Battle.net Accounts and you: How I merged 7 wow accounts to 1 login.

[nomenquis]

One question about it from me:

Does logging into several accounts from different computers still work if all are on the same battle net account?

[Zzc2]

I just hit the WoW limit on this. You can only have a max of 8 world of warcraft accounts. it sucks.

[zanthor]

Wow weaksauce.

I can only assume they know how many users have 10 accounts... I personally have 7.

[Vyndree]

The problem is that actual programs can be reverse engineered to figure out the algorithm of the phone-authenticator. Let's hope they use a seperate algorithm for the physical authenticator and the phone version.

Granted, given enough data anything can be reverse engineered. I just don't like making it easier to do.

[puppychow]

I thought about enabling all my accounts on this but decided against it. Couple reasons:

1. If you read the FAQ, they mention "future benefits". What if every blizzard.net account gets 1 shot at a SC2/Diablo2/etc beta key, no matter how many sub-wow accounts you have? I'd rather have 5 (or whatever) seperate blizzard.net accounts that each have a shot at a beta key than 1 account that has 1 shot. I'm sure more stuff will pop up too, and its easier merging later down the road than now when the benefits are unclear.

2. As discussed, once you have multiple wow accounts on one blizzard account you have an extra step upon login. Does it remember what wow account you used last, so you can just hit return? If not, its adding an extra step to login, especially if you have to tab through and select on every window (UGH!)

3. Its irreversible. If I could split the account back out then I'd be fine, but its a one way step and the benefits are fairly minor (the number of times I login to web admin pages is maybe once every 4 months).

re: authenticators, I'd guess its basically a algo that streams a series of numbers till the battery dies, and the seed is the serial number. ie if anyone is able to grab your auths serial number they could theoretically 100% clone your authenticator (I'm basing this on the assumption that the only thing the server knows is the serial number, so probably the algorithm essentially takes as input the serial number and current time and returns a generated number -- an iphone app would simply ask for your serial number and be able to keep up exactly always, hell you could probably write a desktop app to do this too... kind of scary actually).

[zanthor]

The problem is that actual programs can be reverse engineered to figure out the algorithm of the phone-authenticator. Let's hope they use a seperate algorithm for the physical authenticator and the phone version.

Granted, given enough data anything can be reverse engineered. I just don't like making it easier to do.

It would still be seeded in some fashion, which would require not only knowing the method used to create the number, but the seed as well. This of course is possible if they malware your phone and somehow manage to tie it back to your computer that you play wow on and keylog that machine as well. Of course, I could see this being an issue for any device that actually connects tot he computer to sync - but for phones that don't ever get connected directly to the PC the odds of this happening are very slim at best.

I agree it's not as secure as a physical device, but it's far more than adequate for the seperation of account from physical token for me.

[Xinxo]

Just as a note, once you login and out, you do not need to select what account you use. A box will show up under where you put your password in to which account your logging in to.

[Zzc2]

I thought about enabling all my accounts on this but decided against it. Couple reasons:

Thats all good for now,but after reading the FAQ on it...

Q: Is creating a Battle.net Account required to play World of Warcraft?
A: Currently, creating a Battle.net account and merging World of Warcraft accounts is entirely optional. However, as we continue to build additional functionality into the new Battle.net, we will eventually require all active World of Warcraft accounts to migrate over to Battle.net Accounts in order to continue playing. Additionally, all future Blizzard Entertainment games such as StarCraft II and Diablo III will require Battle.net Accounts.

[keghia]

I know I'm sorta jumping the gun on this a bit, but if Blizzard is going to enforce the use of this in the future and the battle.net interface only supports a maximum of 8 accounts, how are the 10 boxers going to play? Are they just not going to allow someone to box more than 8 characters?

[Xinxo]

Make more then one battle.net account.