause inflation and create a need for n0obs buying gold. In either case, anyone can get gold. There is an infinite amount on the server, the server creates more gold all the time. Buying gold just saves the purchaser *time*.
Really, most of WoW is simply a function of time spent in the game.
What, exactly, is the difference between me playing my character for 20 hours this weekend, farming gold, and increasing the total gold on the server by 10,000g or between me playing my character for 5 hours, doing something fun, and buying 8,000g from a website? In either case, my character ends up with 10,000g more than what it had. In the farming example, more inflation is created because I've introduced more gold into the game. The gold buying, arguably, only created 8,000g and would cause less inflation. But, really, the only meaningful difference is how much time *I* spent having fun and how much money *I* spent.
Being 'great' at WoW is simply a matter of how much time you will spend playing WoW. You can be a retarded monkey, but if you play 14 hours a day, you will hit the level cap, have great gear, and be able to find a great guild.
But, if you aren't willing to make that time commitment, 'cheating' allows you to play the game in a meaningful way. Is it fair that someone can buy gold and someone else can't? I don't know. But it's certainly no more unfair than paying extra money to get 3x experience with refer a friend. The only difference is who the money goes to; but the affect on the game is the same. People who are willing to 'cheat' get benefits that non-cheaters didn't and, arguably, 'devalue' the achievement of leveling.
Automation with bots, two (or more) boxing, refer a friend, buying gold, getting a friend to 'run you' through an instance, buying a character are all ways to get further in less time. All of them are unfair, some are considered 'cheating'. Hell, at release, getting a mount at 40 would have been cheating, but now it's not.
If you want to be strict about it - you can simply say that Blizzard makes the rules, and anything against the rules is 'cheating'. And that's fine and I wouldn't feel the need to argue. But when you say that 'really smart people don't cheat because it ruins the experience....' I feel like you are making an awfully bold claim, without any substance.
Some cheating can negatively impact your gaming experience, certainly; but there is also cheating that won't affect you at all. I've bought gold, two box, and wrote my own fish bot. Oddly enough; two boxing has had a much larger affect on my gaming experience than the other two (and that's the only one that isn't considered cheating!). The gold I bought served only to save my low level horde character a run to a neutral AH to exchange gold with my high level alliance. That purchase saved me an hour or so of death running - maybe more. In either case, my level 1 horde guy would end up with 1000g. I wrote the fishbot because I didn't want to spend an entire day leveling up fishing. I spent more time writing the bot than it would have taken to level up my fishing by hand. The bot was simply 'more fun'. I fished until my skill was maxed out (which is exactly how much fishing I would have done by hand). In either case, my fishing skill was going to get maxed out....my cheating didn't change the gaming experience for anyone else, other than myself.
Re:Of course, I didn't RTFA (Score:4, Interesting)
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.