Battle.net now required to play WOW

By Oli Welsh Published 12 November, 2009

Merging accounts essential from today.

Via its official sites, Blizzard is reminding World of Warcraft players that from today, they will need to create a Battle.net account and merge it with their WOW account in order to play.

The 12th November deadline was set a month ago. You get a free in-game penguin pet for going to the trouble of merging accounts. From today, you need a Battle.net username and password to log in to the game, and anyone creating a new WOW account will need to start with a Battle.net account.

Battle.net is Blizzard's new online platform that will act as a common login, account and player profile for all its games in the style of Xbox Live. It will unify communications, achievements and other features across WOW and forthcoming games like StarCraft II and Diablo III.

More info at the Battle.net FAQ.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (7) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Pirotic #1 2 years ago

    My bets on them switching the WoW subscription to a battle.net subscription, which you'll need to play any of their future games online.

  • ps3owner #2 2 years ago

    isn't that what the article said?

  • Toothball #3 2 years ago

    Yeah, convergence isn't always a bad thing really. Isn't this also what NC Soft do with their stable of online games?

    Doesn't affect me though as I don't play that game.

  • Kremlik Verified Co-Founder, Crash To Desktop #4 2 years ago

    @Pi - nope Blizzard have constantly stated it's only WoW (and the other MMO) that you need to pay for D3 and SC2 will still continue to use Bnet for free

  • darkmorgado #5 2 years ago

    I got my penguin a couple of weeks ago. Yay!
    Nice to see that, from the looks of things, they have realised it might be a bit greedy to charge people multiple times for different games. Go Blizzard!

    Now hurry the hell up with Cataclysm.

  • nuanimal #6 2 years ago

    P-p-p-p-p-p-picked up a penguin

  • CaptainTrips #7 2 years ago

    Blizzard said at Blizzcon that they were going to try and emulate good DLC content delivery systems like Steam with Battle.net, and also take the better features of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and try to incorporate them.

    Imagine the spam: "CaptainTrips has taken the quiz "Which fish are you?" CaptainTrips is a HADDOCK! Take the quiz!"

    But seriously, I have my account merged, and it's pretty slick - I can log into both my WoW accounts with one ID, and can also download my older Blizz games like WC3 and Starcraft without the need for a CD.