Mac WoW Players, Prepare to ‘Merge’

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their accounts with a new Battle.net account come November 11, when the new Battle.net launches. Those who don’t do the merging will be unable to continue to play online, while those who do merge will receive a new penguin pet. World of Warcraft, the popular MMORPG from Blizzard Entertainment, is available for Mac OS X and PC.

According to Blizzard, the new Battle.net will allow players to log in to future Blizzard games, shop via the online store, and keep track of their Blizzard-game key codes. Cross-realm WoW chat, friends lists, and communication across different titles are mentioned as additional plans for the service.

“A few months ago, we unveiled the Battle.net account, our new way for players to log in to World of Warcraft and future Blizzard games, sign up for upcoming beta tests, shop the online Blizzard Store, and more with just one username and password,” Blizzard reveals in a post. “This was just the first step in the rollout of the brand-new Battle.net; in the future, players will be able to use Battle.net to participate in cross-realm chat in World of Warcraft, create real-life friends lists, communicate across different games, and a whole lot more.”

“In preparation for the launch of these new features, on November 11, 2009, all current World of Warcraft players will be required to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account in order to log in to the game,” Blizzard explains.

“As our way to say ‘thanks’ for taking a moment to go through the process, existing World of Warcraft accounts that upgrade to Battle.net (including those that have already switched over) will receive a brand-new penguin in-game pet – check for him in your in-game mailbox later this week. Starting on November 11, all World of Warcraft players will need to log in to the game using a Battle.net username and password, and anyone who wishes to create a new World of Warcraft account will need to start with a Battle.net account,” the giant video-game developer concludes.

In related news, Blizzard Entertainment has recently released a “test realm” update for the Mac version of World of Warcraft. The World of Warcraft PTR Updater provides new features and changes that are applied to the test environment (realm) in order to more effectively test new features making their way into the official WoW game.