World of Warcraft®

If you're like me and would like to have the Launcher open without being logging into Bnet, this will interest you. It's not very obvious.

First, log out of Bnet from the Launcher if you have it open. For some reason this closes the whole Launcher, which made me think I couldn't be off-line and have it open.

Re-open the Launcher. There's an Gear/Icon setting to the right above the user name box. Clicking it will provide a drop down menu and the option "Go Offline."

The Launcher will open, but you won't be connected to Bnet and won't be able to see any friends online.

You will be connected to Bnet once you log into a game, but no more of the "also playing" attached to your name. I'm still not sure how this affects notifications and whatnot.

It does have the side effect of having to go back to using the log-in screen when you launch WoW instead of being instantly taken to character selection, which for me was the main benefit of having the launcher open besides loading updates.

I hope this helps folks!

That's useful info but I'm avoiding the Bnet app until Blizz forcefully shoves it down my throat when WoD comes out :-P

On a side note but I also heard there was a way to have Bnet close after launching a game too. I'm not sure how it is done but that would be useful for anyone who does not want any extraneous programs running in the background while they are playing WoW.