Today the World of Warcraft (WOW) login announcements made mention of the fact that all existing WOW accounts must be merged with a Battle.net account by November 11th 2009.
What does this mean?
Well the intention behind it seems to be to tie WOW into the battle.net framework which already exists for all of their other online games. According to their web page WOW players will be able to utilize new features “such as cross-realm, cross-faction, and cross-game chat”. It almost seems to me like Battle.net (and Blizzard) is going the route of My(Pathetic)Space and (FuckMy)FaceBook. Enter the behemoth mother of all social networking sites that you now have to use to be able to play your MMOs in peace. Not only that but there will be shared statistics for your characters. For the competitive PVP folks this is a good thing. Most WOW players are not competitive PVP players, and I’m sure that most players won’t mind. However to me I have always tried to keep some distance between myself and my guildies. They do not need to know my real name, or where I live. They do not need to know how to contact me 24/7, they do not need to know my alts that i play to hide from the world or responsibility once in a while.
To me this means that any shred of anonymity I had is now gone when it comes to WOW.
Good game Blizz, you win this round.
Battle.net accounts can be made for free at: Battle.net
More information including a FAQ can be found at: FAQ