battle.net - merge or separate?

[Canasou]

I'm a little confused on how to handle the upcoming requirement for all wow accounts to become battle.net accounts. I was wondering if anyone else is in my situation and how you handled it.

I have 6 accounts (naturally I box) and my kids play on them also. So within the household I'm either boxing any number of them but could also have up to 4 accounts being played together on separate computers by the kids at any given time.

When the first big push came earlier to convert to battle.net accounts, in was recommended that if accounts are being used by multiple people within a household or on different machines that they should NOT be merged together on a single account. I just read on the Blizzard FAQ that:

My family plays World of Warcraft together. Should we create a single Battle.net account for all of our World of Warcraft accounts?
No. Sharing access to a World of Warcraft account, other than by a parent or guardian with a single minor, is a violation of World of Warcraft's Terms of Use. You should create a separate Battle.net account for each family member's World of Warcraft account. In addition, future Battle.net features will make it beneficial for players to have the Battle.net account they use associated with their own online identity. Creating separate accounts for you and your family ensures you will be able to take advantage of these features when they are introduced later on.

Why would they say this if the accounts are compliant with the Terms of Use policy? So I wondering if anyone else has a similar situation and how you plan/handled it?

Maybe I'm reading into this too deeply but it just doesn't make sense to me. Damn kids make EVERYTHING more complex...

[moosejaw]

Once you have all your accounts merged there is a 60 day hold on transfering characters outside of that battle.net account. So you can always make a new battle.net for the kids, if want to give them exclusive accounts, and transfer their characters over. It may require a call to Blizz but if your name is still on the account as guardian/parent then there won't be any issues.

Edit: Why they want all family members to have seperate battle.net accounts is the upcoming changes to battle.net will give everyone Blizzard wide IM's and friends lists. This will keep the kids friends seperate from yours. This was a big announcement at Blizzcon this year. Imagine logging into battle.net and messaging your friends, who are all playing different games, to go play Diablo III for a while then going to wow and do the daily heroic. They plan on a Blizzard wide system that even shares achievements.

Edit2: When you friend someone in one game they are visible on every (New) Blizzard game.

[Trick]

I have 5 accounts, with one of them being my teenage son's (well, when he has the grades to justify having his comp). I use his account as part of my boxing setup when he's not playing, and sometimes he even runs my 5th man (btw, that really messes with the other side ).

I merged my 4 accounts into one B.Net account a couple of months ago, and allowed him to put his account into his own. Reading what you posted there, it seems it would have been fine to just put all 5 accounts under my B.Net.

I will tell you that the only real difference I've seen is that it's much easier to transfer toons between WoW accounts of a single B.Net account. No need for those Security Questions.

[Queshank]

I'm also worried about how to handle this. Between my wife and I we have 6 accounts (3 each) ... ostensibly 2 of them were created for our kids to play. If I put all the accounts in my name on my battlnet account, can my kids still log in and play on a different computer while I'm logged into my main account?

These are the types of questions keeping me up at night these days.

[moosejaw]

I'm also worried about how to handle this. Between my wife and I we have 6 accounts (3 each) ... ostensibly 2 of them were created for our kids to play. If I put all the accounts in my name on my battlnet account, can my kids still log in and play on a different computer while I'm logged into my main account?

These are the types of questions keeping me up at night these days.

Yes the kids can still play. Your old account names are preserved as a subaccount to the new battle.net account. If you use an authenticator all accounts will now now use just one authenticator.