Mandatory Battle.net on 11/11/09 (with Penguins)

MMO Champion has discovered Blizzard is going to require everyone playing WOW to set up a Battle.net account by November 11, 2009.  Blizzard will send all those who have an account set up by then a penguin pet via the in-game mail.  whoopee

Here is what WOW Head says about the switch.
http://www.wowhead.com/?blog=125397

I strongly advise anyone making the switch to set up a dummy email account to use as your login user name for Battle.net.  It might be a hassle but your real email will be more secure.  Anyone hacking Blizzard's Battle.net will have all the email address logins to play with, you know.  You might be interested in reading WOW Head's take on Blizzard security.
http://www.wowhead.com/?blog=101004

UPDATE:  Tobold explains better than I did the issues you face with security if you use a real email address as your user name/login for Battle.net.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/10/blizzard-sabotages-wow-account-security.html

UPDATE #2:  Here is what WOW Insider says about Battle.net which it doesn't think is a security issue.  I'm old and cynical and I don't agree, but that doesn't mean I am right.  (Just really cute.)
http://www.wow.com/2009/10/15/the-pros-and-cons-of-battle-net/

UPDATE #3:  Cold Comfort analyses the criticisms of the switch and gives good account security information.  It looks as if he is going to discuss how this impacts guilds from a GM perspection in Part 2.  I'll update this when the second entry is available.
http://blog.cold-comfort.org/battlenet-nerdrage-one/

Here's the update from Cold Comfort.  It discusses responding to "nerd rage" comments on forums in general and the Battle.net controversy in particular.
http://blog.cold-comfort.org/nerdrage-deal/

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