Will Battle.Net be free or will we start paying for it…

Blizzard executive VP of game design, Rob Pardo, cleared up the comments while speaking with Joystiq

With Battle.net we’re definitely looking at possible different features that we might be able to do for additional money. We’re not talking about Hellgate or anything like that. We’re not going to tack things on. I think World of Warcraft is a great example to look at. We charge people if they want to switch servers or if they want name changes, things that aren’t core to the game experience, they’re really just optional things that some people want. It takes us some development work to do it, so it makes sense to charge for it. We would never do something like say to get the full game experience, you’ll have to pay extra.

Distancing themselves from Hellgate pretty much means it should be free, I think.

Awesome top art found at Blizzard Fan Art; artist: Lee Sin Jae.