Those of you who’ve tried to log in to any of the Account Management features lately – including PTR character copies, and the official forums – will have seen a new login screen, asking for your account name or email address.
This is the first step in Blizzard’s new plan of integrating their game accounts into Battle.Net accounts. For now, your usual game account details will work fine; at some point in the future, you’ll have to convert to a Battle.net account to keep playing.
The Process
You’ll need a new Battle.Net account; old battle.net accounts from the Diablo II or StarCraft days don’t count. You can turn your current WoW account into a Battle.Net account here. It’ll become a single login for all future Blizzard games and services. (It currently only works for US/Oceanic accounts, but I imagine it’ll roll out to the EU realms soon.)
Multiple Accounts
From the Blizzard Battle.Net FAQ: you can add and access up to eight WoW accounts under a single Battle.net login. When you log in to the game with a Battle.net account, if you’ve got multiple WoW accounts you can select which one you want to play. You can still log multiple WoW accounts in at once.
(I have now typed the word ‘account’ so many times that it’s starting to look weird and wrong.)
The Ramifications
Right now, there’s no need to use a Battle.Net account, or to merge your accounts. However, in future, Blizzard says a) you’ll need to, and b) you’ll want to – there will be new features accessible when you use a Battle.Net account. (Also, all new Blizzard games will require a Battle.Net account.)
I am hoping that this will allow better cross-account play in WoW. For instance, my main – on whom I do all the raiding and Wintergrasp’ing – is on one account, but the alts who could really benefit from Heirloom gear bought with my paladin’s Emblems and Stone Keeper Shards are all on the other account. I’m hoping that what’s now ‘Bind on Account’ will eventually be accessible within all accounts on a Battle.Net account. Ditto for Achievements when they become account-wide, too. It may be a pipe dream, but I can hope.
I’m wondering how much of this is an effort to cut down on account sales, since I’m assuming you can’t un-merge a WoW account from a Battle.Net account once they’re linked. Characters powerlevelled specifically to be sold will still be around, of couse, but people are much less likely to sell off a cancelled WoW account with a tricked-out level-capped character if it means selling access to their other WoW accounts too, not to mention their StarCraft II and Diablo III access.
Edit!
I am so impressed. I just signed up for a Battle.Net account, merged my WoW accounts into it, and started scouring my study for other Blizzard games to register. I found one empty jewelcase for StarCraft, entered the CD key on the back, it automatically recognised the software and gave me a link to download it. This service will be a blessing for those of us who can’t keep our offices organised!
…Now I just have to work out where I left the CD keys for Diablo, Diablo II, DII: Lord of Destruction, and SC: Brood War. Oops?
Brood War doesn’t have a CD key associated with it. Because of this, Blizzard will “give” it to you for free when you register(ed) your Starcraft CD key.
This is all very well, but i’ve just merged my US account to my Battle.net, and the damn thing wont let me in on WoW sign in.
All seems great in theory, but when it locks up like this it’s a bloody pain.
Can’t get a response from Blizz at all.. Nothing new there.
@Obsi: you are logging into WoW with your email address now, right? It says a couple times that you cannot log onto WoW with your WoW account name after merging.
So far I’ve had a great experience with the new service. I had two WoW account, one mine and one my girlfriend’s — she no longer plays. My main is a pally on “her” account, that I leveled quasi two-boxing. Even though we had the same address and payment info, Blizz would never let me xfer the pally from her account to mine because the accounts were registered with different last names.
I linked both accounts with Battlenet and without 20 minutes was able to successfully transfer the pally from her account (which I have since closed) to my account.
How does it work when you have two WoW accounts? I haven’t merged my second account because I wasn’t sure how it would work to differentiate them when I go to log in…
You log in using your battle.net account on the login screen, then the first time it pops up a dialogue box of accounts to select from. After that, right on the login screen it gives you a dropdown of accounts to select from.
SSO (single sign on in geek speak) is something companies tend to prefer for both cost savings and customer convenience.
Alas, this is Blizzard with their low quality standards; today Mac customers can’t login.
yea i merged my account with battle.net and when i go to log in it says that this account has already been merged to a battle.net account. than when i go to log into the worldofwarcraft.com website to renew my subscription. i use my battle.net stuff to log in like it says than when i log in it says that are no WoW accounts on this battle.net account. so im being told 2 different things and its really starting to piss me off. i cant log into the WoW website, i cant log into wow i cant do ANYTHING. so if anyone has an answer to my problem please notify me at brandonsobo@yahoo.com. thanks
sigh* i cant log into my second account now it doesnt alow me to choose it doesnt give me an option and i am not prompted to pick one(yes repatition was necessary) it simply logs me into the first one (my main) and my other is completely un accessable this is a failboat
This is wonderful, thanks to this merger idea. my account was succeussfuly stolen.
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS YET!
…until they get it right. I just merged my WoW account with Battle.net and now I cannot log onto the game AT ALL. I did it to get the new Battle-bot passive pet since I’m an achievement junkie and now I can’t play at all!! Yes, I’m using my email as a log in and have the same email for both websites and the same password. I have a raid in an hour and I cannot get in. SAVE YOURSELF, DON’T DO IT!
Same problem here. Wow Account has been nerf’d to an battle account allready.. No idea with one. Can log in to wow or that battle.net account at all. Blizz are like underpower’d when they make stupid chance and takes normally 3 weeks to get everything up running again. Waist of good expencive money. Bliiz should get banned from internet use. They legally waist people’s money on no answering people’s question when they are bussy. Hope they offer some kind of reward or archiment just for waiting 4 day’s for an e-mail answer.