Snippets: WoW forced to Battle.Net, price cuts hurt, Wii gets exercise bike

4:01 pm Wednesday 14 October, 2009

by Dan Cheer

Here's today's roundup of top stories from elsewhere on the internet:

Price slashing will 'confuse and disappoint' consumers (GamesIndustry.biz) - The recent price war conducted by some supermarkets on the release of FIFA 10 earlier this month has been branded as "stupidity" by SimplyGames.com director Neil Muspratt, who has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes the practice will only service to confuse - and ultimately disappoint - the consumer. Speaking in an exclusive interview in the build-up to what the industry hopes will be a busy Christmas period, Muspratt explained that while the recent hardware price cuts were good news, he expected the new higher RRP of Modern Warfare 2 to become the standard in future.

Wii gets full-size exercise bike (Eurogamer) - Bigben Interactive has unveiled Cyberbike, "The very first videogame that comes with an exercise bike." It's in development for the Wii, astonishingly. The game involves riding "some of the most improbable vehicles ever imagined" around 18 circuits, on land, sea and air.

World of Warcraft requiring Battle.net registration Nov. 11 (Gamespot) - Soon, Battle.net will be giving impatient Blizzard fans another reason to grumble. Blizzard has announced that, starting November 11, World of Warcraft will be accessible only through Battle.net. According to a post on the game's official Web site, players who do not have a Battle.net account must register with the service--at no charge--before they can join the 11-million-plus players in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Warcraft movie gets Saving Private Ryan scribe (GameSpot) - Ever since director Sam Raimi got on board in July, the Warcraft film has been making headlines. Last week, word spread that the project would premiere in 2011 and would be subtitled "The Rise of the Lich King." the title would indicate that the film would chronicle the Lord of the Rings-ish story of Arthas Menethil, a benevolent paladin prince corrupted by the runeblade Frostmourne and turned into an undead lord.

Comments (20)

Sniper_X

14 Oct 2009 4:15 pm

yeah i saw that about the battle.net rego yesterday.
No biggy to me though i was already using the battle.net login in hopes to get into the starcraft 2 beta.

In regards to the movie tho.
At least they are keeping in line with the Mythos of the warcraft universe. That will keep some people happy.

DumKopf

14 Oct 2009 4:16 pm

Just signed up to battle.net and added WoW to my games list. Pretty uncomplicated process and my WoW account has been deactivated for 12 or so months.

BURN_BABY

14 Oct 2009 4:42 pm

JvJ wrote:

Here's today's roundup of top stories from elsewhere on the internet:

World of Warcraft requiring Battle.net registration Nov. 11 (Gamespot) - Soon, Battle.net will be giving impatient Blizzard fans another reason to grumble. Blizzard has announced that, starting November 11, World of Warcraft will be accessible only through Battle.net. According to a post on the game's official Web site, players who do not have a Battle.net account must register with the service--at no charge--before they can join the 11-million-plus players in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

So, that's that for "private servers", I imagine?

Sniper_X

14 Oct 2009 4:53 pm

i doubt it.
Private servers have their way's around things.

exis

14 Oct 2009 5:36 pm

Sniper_X wrote:

i doubt it.
Private servers have their way's around things.

Yeah, I doubt it will be much of an issue.

It will blow my mind if people find a way to complain about having to sign up for this. It takes a couple of minutes, less time than needed to download and apply most of the regular patches.

Sniper_X

14 Oct 2009 6:08 pm

oh and they are in droves!
Im surprised people didnt sign up sooner to be honest.

Doofer

14 Oct 2009 8:24 pm

So the new battle.net is like Blizzard's Steam pretty much?

I was one of those players that were on WON till that was closed.

DumKopf

14 Oct 2009 8:48 pm

Not sure, there doesn't seem to be a client, they just want you to register your games on their website.

craigmsherriff

14 Oct 2009 8:55 pm

DumKopf wrote:

Not sure, there doesn't seem to be a client, they just want you to register your games on their website.

they just wanna waste your time by signing up for more shit just to play a game you paid for already.

EvaUnit02

14 Oct 2009 9:14 pm

Doofer wrote:

So the new battle.net is like Blizzard's Steam pretty much?

From the looks of it, I'd wager yes. BNet 2.0 seems to have a lot of the same integrated social interaction services that the likes of Steam and Xbox Live have (i.e. Friend's Lists, IM'ing, voice chat, maybe achievements), also the Blizzard Store will run off of BNet 2.0 (from what I understand, I haven't done any thorough research into the topic), where you'll also be able to buy premium mods for Starcraft 2 made by the community.

craigmsherriff wrote:

they just wanna waste your time by signing up for more shit just to play a game you paid for already.

A lot of people will probably grow to like the integrated social tools of BNet 2.0, I'd wager.

Of course you'll always get stubborn, close-minded people who refuse to give things a chance and who'll continue to whine no matter what, with their head buried in the sand.

eggzs

14 Oct 2009 10:00 pm

I hope to start playing wow soon, does this mean I have to make one more account?

metz

14 Oct 2009 10:04 pm

what's the reason to grumble about? o_O

just one of the prominent features is being able to see who's online and talk to your mates across different games.. i changed my account to a b.net account the minute it was available, with all the new stuff on the horizon anyone who likes blizzard games should be only glad to do this, not grumble about it..

EvaUnit02

14 Oct 2009 10:04 pm

eggzs wrote:

I hope to start playing wow soon, does this mean I have to make one more account?

No. It said on the BNet website that you'll be able to use one unified account for WoW and all upcoming/future Blizzard titles too. Support for older games like D2 will highly likely be integrated too, I'd wager.

exis

14 Oct 2009 10:12 pm

eggzs wrote:

I hope to start playing wow soon, does this mean I have to make one more account?

It means you have to make less accounts. You make your Bnet account, add WoW to it, then log in to WoW using that account. Then when Diablo 3 and SC 2 roll around, you add them to that account and log in to those games using that as well. In the long run it's a lot easier.

Slayer

14 Oct 2009 10:12 pm

EvaUnit02 wrote:

Of course you'll always get stubborn, close-minded people who refuse to give things a chance and who'll continue to whine no matter what, with their head buried in the sand.

Orz

15 Oct 2009 2:44 am

Movie about Arthas's shift from human to undead? Couldn't have picked a better topic

iRoN

15 Oct 2009 9:41 am

exis wrote:

It's also a much larger security risk with one login for all games, but yeah. I'm not against the idea, but I hope they've thought about this.

exis

15 Oct 2009 12:03 pm

iRoN wrote:

It's also a much larger security risk with one login for all games, but yeah. I'm not against the idea, but I hope they've thought about this.

A lot of people already use identical logins and passwords across multiple accounts. I'd say those are generally the same people stupid enough to allow keyloggers etc. to get on to their machines and collect data about them. It's really not Blizzards responsibility to protect people from their own ineptitude.

Egor

15 Oct 2009 12:17 pm

exis wrote:

And you could always get one of those Blizzard Authenticator RSA dongle-thingies if you're that worried.

Donutta

15 Oct 2009 1:34 pm

People are moaning about Battle.net? WHY? It takes all of like five minutes at the very most and the only change is that you have to use your email address to sign in rather than a username. You can also change your email address too, which is handy -- and for me, it was a good way to replace the stupid username I must have picked when I was drunk or something.

I honestly cannot see why anyone would whine about this. Don't give me any bollocks about it taking time to sign up, because it takes far longer to piss and moan about it in a forum.

Snippets: WoW forced to Battle.Net, price cuts hurt, Wii gets exercise bike

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