The kick line was apparently delivered from a speech file from TeamLiquid, which said the following:
Quote fromwhat I will say is that a player who goes to retail and buys the Starcraft 2 box at retail will have the full Starcraft 2 game included in the box and they will have the ability to play on battlenet with no additional fee.
It shouldn't be much of a stretch to say this same feature extends to Diablo III, as both Starcraft II and Diablo III will be running on the same Battle.net. Also, as noted by many over the years, Battle.net has always been and still is a free gift from Blizzard.
However, it may still be possible that complimentary features, like name changes, may still be royalty services that require a little moola. That might be a small price to pay for the ultimate ARPG gaming experience available for free play.
This was actually tipped-off to me on June 1 I believe, but I neglected to post it until now. Sorry about that. All the credit goes to Svetopolk who found it first. The first thread on this article can be found here. Pop him some rep points if any of you get the chance, he deserves for finding this for our community as well as dealing with bothersome staff members, like myself.
Could this be a definitive declaration that Battle.net will be free for Diablo III as well? Would players be willing to pay for extended services if they are implemented? Does this increase the appeal of buying and playing Diablo III on Battle.net for fans?
An imbalance is inevitable with the invention of ebay and all. I'm on the non-paying player side and of course don't like this, but what can we do?
It's something that has been posted on DFans at one point or another anyway - I get all my news here. So you should know.
EDIT: Feast your eyes:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/13/blizzcon-2008-rob-pardo-talks-battle-net-monetizing/
The original full interview (which I can't find now) is from October '08. Thanks to the idiot who gave me negative rep because of "bluffing". Maybe you will learn to check on news in the future before mod-trolling people who know more than you do.
ive been looking forward to it lol ive bought tons of copies of DII:LoD battlechest
at my local wally world but i think P2P is going to far
i mean im only 15 and if DIII is p2p that means i have to get a job