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::"When a player buys the StarCraft II box at retail, they will have the ability to play on the new Battle.net for free."
::--Kevyn "Karune" Yu, Starcraft 2 community manager [http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/comments/no-monthly-payments-for-starcraft-ii/]
Though "free" is a good thing in the opinion of most fans, it's clear from how carefully-worded all these statements have been that Blizzard is considering ways to monetize Battle.net. [http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/08/blizzard-co-interview/]
::[[Paul Sams]]: What we’re saying is, if you buy a copy of StarCraft II, you will be in a position to play the game on Battle.net with no additional cost. That’s not to say there are no other things there. But, you’ll be able to play and have a great experience. But they’ll be a lot of different elements; we’re going to be pulling a lot of social networking into the Battle.net experience, and they’ll be a much more significant focus on e-sports, and so the competitive elements of that gaming experience with ladders and rankings and tournaments and everything you could imagine and more.
::We’re going to integrate the games that we have into that Battle.net experience so that it feels like a much bigger and more meaningful community made up of all these Blizzard gamers. When I think of StarCraft II, and if there are other things we’re going to do from a monetization perspective, it’s certainly possible. But again, if you buy the game, you can play on Battle.net with no additional cost.
On top of the monthly subscription fee, [[World of Warcraft]] has added various additional revenue streams through allowing players to pay to move their characters between realms or switch their alliance. It's expected that we'll see similar options with Diablo 3; players may be able to pay to move characters between servers, pay for larger stash sizes or to create more characters on a given account.
