Battle.net account mandatory?
 

I heard from a friend that wow will be forcing everyone to upgrade to a Battle.net account in order to login to play wow..

This upgrade requires the obvious wow account info of account name and account password...

Another requirement is your Game Authentication Key.

This poses a minor problem for me...

I bought the game over 4 years ago and have since then lost the box it came with... and the disks..

Anyone know how to go about finding this key?
(aside from calling blizzard for 3 hours of painfull on-hold music)


Thanks..

You don't need your CD key. It just asked me for my account name and password, and the number from my Authenticator.

When you create the account you will have the option to "Merge a World of Warcraft® Account" . Because you needed the key to create the WoW account they assume you had the key at one time. I was worried about the key problem when i created mine because we have 4 account here and I had no clue which key went with which account.

Not many of us use the little keychain authenticator.. since they are no longer free and never were required.



4 accounts? that'd suck ballz if ya miffed that up, best of luck!

I endured the on-hold music and spoke to someone... verified who i was and she set the account up for me..

How nice, for a change.

I don't remember needing the key and I don't use an authenticator - you are going through the main site right?

yeah, create a Battle.net account, and then attach your WoW account(s) to the Battle.net account.

i have all my keys, but i did not need them. i do not have an authenticator.

Correct. You do not need the cd key linked to your account, and you only need the Authenticator number if you use an authenticator (that's what they're there for ;) ).

I don't recall needing my CD Key when i merged my battle net account.

My CD Key is on the front of a CD cover that's at the back of my drawer with all my install CDs in it.

So I think I would of distinctly remembered having to get every CD out of that drawer to reach my wow discs ....

I believe somebody merged 2 concepts, and that is causing the spread of this misinformation.

1. You can (now, must) merge your WoW account into a battle.net account. You can do this when you know your WoW username, password, and (if you use one) authenticator code.

2. You can store your Warcraft 1/2/3 & Diablo 1/2 & StarCraft CD keys on your battle.net account. This will allow you to play without having the physical CD on hand, download a new copy of the client, etc. if you are connected to the account. (I haven't tried this to see how well this works - I may have heard you still need the physical CD to actually play.)

I know Starcraft, Warcraft and Dioblo can be played without the CD in the drive.

Here are the instructions for Starcraft. The other games are done in much the same way.

They had to do this to be able to allow people to download the games.

The Diablo 2, Warcraft and Starcraft clients that can be downloaded from Battle.net are fully patched up and include the official no-CD patch. Your Blizzard CDs can stay tucked away in a safe location. Clients downloaded from Battle.net use the Blizzard Downloader client that we know from installing so many WoW patches.

When you download and install game clients from Battle.net, you use the CD Key listed on Battle.net (not the ones on your physical CD even though they are stored on Battle.net once you add them) to install the games with.

This comes from first hand experience with installing and using the Starcraft client (I have Starcraft, Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 attached to my Battle.net account). It's really quite easy and the install is much faster since you don't have to read from a CD. In addition, once installed, start-up and map loading is also faster since everything is stored on the hard drive and nothing has to be accessed from the CD.

Setting up my Battle.net account was quick and easy. The longest couple of bits where thinking up a good secure password and waiting for data transfer between me and Blizzard's servers. Likewise, merging my WoW account took all of five minutes and went smoothly.

My rating for Battle.net

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

Out of four possible :banana:.

Wow, that's handy. I might have to link my Diablo 2 and Warcraft 3 keys to my Battle.net account if I can, then.