In preparation for the rollout of Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, Blizzard have been revamping their free Battle.net service. As part of this, and no doubt to decrease their overheads from maintaining separate authentication services, they’re also shifting World of Warcraft over to Battle.net as well. Account migrations have been available for some months already, and Blizzard announced at the recent BlizzCon ‘09 that some time in the near future, migration would be mandatory. According to MMO-Champion, an apparently accidental FAQ update to the European site has indicated that the cutoff date may be in mid-November.

Cue the crazy:

they are transferring your account from Blizzard incorporated in California to Blizzard incorporated in Oregon Such a transfer across state lines CANNOT be required and is a federal crime.

No indication whether this is a deliberate troll or not, but it’s hardly more nonsensical than the allegedly ‘legitimate’ complaints about the migration. The good news is that there is a slim chance these chicken littles might actually follow through on their threats for once, and leave the game.

Update: Blizzard has made it official, and provided a focal point for the madness. Thanks Blizzard. Thizzard.

Update 2: It’s an assault on personal liberty.

Blizzard (a company who has not exhibited anti-competitive behaviour) has announced that the Wrath of the Lich King expansion will be released on November 13th, coincidentally the first Monday after I finish University. Bastards.

Following from its premiere at Leipzig, Blizzard have uploaded the new Wrath of the Lich King cinematic. I still haven’t watched it, because Blizzard are cheap bastards, and make everyone else transfer their files for them.

In somewhat related news, Mythic recently put up a new cinematic for Warhammer Online. Blah-ish female content aside, the video is definitely well put together and reflects at the very least a somewhat chaotic sense of humour which will work in the game’s favour if they manage to include it beyond pre-rendered animations.

Age of Avatars is available on the SBS site as part of the My Generation series of documentaries. It is a brief but interesting look at a few World of Warcraft players, including one I used to know in my LAN days. It was produced by some Flinders grads.

Blizzard have introduced new incentives to their Recruit-a-Friend promotion:

1. Characters on both accounts can summon each other once per hour.
2. While adventuring with your linked friend/family member, you will each gain triple experience.
3. For every two levels the new player earns, the new player can grant one free level-up to a lower-level character played by the veteran player.
4. For each person you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases his or her first month of game time, the account you sent the invitation from will receive a free credit of 30 days of play time.
5. For each person you refer who upgrades to a retail version of World of Warcraft and purchases two months of game time, you will be able to give a character on the account you sent the invitation from an exclusive in-game zhevra mount. This unique mount can be claimed through the website, is only available to Recruit-A-Friend participants, and can only be applied to a single character.

Yahtzee's take on Age of Conan. To Funcom's credit the game is apparently not a worthless piece of garbage, a point previous developers competing with World of Warcraft have failed to address. I'm still waiting for AoC's server instability to evaporate, and for Funcom to start offering trials. Buying an MMO without trying it out first? That would be stupid.