comes the news that as of November 12th, 2009, WoW subscribers will need to merge their account with a Battlenet account if they want to keep playing. Users who fail to merge their account by that date will be unable to access (& play) WoW until they do.
Currently registration and use of BNet is free, but when one looks at BNet it invokes images of Sony's Station and Microsoft's XBox Live (I think that's it), neither of which are free.
Coming next year, some time, (when they're done, says Blizzard, so maybe 2011), are Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.
Maybe I'm being a paranoid fatalist, but I'm thinking that following on the heels of this forced WoW/BNet merge will be a switch to a paid service, that is, BNet will no longer be free like it is today.
All those people still using it to multiplay Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, and Starcraf can still use it, they'll just need to fork over $15/month. But the good news is Blizzard will throw in a subscription to Vanilla WoW for free...as long as you pay the $15/month BNet fee :P
When Blizzard release Diablo 3 and/or Starcraft 2 I would not be surprised to see them introduce tiered pricing for BNet, i.e., $15 lets you play WoW over BNet, $25 lets you add D3 to the mix, while $32 (maybe $30, if you're lucky) gets you SC2 on top of that.
Don't want to pay for a BNet account? Dare I say it, would Blizzard be complete bastards, but would they not include any form of multiplayer support for D3 and SC2 other than over BNet? Currently you can multiplay D2 and Starcraft over a LAN or via a Direct2IP connection. Will this feature still be in D3 and SC2?
So Diablo 3 comes out and I drop $100 on two copies so my son and I can play together...but then I need to shell out another $30/month so we can actually play together over BNet because D3 won't multiplay over a LAN. That would suck more than Meter Maid switching from suck to blow (which blows more than it sucks, but that's getting away from the point) so I really hope I'm just being my typical paranoid, pessimistic self here. Of course an upside to making BNet a P2Play service (with a built-in subscription to WoW) is Blizzard would be able to report back to their shareholders that subscriptions to WoW are at an all-time high. Well, that's an upside for Blizzard, or it that just more pessism? :)
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If I recall Blizzard did announce what you describe in the second to last paragraph. There won't be LAN play as we know it for SC2.
I fear you may be correct! This way lies darkness!
I think that's exactly where they are headed. And yes, SC2 won't have LAN play. (Unless they changed their policy on it.) It's absolutely idiotic, and ultimately will most likely cost them at least the money I would have spent on SC2. I hope I'm not the only one.
I *loathe* any company that requires the internet across the board. It's a piss poor way of doing business. (I ranted a bit about it a couple of weeks ago, as it happens. "Cutting The Umbilical")
In case anyone is interested, Cutting The Umbilical has slipped onto your second page so here's a Hyperlink: Cutting The Umbilical
Ah, thanks. I just got lazy and didn't put in the link. Bad Tesh. :)
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