Entire-account features?

I bought the trial disk for Guild Wars about a week ago, and I like it a lot. I shared my game account with my bro (so we each get two characters) and he liked it too, so I got him Prophecies for Christmas. Of course he doesn't have it yet, so I'm trying to do a bit of planning beforehand. I like GW too, so I was hoping a could share an account with him again (I don't want feel like paying another $40 for my own account). The only problem is, I noticed theres a few negatives to sharing an account. For example, if one of your characters joins a guild, all other characters on that account also automatically join. I wasn't too happy about this 'cuz I kinda wanna be my own person, y'know? Are there any other features that go by entire accounts rather than just individual characters?

All the characters on an account share the same storage. There are also titles which are account based but that isn't too bad. Anyway, let me explain the storage. For each game on your account (Eye of the north excluded) you have an extra storage tab added (4 at the most) these tabs can store any items. you pay a one off fee of 50gold (which is nothing really) to open an account, you must pay per character to aces the storage. for an extra tab to store all your materials you must pay another 50gold per character. You may also consider creating characters to store items on if you buy other games as you will get extra character slots. Oh, and by the way, You can only hold 100platinum on a character at a time the bank allows you to hold up to 100000 platinum. If you need any more help then visit http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Main_Page and feel free to add me to your friends list in game (My in game name is Willy Piggy)

On that last note of willypiggy's post, your friends/ignore list will also remain the same.

And you'll appear as the same person on other peoples' friend/ignore lists.

storage allows you to hold up to 1000 platinum, not 100k platinum

I'm thinking about just letting my bro have the whole account and getting Nightfall for myself. For some reason, it really eats away at me when I don't get to be my own person. Congratulations, NCSoft, your little scheme to sell more games is working...

Isnt that how most games are? For example, sure, in a first person shooter, you can change your name but can you really share an account and expect to "be your own person"? You share the same ID so whatever he does will directly affect your gaming experience. If they get banned, ignored, whatever, you get the same treatment.

Ok, so maybe that wasnt the best example, but hopefully you see my point. These features they include arent neccesarily a ploy to get your money, imo its for convenience. The whole account sharing thing isnt endorsed by Arenanet, in fact it is discouraged.

Exactly, it's discouraged. Why? They want each player to buy a copy of Guild Wars. That's more $$$ in their pocket. CHING CHING!

No, they dont want people complaining because they shared their password with someone they thought was trustable. Maybe, you really can trust this particular person, but Support doesnt need to here about how your buddy stole your stuff or deleted it, they have enough stuff to deal with as it is.

Well, that could be easily dealt with; they could require a password or PIN for each character on an account. Trust me, a game publishing company like NCSoft has fanancial issues primarily on their minds when publishing games. If there's a way to sell more copies, they'll use it. ^.^

Wait a sec? Do you mean that a company that provides something that compares very favorably to much more expensive full blown MMORPGs and pays for it entirely through the initial sales of the game actually wants to sell more copies? Geeze, I just thought they ought to give it all away for free.

Here's a clue: if there is more than one person using an account, there is somebody abusing the way they've budgeted the game. What you are asking for is to have multiple accounts for the price of one, full stop. It makes zero sense, not just to NCsoft, but to anybody with a clue. They've made predictions on the amount of time the average gamer will spend on any particular chapter's material and budgeted both content and the price to access that content accordingly. Anything that promotes more than one person accessing the game for the same cost would, by necessity, drive up the cost.

This isn't an offline game where everything resides on your hardware, this is a game where the majority of the work is done on their end by their hardware at their expense. If you want to access their hardware, you need to pay your share of the costs. It's that simple.

Lol, that's exactly what I was trying to avoid. I don't exactly like the idea of paying another $40 for a game my brother already owns, but it looks like I'm gonna have to...>.>

Neal, trust me you will enjoy having your own account. It's more money, but you dont' have to go out and buy 2 copies of everything immediately. Just get 1 campaign for each of you to start with and add on as your budget allows.

Technically, sharing an account is against the EULA and could get the account banned, but since it's your brother you're probably safe. The problems start when your brother invites his friends over while you're at the mall. His friend logs onto the account and basically acts like a total jerk online and manages to get perma-banned. Now your account is gone although you did nothing wrong (other than sharing an account).

Also with 2 accounts, you'll be able to team up with your brother on quests and missions and you'll have a lot more fun that way.

You're thinking of this completely the wrong way.

When you buy Guild Wars, you aren't paying for the actual content, you are paying for access to the Guild Wars servers.

A similar example would be, you paying to see a movie at the the cinema, but because you have your brother with you, expecting that he should be able to get in with your ticket since you are 'sharing' the ticket. But of course, it doesn't work that way.

Watch the problem to pay about 120 euros (or dollars, or pounds or whatever you're using) for all these 4 installations. Really, choose any other hobby (yes, i call this hobby) and it will be more expensive. And do you really wanna share your account with your bro? He have access to all your accounts and money and stuff etc...

So, anyway, without getting side tracked by the whole "OMG ANet wants to make money!" BS:

Sharing an account would really not be a very good idea. Here's some points to ponder (most of which have already been said)

1. One account name and password would access everything on the account. Even though you could have separate characters, there would be nothing stopping either of you from accessing the others characters. I can just imagine the fun and games when your brother gets into a snit and dyes your warriors nice shiny (expensive) black armor, yellow or pink (or whatever).

2. In addition to the above, there's nothing stopping either of you from changing anything on each other's characters. This means that items could be 'borrowed' from each other, for example, and get accidently lost or sold. Or builds could be changed without notice.

3. Since you would share storage, you could spend a great amount of time farming for some crafting material, for example, and then find that your bro used it to craft something for himself. More arguments - more snits. Or, conversely, you would end up with only half the storage space.

4. You would share Friends lists. You would also both be on anyone else's friend list or ignore list. And you couldn't join separate Guilds. And you would 'share' any bans - temporary or permanent.

5. You couldn't play at the same time, even if you had 2 computers. You can only play one character on one account at a time.

6. You would also share access to birthday presents, although they are character based, not account based.

Another thing to consider, btw, (which has also been sort of mentioned) is that, if you have Nightfall and your brother has Prophecies, you won't be able to play together - although that could either be a good thing or a bad thing. If you want to quest together, you should both get the same campaign.

And really, pretty much nothing but EotN cost $40 and even it has been on sale. I've seen deals for Prophecies go for $10 and I've bought Factions for $20. That's two chapters right there for under $40.
It's Christmas time and everyone is having sales. Trust me, a little looking can go a long way.

Hey there and welcome to the Game

Just another few points on buying your own account:

1: If you have two computers (I'm assuming you do as your bro and you both want to play) then this way you can both play and learn together. As this sort of RPG is better to play through with close friends/relatives (rather than PUG's which stands for pick up groups.)

2:What's been said above, about people on friends etc, you don't want to have to ID yourself to your brothers friends everytime you log on do you..

3: As you say you want to be your own man...which is fair enough as that's the way i prefer it personally. And your own account would only help you to acheive this...

Just a few tips expanding on what's already been said.

Enjoy the game =)

If you do buy a copy of the game for yourself, buy the same one your brother has. This way you can do quests/missions together. If he owns Prophecies and you own Nightfall, the only thing you can do together would be PvP.