So It’s 8:30am in New York, and I am checking the World of Warcraft forums to post about an article, when a Maintenance page hits me on the noggin’. The curious me wanted to see if the same would happen on the Starcraft II forum at Battle.net, and it was down too. Not long ago, on November 11th all World of Warcraft accounts had to merge with a Battle.net account in order to continue having access to the MMO, so it’s logical for both forums to be down nowadays.


Screens from the WoW forums and Battle.net respectively.

So what did we report before November 11? That this step of forcefully merging WoW Accounts with Battle.net accounts was a milestone toward integrating World of Warcraft with Starcraft II over the Battle.net 2.0 interface. This could allow at some point in the future to integrate both games’ friends list — as you can see in two of the Battle.net 2.0 interface screenshots provided in that link.


One example of how the site has been looking.

I will go “Barbarian-mode” and make a long leap, and you can interpret this as a big stretch. I will call it theorycraft. We know there is going to be a World of Warcraft minor patch, which at the moment is undated.

We also know that the World of Warcraft PvP Season 8 has oddly been delayed, and presumably will kick off with the undated minor patch.

We know of a rumor and yet another rumor about the significance of January 26-28 — which by the way is not the start of Starcraft II beta, just another, let’s say: internal milestone toward that.

We also know the fourth quarter 2009 earnings conference call is on February 10 with Bob Kotick and Mike Morhaime — of which, let’s face it, we have no clue if it’s related to any Starcraft II beta announcements, but we are propelled forward on the assumption that he will. [Just because I am cocky and say so; and because I always follow what my guts tell me, even if I turn out to be wrong].


Another error message. Something is obviously going on.

We watched yesterday the Jace Hall Third Season trailer and jaw-dropped to see the Starcraft II team and Jace Hall toasting to the Welcome to Starcraft II Beta screen in the background at minute 2:16.

So let’s cook this big stretch and see what’s inside this pot of paella.

The WoW and Battle.net forums undergoing maintenance on a Wednesday is not very common. Could the web department be creating and testing internally the Starcraft II beta forums?

Flashback yourself to the moment Burning Crusade beta forums started. When the Warcraft III beta forums started. Wasn’t there a similar odd downtime on the forums during the eye of the storm?

Since none of the very verbose clandestine sites out there have found anything relevant in the WoW MPQs, we have to assume that if Starcraft II beta is somewhere in the close future, kinda Tzzz iron-hot close future, shouldn’t therefore be a parallel World of Warcraft minor patch to introduce the full integration of the new World of Warcraft friends list with the Starcraft II / Battle.net 2.0 Friends List?

Wait, Season 8 was meant to start a week after Season 7 ended. Ain’t there a pending Season 8 minor patch that was unexpectedly put into a hiatus?

My crystal ball might be full of smoke, and some other [beep], but hopefully it entertains your neurons.