Merging Battle.net Accounts

[Shaso]

So my wife and I have been together now for 2 years and we're thinking about taking the next big step...

Merging our battle.net accounts!

The main goal originally was because she is a hardcore mount collector and I have 5 that she doesn't and this would push her up to the count required for the final mount achievement and I mentioned that she would also inherit all of my pets.

Then I got to wondering...

What does happen to pets when you merge accounts? I assume it would force the pet limit on the new, merged account, effectively halving the capacity for pets you used to have. Would we just get them all lumped together in a super-sized list and couldn't add anymore until we deleted enough to have capacity again? Would some of them simply disappear/get deleted?

This is kind of worrisome. I'm just looking for a little input from any pet collectors who have merged accounts and have any experience with this sort of thing. Maybe the pros and cons of such a situation.

[Peanutty]

AFAIK they don't actually merge like how you're thinking - one account's collection would override the other.

[Lordblacknail]

Im not sure you can still do this, but if you can, the main thing that will interest you is that the first person who logs in will be able to battle pets, and the other one won't. Other than that, no problems.

[Auryona]

I don't know if Blizzard will do BNet account merges - normally they'll do game license transfers in a limited number of cases, which is to say they'll move just the WoW data from one account to the other. So one BNet account will have 2 WoW licenses attached to it, and the other will have 0.

Not sure if this is still true, but way back when it was as Peanutty says: the account being moved loses everything, since pets, mounts, etc. are attached to the account and not the license. So if your wife moves her WoW license to your BNet account, all her pets will be wiped (would recommend caging anything cageable and trading it off beforehand). However, she will then have access to all the mounts and pets you have on your BNet account.

If you both like pet battling, I'd recommend not merging because only the first account to log on can pet battle, change team slots, or remove* pets and the pet battle dailies are BNet account-wide. So for example, if you do the Kura/Erris daily or the Pet Battle Event weekly for PvP wins on your license , then your wife can't do them on her license because you're both under the same account.

*By this I mean only the first account to log on can cage or release pets in the Pet Journal. Both accounts can still learn pets and add pets to the Journal regardless of who logs on first.

Edit: Modifying for clarity regarding accounts/licenses.

[Madja]

I'm not really sure about the mechanics regarding merges, but have you checked the EULA for info about sharing accounts? As far as I'm aware you're only allowed to share an account with a minor who you're the guardian of. It might be that they can be shared in a household, just make sure that's the case. Wouldn't want you to get banned

[Beastlyserenity]

I would not recommend merging accounts.

No matter how close you two are, sometimes having your own space to log on your character without any restrictions is worth it, and will be worth the extra $14 a month (really not much).

[Mykro9]

Okay, I have 'some' experience with merging accounts, albeit it was mostly before all the account wide stuff happened when I did most of it. To the best of what I recall, account 1 that had say one character with a red whelpling and account 2 that had the Cenarian hatchling, they both got them, but my accounts were already merged. As far as multiple cageable pets, for instance, I had the leaping raptor hatchling on several toons, so I either had to cage them from the journal, or they appeared as caged pets in my inventory or mail, I forget which.

The OTHER more important thing is being able to merge at all. Blizzard is pretty clear about what accounts can merge, generally. For instance, I had a second account, under a different email address, but the same name, and after providing security information to prove that I was indeed the owner of both accounts, they merged them. Being married should be an exception, but I would assume you would have to provide some proof, and it would definitely require that you both be present during a live chat with a Blizzard rep.
As far as unique mounts/pets per your individual accounts, I would make sure it was clear from a rep whether one account overrides the other, or if account 1's ABC mounts, and account 2's XYZ pets will then be shared between the merged bnet account, after he fact.

I will echo what others have said. Any account daily, like any pet tamers, blingtron and such will be a once a day for the ENTIRE bnet account, so now each of you can loot bling, merged you get one. Period. Pet tamers, Including the Celestial Tournament weekly, is once for the entire bnet account. The Tanaan pets are not, as are the menagerie dailies from the female troll (horde). But the female Tauren is once per bnet per day, and the weekly for the 10 stones is also once per bnet.

As far as control of the actual pets for battling, the first account logged in at one time gets control. So if you log on at 12:05, and your wife logs in at 12:06, you can battle the tamers, and wild pets, but your wife would be locked, and the bottom right section in the pet journal that has the selected pets for battle will be greyed with locks over them. In order for your wife to access the ability to battle you would have to log out to character selection, and her log out to character selection, then she would have to be the first to log back in. I run two accounts on one PC, and if WoW1 is doing the menagerie daily and I want to do it on WoW2 for the day, I logout on WoW2 usually first, and WoW1 second, and as soon as WoW1 is at character selection, I log into the realm on WoW2, and the pet battling ability is unlocked. I actually time it if I am not in a rested zone, say out by a world tamer, and after sitting down with the logout countdown going, I can start to log in from character selection with about 5 seconds left before the first character is even logged out, and before the time the second account enters the game, and the server recognizes the switch, and switches pet battle access.

[Mykro9]

I would not recommend merging accounts.

No matter how close you two are, sometimes having your own space to log on your character without any restrictions is worth it, and will be worth the extra $14 a month (really not much).

Each separate account on one bnet STILL costs $15 a month. So, it still costs me $30 to run 2 accounts. The biggest quirk, is the accountwide stuff, which isn't consistent. Like, blingtron is once per bnet, even though I pay the same as 2 separate accounts. The Blizzard logic on that one is flawed. I get not allowing every toon to do blingtron, but not every account. I don't even really understand the once per account for blingtron, really. It isn't like you can somehow exploit it. The very most you can get from it is a mount or pet, and it isn't like it spits out a pet every time. For instance, you can run 20 lvl 100's through each day for better chances at the holiday mounts, but not blingtron. Same with the pet tamers. Tanaan is done right, each toon on each account can battle each pet once a day, so you could get pets through shear numbers of attempts. The female Tauren should be the same. An abysmal drop rate AND only one chance per day is awful, and not even every day, unless you realm hop via group finder.

[Ranok]

Working two separate accounts under a single Battle.net logon comes with one of those minor annoyances that can be maddening at times.

Scenario, Husband & Wife: Wife logs onto Battle.net then Husband logs on. Wife now gets informed that "Your Battle.net account has logged in somewhere else" and has to click Reconnect and re-enter password. If she does this before Husband has continued on and clicked PLAY, Husband now has to Reconnect. Hopefully not before Wife has gone on into game.

One more example of why marriage partners need to communicate with one another.

[Mykro9]

Working two separate accounts under a single Battle.net logon comes with one of those minor annoyances that can be maddening at times.

Scenario, Husband & Wife: Wife logs onto Battle.net then Husband logs on. Wife now gets informed that "Your Battle.net account has logged in somewhere else" and has to click Reconnect and re-enter password. If she does this before Husband has continued on and clicked PLAY, Husband now has to Reconnect. Hopefully not before Wife has gone on into game.

One more example of why marriage partners need to communicate with one another.

I think this can be remedied in an account setting. I play 2 accounts on the same PC, mind you, but I never get any error messages when I log on both at the same time. There should be a setting that allows you to set trusted PC's to your account so your scenario never happens again.

[Ranok]

I think this can be remedied in an account setting. I play 2 accounts on the same PC, mind you, but I never get any error messages when I log on both at the same time. There should be a setting that allows you to set trusted PC's to your account so your scenario never happens again.

Darn. Thought you'd shown me a way to fix the Reconnect thing that's been annoying me since the Battle.net logon was invented. But the Game Settings option Allow multiple instances of Battle.net apparently just applies to double-boxing on one machine. When using two accounts on two different PCs, still have the same problem.

[Ishildur]

Working two separate accounts under a single Battle.net logon comes with one of those minor annoyances that can be maddening at times.

Scenario, Husband & Wife: Wife logs onto Battle.net then Husband logs on. Wife now gets informed that "Your Battle.net account has logged in somewhere else" and has to click Reconnect and re-enter password. If she does this before Husband has continued on and clicked PLAY, Husband now has to Reconnect. Hopefully not before Wife has gone on into game.

One more example of why marriage partners need to communicate with one another.

This won't help with games that require being launched through the launcher such as D3 or HotS, but you can still log in without using the bnet app by just making a shortcut to wow.exe. It's the only way I was able to get in to play when near the release of WoD there were issues with battlenet going down and the launcher not working due to that while the wow servers were just fine.

Now if you have an authenticator attached then you do need to authenticate every now and then (I think it's every week based on how often my second machine gets asked for authentication code) logging in that way, but it's a bit less of a hassle than constantly bouncing the bnet login between computers. You do need the app to keep the game updated though so every time there's a patch whichever computer isn't the one logged in needs to go online to get the patch. I know this since I have a second machine I sometimes use to port myself around or post auctions while I raid.

[Auryona]

I'm not really sure about the mechanics regarding merges, but have you checked the EULA for info about sharing accounts? As far as I'm aware you're only allowed to share an account with a minor who you're the guardian of. It might be that they can be shared in a household, just make sure that's the case. Wouldn't want you to get banned

This is true! EULA says that you can only account share if you are a guardian of a minor:

"You may not share your account or password with anyone, except if you are a parent or guardian, in which case you may permit one minor child to use your account. You may not use your account at the same time, and you are liable for activies conducted by the minor child."

In addition, another con that hasn't been mentioned yet - if both accounts are under the same BNet, whispers from BNet friends go to all accounts that are online. So all accounts get to see all BNet conversations, which may or may not be a problem. If a friend wants to whisper just you, that friend will need to whisper the specific character you're playing.

I think this can be remedied in an account setting. I play 2 accounts on the same PC, mind you, but I never get any error messages when I log on both at the same time. There should be a setting that allows you to set trusted PC's to your account so your scenario never happens again.

Darn. Thought you'd shown me a way to fix the Reconnect thing that's been annoying me since the Battle.net logon was invented. But the Game Settings option Allow multiple instances of Battle.net apparently just applies to double-boxing on one machine. When using two accounts on two different PCs, still have the same problem.

I usually just open the launcher in offline mode on one box if I'm running two boxes. So like, when you first click the launcher there is a little cogwheel in the upper right. If you select "Go Offline" then it opens the launcher where you're not logged in to BNet but can still launch your games that require the launcher. You can always just log on after (by clicking "Go Online" on the top of the launcher). Note you'll still need to enter your account credentials after you've launched the game, but doing so will not log you into BNet and boot your other account off BNet.

[Madja]

In addition, another con that hasn't been mentioned yet - if both accounts are under the same BNet, whispers from BNet friends go to all accounts that are online. So all accounts get to see all BNet conversations, which may or may not be a problem. If a friend wants to whisper just you, that friend will need to whisper the specific character you're playing.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about that! But as I remember it, only one character will get the tell. I used to 5-box a lot back in the day, and I would often get tells that I didn't notice because they would go to one of my follower characters instead - which I wasn't paying much attention to.

[Mehetabel]

I just wanted to add my 2 cents and say that playing on a shared BattleNet account is a NIGHTMARE! Really, if you don't have to do it, don't do it! My daughter and I share a Battlenet account as she was a minor when she started playing and it's a real pain. Now she's old enough it's really tempting to split our accounts . . . except that she won't let me as she doesn't want to loose all the pets and mounts that we have due to my collecting "addiction"

In addition, another con that hasn't been mentioned yet - if both accounts are under the same BNet, whispers from BNet friends go to all accounts that are online. So all accounts get to see all BNet conversations, which may or may not be a problem. If a friend wants to whisper just you, that friend will need to whisper the specific character you're playing.

I actually don't have many friends on my Real ID (even though I'd like to) because of this. They try to whisper me and it goes to my daughters char. They try again and it comes through to my char and so on and so on. The people I do have on Real ID are on there because they mostly play other servers or faction so the whispering a specific char doesn't work.

Scenario, Husband & Wife: Wife logs onto Battle.net then Husband logs on. Wife now gets informed that "Your Battle.net account has logged in somewhere else" and has to click Reconnect and re-enter password. If she does this before Husband has continued on and clicked PLAY, Husband now has to Reconnect. Hopefully not before Wife has gone on into game.

Also annoying!

I will echo what others have said. Any account daily, like any pet tamers, blingtron and such will be a once a day for the ENTIRE bnet account, so now each of you can loot bling, merged you get one. Period. Pet tamers, Including the Celestial Tournament weekly, is once for the entire bnet account. The Tanaan pets are not, as are the menagerie dailies from the female troll (horde). But the female Tauren is once per bnet per day, and the weekly for the 10 stones is also once per bnet.

As far as control of the actual pets for battling, the first account logged in at one time gets control. So if you log on at 12:05, and your wife logs in at 12:06, you can battle the tamers, and wild pets, but your wife would be locked, and the bottom right section in the pet journal that has the selected pets for battle will be greyed with locks over them. In order for your wife to access the ability to battle you would have to log out to character selection, and her log out to character selection, then she would have to be the first to log back in.

For us, the dailies weren't "too" much of an issue as my daughter doesn't often do those but there has been times when I've had to skip them so she can do them. The pet battle thing is much much more frustrating, especially as in our case, we both like to pet battle.

[FuxieDK]

Besides all the hinges, people have mentioned, consider this: Your matriage might be joy today, but ypunhave no idea, whet tomorrow or next year brings..

Even if you managed to get 2x battle.net account joined, I can guarantie you, that Blizzard will NEVER perform a devorce on an account...