World of Warcraft Will Require a Battle.net Account

A few months ago, during August's BlizzCon 2009, Rob Pardo, the vice president of game design down at Blizzard, gave the world his view of the Battle.net future. The service has gone for six years now with practically no attention from the company. With no major updates of any kind or modifications, the only thing the network managed to do was delay Starcraft II. The major overhaul that Battle.net is currently under is the reason why the eagerly anticipated game was pushed back to 2010.

If the Starcraft II thing isn't enough to make players hate Battle.net, and it is, more than enough, it seems it's about to bring another barrage of complains down on itself. Starting November 11 World of Warcraft will only be accessible through a Battle.net account. Those who don't have one are forced to register, free of charge, before they can join their 11 million fellow massively multiplayer online role-playing game fanatics.

"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," said the Blizzard announcement. "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."

As an incentive and a freebie meant to ease the transaction on to Battle.net, players with existing World of Warcraft accounts that sign up for Battle.net will receive an in-game pet. This won't be some sort of useful pet in any way since it's available to all the classes, and to add insult to insult, the pet is a penguin. Blizzard seems to treats its fans like spoiled children, throwing a lollipop at them to make them forget they just lost their father in the war. Plenty additional questions may arise, but Blizzard put together a hefty FAQ to handle any kind of misunderstandings.