Blizzard Digital Download

The Game Room
1

Hello this news is a few days old but I thought I’d post it to see if anyone was interested.

Blizzard has launched a digital download store Blizzard Login which you can buy and download games from. But the great thing about it is you can register your old games with your CD keys and download them on any computer and play with no CD. I’ve already tried it with Starcraft and it worked like a charm (also if you register a Starcraft key I hear it assumes you have Brood War as well so you get that for free I can’t confirm because my CD was the anthology but others have reported it works with any Starcraft key) I know it’s unlikely anyone is still playing this game but as a test it worked great. Brood War and Starcraft no longer require disk swapping in order to play one or the other and needless to say it doesn’t try to access the CD all the time as Starcraft used to due to copy protection and the fact the music files were on the CD. I was satisfied with my experience and I went ahead and registered my other Blizzard games Diablo II, Lord of Destruction, Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne.

A few things to note:

  1. Diablo II isn’t ready for download yet for some reason you can still register but no Digital Download for you.

  2. When you’re installing the game it asks for your 26 digit CD key but that apparently means the one that was generated when you registered the game online and can be found in your profile NOT necessarily the one on your CD case.

  3. First time I tried to download I got horrible speeds (26K) I stopped it and tried it later and it worked fine (300k). I don’t know if there was an issue or what but I thought if other people have that problem to tell them not to be discouraged.

  4. Registering is pretty straightforward no Credit card or anything but your CD keys and an email address is needed.

2

Looks good, kind of steam-esque. Now I just need to find all my originals lying around somewhere. I was able to add Lord of Destruction without adding the original DII, I wonder if it still allows you to dl the whole game when the time comes. Thanks for the heads up.

3

I am tempted to download and pay for the full WoW but I don’t have a lot of time to play. So WoW fans if I have 2-3 hours a week to play it does it make it worth paying the monthly fee?

4

Yes, you can have fun if you only play for a little while–though it will be harder as you get higher level and it takes longer to level up.

The hard part will be keeping yourself from playing longer. :slight_smile: It’s a very addictive game.

If you’re not sure, try the free trial (I think it’s either 15 or 30 days) or get yourself a 30-day game card.

5

Fifteen bucks for 8-12 hours of entertainment seems like a pretty good deal, you pay almost as much for a movie and thats only 2 hours or so.

6

Well currently I play America’s Army, Battlefield 2142, Age Of Empires III in those hours :slight_smile: But I did like playing Warcraft III so I have some interest in the game, and the WoW does look interesting. Anyway I’m probably going to pick it up tomorrow after work, but should I get WoW original or both it and the expansion?

7

The expansion adds two new races and levels 61-70, unless you are really set on playing one of the new races there is no reason to pick up the expansion unless you are already max level. I’d wait until you were sure you liked it enough to stick around for a while.

8

After hating it at first (I bought HL2 on DVD and took it home only to realize the damn DVD only contained the Steam installer and the product key!), I now heart Steam, so I’m totally signing up for this as soon as I get home.