Six character slots confirmed

Would you mind posting links to those polls?
17% is very large percent to consider not buying GW:F ofer this issue. Sure, it's not a majority, but is not anywhere near insignifigant.

On the first poll only 5% says no, but 5% is also undecided. Strange that is has such different results...but....

Currently, over in *cough*GWOnline*cough* there's a poll on the issue
43% Happy with two slots
51% Unhappy with two slots
6% Don't care
Now that's not a pretty looking result at all.

be happy to do so back in a minute

remember it is not if you are super happy but if you will buy it

first poll is here on the right side of main page

http://www.guild-hall.net/index.php?...&poll_ident=34

the second is from..GWONLINE

not the ru happy poll but the will you buy poll

http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=387644

i think you can honestly say also that not all of that 17% will stay away from factions. In fact i'll bet (uneducated guess) the majority of them eventually get it. Because it's a poll, the ones that are mad that they cant have what they want are most likely gonna say they wont buy it. They have nothing to loose in saying it. But if the number scares A-net, then they have everything to win from saying it. So, in other words i think it's just people trying be scary.

A lot of the biggest grievers are getting the game.
They're just trying to manipulate ANET into getting more of what they want.
I bet a good deal of them are American (no offense, I'm an American, but just listen). In our news, and just in life, I've noticed so many people UPSET when people give them things, they don't stop to appreciate what they've been given.
For example: I go to a private school. For the past someodd years our bussing (a 45 minute trip one way) has been FREE of charge. This coming year, there's going to be a $400 charge to use the bus. This made so many people raving mad, and I was dumbfounded. I mean, 180-ish school days, 2 trips, 360 total trips, so a little more than a dollar per way. I mean, that's a decent deal for the distance away the trip is. Now, did they ever stop to think that my school DOESN'T have to give bussing, or could charge a lot more? No. People are just ungrateful for what they have.
I say, be happy they had it free for so long.

In this case, I'm not HAPPY it's only 2 slots, but I'm sure as hell not going to rant and rave about being upset. I'm happy they gave us a new game, and more slots at all <3


As for the 4+4 /= 8
You're all twerps who can't figure out the benefit of linking. Go read up on it, and you'll understand.

I'd say that you have about 75% content from each game, with 2 chapters. But, as chapters go on, that % will decrease if you have standalones.
For now 8*.75=6
I see it as a fair trade.
The next chapter will be more like, 67%
So 12*.6667= 9 wheras linked people will have 10.

Seems kind of basic....

unless you are a beta tester breaking the NDA you have no idea of the amount of content they give.

if Cantha is as big as chapter 1 they have doubled the content and if you have access to both you do have twice the content.

as for switching between non linked accounts i do it every few days giving stuff to my other self so dont say it is impossible

First of all I'm not an american.

Second of all I resent being called a name like twerp or somesuch for having a well founded opinion. I never asked them to create this game. They created it in the hopes of making a profit not out of the goodness of their heart. This by using an idea which nobody had tried before, risky but if successfull quite profitable as has been evidenced by their final year numbers.

Not to mention that the point that you are trying to postulate could be also interpreted in the next way: hey let Anet make it a monthly payable game now. But you guys should be happy that you were able to play this long without a monthly fee... which would be utter BS seeing as their businessplan was oriented towards a non monthly fee. On top of that we are reserved the right to complain about items that we don't like and if they don't take note of that we have the right to take our bussiness elsewhere. Just as with your example of the school, people have the right to protest about it. If your school would keep to it, then we would have the right to quit the school and find one nearer to us since in the end an extra expenditure of 400$ hits hard especially if you weren't expecting it. And that is exactly what many of us stated that they would do, seeing that there are many more competetitors on the market in comparison with 1 year ago. At the time of GW's inception there where no single player RPG's with some MP content brought on the market, which has coaxed many of the rpg crowd to GW. But by not satisfying the RPG crowd now chances are higher people will pick up a copy of oblivion/ gothic 3/ nwn2 in stead of factions...

And sorry to burst your bubble, but all the fuzzy math that you postulate means squatt to me. In the end I consider the payment of GW to include access to tyria and access with my already established characters to the expansion chapters once I buy these expansion characters (the continuity is comprised in the chapter build up) even if they call it stand along chapters for marketing affaires. On top of that I expect to receive as many extra char slots as that the stand along option offers since I'm paying the same money for this stand along game which can actually be considered to be an expansion for owners of GW.

But meh, think what you like... i drew my conclusions and will pick up gothic 3 for sure and maybe oblivion, i'm not going to spend money on something which i deem to be unfair treatment of customers and comparably of a lower value. Heck if anet ever goes broke I won't be able to play GW anymore due to lack of servers, but if bethesda or bioware god forbid ever goes broke... guess what I can still play oblivion... or morrowind or even older BG1... which i still play at least once a year.

I don't want to join the debate, nobody would listen anyway. The product doe snot meet my demands, so I will not buy it. Simple as that. Should it meet my demands (which would be one slot per class, by the way, meaning 8 slots for Prophecies and Factions combined) at one point in time, I will buy it.

There is one thing I wanted to point out though: Have you actually realized that ANet has never actually given a reason for taking away two slots from linked acounts? I for one did not find any.

why should they have to in the first place?

they give you a choice

merge and carry over any characters and items you want or start fresh with a clean slate.

you get 6 slots for a merged account

you get 4 slots for stand alone.

you are not having 2 slots taken away you are getting 2 additional new slots to play Factions while new buyers only get 4 slots

6 is 2 more than 4

No one has still answered my question:

Those of you who supposedly love the game so much, that you cannot possibly enjoy the expansion without 8 slots?

That makes no sense.

dem, i only care about inventory and stash size, not character slot.

I think it's logical they give us eight slots, one for each profession.

Right now, I still haven't played Ele nor Necro primary, and either I have to delete one or two of my characters, which is out of the question as I enjoy playing each and every one of them, or I have to buy another copy of Guild Wars. Why should I shell out two copies of GW just to experience 100% of the game? It'll be the same deal when Factions comes out, you can bet Assassin and Ritualist primary will occupy my two new slots, which means I still can't play Ele or Necro. Why should that be? Again, I'll reiterate, deleting characters is not an option, and I don't believe I should have to buy two copies of GW just to fully experience the game.

This 6*100% vs 4*50% is "heads I win, tails you lose" as far as I'm concerned. I ain't biting.

The only thing I don't like about the situation is that you can only have one character online at a time, so it really doesn't matter to Anet if you have 6 chars or 30. The ploy here is that Anet knows that many people, myself included, love to play all the classes. The only way to do that is to limit the slots available so the end user MUST buy multiple games. Which I have done, resentfully. But they knew that many of us would.

With an update(new game platform) like this people like myself will have to buy multiple Faction accounts to be able to play all thier characters throughout both the games.

we love the game but we aren't going to let people take advantage of us repeatedly.

Its the same as you caring for your sister. If she hits you once in the groan... you'll be happy with a plain sorry. If she keeps on hitting you in the groan... a sorry won't cut it anymore even though you care for her as a brother...

If you love your girlfriend so much then she has treated you like a kid
Think it that way and you will get it.
This new GWF is an expansion hmm stand alone hmm combine lose two slots...whatever...ever..

You seem to be assuming that having two few slots wasn't a problem in the past. I know the last few months the lack of slots has become very fustrating. So I can't say I loved the game "so much" in the first place, primarly because of this issue. The fact that there is no plan to fix it in Factions would make me consider not buying Factions, yes.

Part of what has kept me here has been the lack of good looking alternatives. Oblivion, and NWN2 are not too far away, so for Faction's to interest me, It's gotta, well, you know, be something that I want. I want to be able to play the new content without feeling restricted, like I have been for the last eight months in GW. I had bought GW thinking "well, lets see just how annoying the lack of slots is" and well, it's freaking irritating. I don't want to go through the same thing yet again in Factions.

Again, the issue is not really Faction's itself, but the core number of slots. I will not buy another account to fix what I consider to be a flaw in the basic game design. I do not think we should need to buy two accounts to fully experience the game. That being said, I don't think saying 'buy another account' is sound advice. A second account is simply not sufficent (Too many doubling, and seperation issues, see previous posts). To solve the problem, slots need to be added to a players account. I don't care if we have to buy them, or if A.Net gives in and hands them over.

If each class is content (As indicated by A.Net Fuzzy-Math), and the game itself is content, we have now
4*1/6=67% of the content we purchased.
Four out of six. I didn't get the full game, I got a little more than half.

A Faction's only player would have:
4*1/8=50% of the conent they purchased.
Limited acess to content, but more character choices.

Factions+Prophecies, unmerged
4*.5/6+4*.5/8=58% of the content we have purchaced.
This value isn't very clear, since two classes cannot acess tyria regardless. However, I don't feel this value is very important.

If we were to ignore that, and say that we can elimiate the classes on the GW:P account from the list, we get this value for unmerged accounts:
4*.5/6+4*.5/4=83%
Again, a funny number. It's bigger than any other value on the table.

If we merge accounts, we get:
6*1/8=75%
That is, six potential characters, out of eight, times the full content we have purchased.

Or if we want to see how many games we have.
6*2/8=150%
Thats one and a half games, not two, I paid for two didn't I? Where did it go? Where is my missing third from GW:P? "Not funny math"? A.Net, I donno, but I kinda like to think that 1+1=2 but we see here that you think 1+1=1.5

So, We go from 67% to 75%? We go up slightly in total playable content. If we had an inital six slots, owners of GW:P, and merged accounts of GW:P+GW:F would have 100% of the content. Factions players would have a little bit of a problem, I'll admit, because they start with eight classes. I'm not concerend about that, because they would have what GW:P players never had, a good simple solution to their problem.

So we see that the benifit of linking is to get a slightly higher percentage more playable, purchased content. Or not, depending on how you look at it. So yes, there is (Or might be, we'll assume there is for now) a benifit to linking, however, the first sentence here is what causes me pause. The benifit is to get a slightly higher percentage of purchased content. Slightly higher percentage of purchased content? . I'm not sure what other people think, and some may even call me crazy for thinking this, but I'd kinda like to have acess to all of the content I have purchased. One hundred percent. I don't want to buy a game and only get half of it, and when I do, I'd darned well like to be told so, and have some viable way of making it whole.

I thought I mentioned this before, but here goes again. We are paying for GW, sure, it is not a monthly fee, but we are still paying for it. A.Net does not get a get out of jail free card because of this. This does not make them Gods, just because there is no monthly fee dosn't mean they can get away with whatever they like. Yes Lovitar, 4 is more than six. Fantastic, are you saying we're lucky we got slots at all or something? Or are you saying we should be happy with whatever they throw at us?

We will move on and try something else new ..
Dont forget Oblivion will be released on the 20th of this month
NWN2 will be also released sometime around July
Final Fantasy XII will be released in August.
These games are being developed by bigguys and trust me people will leave .
One of these games at least will be AAA and people will just stick with these new games.
Remember this is 2006 not like 2005 when there was'nt enough good RPG .
In the end we win because these NEW games are 100% STAND ALONE new new new fresh fresh fresh.....

OK

I read the fist couple of posts... but once it turned into a Whinge fest i decided not to waste my time with the rest.

So, I apoligise if someone else has mentioned this.

But ....

STOP MOANING !!!

If you link accounts you have only 6 slots ....... instead of 8 unlinked.

This is true

But, Anet has allready said there will be content that spans BOTH continents..... ie, Quests in tyria to relate to cantha and vis a vis.

So if you do not link you miss out on new quests in tyria .... seem like u lot are all just getting upset because you bus isnt free anymore.

You think $50 for an stand alone WHATEVER is free ...LOL

Why indeed? It's not as if I am a potential customer who would like to be informed.
...wait a second... bugger, in fact I am!
Look at it this way. I buy Factions, a game that allows me to choose four characters to explore the world of Cantha. And if I link it with the first chapter, I get 2 characters to explore Cantha. Tell me there's no loss. And I would like to know why I should tolerate this loss.
And to counter your next argument, no, I don't get 6 characters for Cantha. I have already paid for the first four so you can not just add it up.

I don't doubt that. But if I carry my stuff over, then why do I lose two character slots? I can not see any reason behind this. I have said it once and I will say it again: If I am told a reason for that decision that does not equate to "we said so" and is understandable to me, I will gladly shut up. Nobody has managed to do so in 30 pages though. Not one single argument as to why there should be less slots on a merged game.

No, I do not get 6 slots for a merged account. I have already bought 4 slots with the first game, so I get 2. Your logic is so flawed it's not even funny.... if I had 9 different accounts and then bought Factions nobody in their right mind would tell me that buying Factions gets me 10 accounts.
Faction provides the world of Cantha and four character slots to enjoy it. If I link the games, I only get two slots. Two is only one half of four. Therefore linking games only gives me one half the fun.
(For the thickies: This is not what I think, this is simply making fun of the brainless calculation ANet gave us.)

I don't love games, I love my fiancee.
I don't know if I had fun with the expansion if I got x slots. Hey, I don't know if I had devilish fun even if the expansion took 3 of my 4 slots away and installed a rootkit. I don't know and I don't care. I will buy a product that meets my demands or take my business elsewhere. ANet has surely calculated with my unhappiness - "If 17% of the players equal Mosch and stop buying our games, we will still turn a profit". There is no grudge in that and there is no grudge in my leaving. I would have liked to do business with them, but I can't because they do not offer the product I want. They do not offer the product I want because the number of people thinking (and above all acting) like me is insignificant to them.
In closing, and to put all my crap in a nutshell: I like the game and therefore want to have it changed so that I will keep on liking it. This is a simple change that would have no drawback for anyone, is already implemented (you can install Factions as a standalone to get 4 slots) and would be negligible cost-wise (I will just assume this based on my knowledge about IT) and YET they will not give this change to me for reasons that are utterly mysterious. So no deal with me.

your calculations are faulty from my perspective.

Factions is a full complete stand alone game with new territory game mechanics and things to do

think Baldurs Gate 1/2 where you could carry on your character or start fresh

a full new game with 4 slots to play it.

if you merge it you have 6 slots to play the new game and what you do with them is up to you.

you might carry over 4 2 or none of your characters and start fresh.

you can carry over 4 characters that you have lovingly nurtured for hundreds of hours into new adventures without losing a gold piece or item.

you have 2 additional slots to either try out the new professions or fill out the 6 core professions and look over chapter 3 introductions and take the 2 you most want from those to play. (8 slots by then)

if 2 slots is a deal breaker for you so be it and i honestly wish you would come back and let us know if you find the perfect (in your opinion) game

i will get OBLIVION as well as chapter 2 , and i have books on preorder as well (and not game guides)

Katari - excellent points, finally someone else besides myself has posted the actual math of the equation. However, the actual percentage for linked accounts may be lower depending on the amount of content that cannot be accessed from old characters vs. new.

A big example are the tutorial worlds for each chapter. With newly created characters on a linked account, we will be able to only play one of the tutorial worlds, so we're missing out on a whole bunch of quests and content based on what professions we create and which tutorial we have them start in.

Accurax and TSGold, you guys a little off in your figuring. I went through a several post debate a few pages ago with another poster who thinks that Anet is giving us gifts. Let's remember that we are paying for everything we have thus far gotten in GW - it was built into the price of the game. Just because we don't have to pay a monthly fee, does not make any of the updates or added content a "gift" or any other word you want to ascribe to it. All of this content was promised to us as part of the purchase price of the game, therefore we are entitled to it.

What wasn't included with the purchase price were six character slots. Though Anet said that they would consider upping the number of slots in a future update (not a future chapter, but an update), it was not a definate thing to be counted on, and not included with the purchase price. However, that did limit the amount of content from the game we could play. As Katari stated, and I have previously posted in this forum and a few others, we actually only got to play 67% of the game we paid for with Chapter One. If we keep Chapter Two separate, we will only be able to play 50% of the content. If we link Chapters, the max amount of content we can play is 75%, although this figure may actually be smaller, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

All we are asking of Anet is the ability to play 100% of the game that we paid for, and the opportunity to play 100% of Factions and all future chapters by increasing the number of character slots to match the number of primary professions they have created, and will create in the future. There is nothing unreasonable about that, nor are we asking for anything less than we deserve as paying, loyal customers.

Hanok Odbrook
Real Millennium Group Guild
Truth * Knowledge * Peace

I, frankly, cannot think of one. The profits made on each copy sold should easily be able to cover the overhead of storing 4 characters on the servers. Joined accounts should benefit from 4 extra slots and not 2 because financing the required overhead is easily achieved. Moreover, the overhead of storing the bulk of core account info (email, key, password, unlocked features common to both chapters) has already been stored when we bought the first GW chapter. So there's no electronic or financial reason for them to only give us 2.

Also, consider that non-core class PvE characters (Assasins and Ritualists) can only be made *only* as Factions-born characters. We will not be able to make them in Prophecies or any further expansion. This means that, short of paying for new accounts, if we want to enjoy trying PvE with the distinct flavours of a primary Assassin, a secondary one, a primary Ritualist and a secondary one, we'll need to scrap some of our old PvE characters to do so. This cycle will only get worse as we buy and link new expansions with 2 new exclusive classes and only 2 extra slots each.

Finally the restriction to 2 slots will probably guarantee that we will be playing alongside a horde of players with either Assassin or Ritualist as a (most likely primary) class, if not both. This will lead to a serious lack of variety in parties formed, as linkers will not likely be playing the early parts of Factions with fresh, low-level characters that just have core classes. I suppose it's a good thing ritualists can heal, because the much-coveted monk primaries will be all the more scarce. Unfortunately, with the variety of play styles presented by the Ritualist, healing might not appeal to a significant number of players, so accessible health recovery could become a problem. Personally, having played a healer Monk, I'll be making a minion-centric Ritualist/Necromancer with one of my precious slots. No more healing for you! Come back one chapter!

Based on these points, I cannot view the denial of the full 4 slots to players who link both as anything but a slap in the face.

And to the private school bus user, no I am not Amercian, eh - not that there's anything wrong with that.

...

They want money. They're a BUSINESS. That's what they DO.

well I already pointed out my point of view but I am still waiting for some1 of A.net to say something about this.

I am 100% sure they will lose atleast 10% of the customers just because they didn't give enough slots. (Couple of my friends won't buy it because of this)

and make the calculation: 0.1 * 1 million = 100.000 customers they lose just because they only gave us 2 slots.

100.000 * 50 euros = 5 million euros they lose (its an easy calculation i know they have alot more expenses etc... its just to point something out)

I will buy the game, just because I darn love it, but there are alot ppl who won't buy it anymore just because they can't play 100% of the game.

I want to play the game with every character without deleting 1, I already had to delete my ele

and buying another account... wtf ... thats ridiculous, I am in university its not that I am swimming in gold, and I don't got parents who pay everything for me either.

Maybe this is the time to show what you are made of A.net ppl who listen to their customers, or just plain simple ppl like the makers of other games.

Sure, I wanted more, but doesn't everyone?

It's all fine and good to pretend you don't, though. I won't mind.

If you care that much about how many character slots you get, look at it this way:

When we head six classes, we had four slots. That let us cover 67% of the game, if you judge it by class - that is, each pass through the game with a different character counts for as much as your first time. To me, that reasoning is a little questionable - if you don't agree, take a little trip to Beacon's Perch. Playing as a different class certainly adds something, but it doesn't double your game. Would you care to argue that GW:P was four games, since you could play it four times?

When we get Factions, we'll have six slots to pick and choose from eight professions. That's 75% if you keep the same reasoning. And you'd have to be really asinine not to.

I'm no mathologist, but my calculator says that 75% > 67%. I'd call that an improvement, no? People always want more, it's just human nature. But can't we be at least partially satisfied by getting SOMETHING?

i make note of small details here and there and as Alex said certain things are ambigious to keep people guessing.

in a frog/Gaile talk she made a specific statement on joined accounts.

if a warrior can be born either place there was no restriction mentioned on the new professions.

since i dont really want a mesmer i may try an assassin in presear ascalon.

remember the presear animosity is with Kryta not Cantha so just because we havent seen assassins/ritualists yet in presear doesnt mean they wont show up later.

same for Cantha featured asian e/w/r/mo/n/me characters as well

add a few a/rit quests in presear/post sear for a whole new experience

People clearly missed or ignored my posts that attempted to explain things. So here is a summary for all those saying "anet has no reason":

1)Guild Wars is targeted at casual gamers. 100 hours of pve is sufficient for most casual gamers.

2)Anet makes its profit from keeping the game interesting for casual gamers, so anything that gives a huge advantage to the 300+ hour crowd will never be good for guild wars business.

3)Having 8 character slots as the norm is going to give a significant advantage to people with the time to build 8 characters. This is due to several things (space, more weapons access, easier trend conformity...), but it is enough to say if we are arguing this passionately about it, there must be some advantage.

4)Linking will be open to abuse. Abuse kills MMO's.

5)Any abuse proof linking will be of the 100+100=175 form, not 100+100=225. You won't like it if they allow it.

6)Linking abuse will cause headaches for the consumer side of things. Which is more costs for NC.

7)Linking won't necessarily be all positive for Anet. You will get many people buying another copy and many quitting guild wars because they no longer see it as a cheap/casual gaming option.

--I'm not 100% all decisions, but people keep asking for an explanation so I keep typing mine. Guild wars isn't a hardcore MMORPG. It is a fun diversion for hardcore gamers and a solid PvP environment. I for one am here to avoid Evercrack, but there are more PvE friendly games for those wanting greater content and options.

EDIT:
8)Of course this is about making money. Anet wants a bit more from high usage costumer for obvious reasons, so 2 accounts will always be needed for "full" access. Casual players will always have access to PvP relevant content using the alotted number of slots (that is skills and quests).

Couldn't have said it better myself.

If they fully support the Assassin and Ritualist classes in Prophecies and future campaigns, then that'll be fantastic and we can gripe a little less. Unfortunatley most ArenaNet announcements seem to imply against that, what with their declarations that these classes will be exclusive to purchasing Factions, as well as their statements that all 6 core classes will be featured in each new campaign. Supporting all prefessions in all campaigns will require a lot of designer overhead and It'll take a full complement of skill-providing quests to support a new class in equal proportion to the core ones, not just "a few". I'm not saying it's not going to happen, it just that it won't come cheap for ArenaNet developers.

Raven, are you looking for a give away? Freeware is all over the net.

Please do not misunderstand. I do not expect ArenaNet to give us Assassin or Ritualist content in all campaigns. As I said in the above post, it would be a huge, expensive overhead to finance. It would we a cool offset to the lack of slots, that's all.

I go back to my point in my original post that this wouldn't be an issue if a linked account had all 8 slots.

here is the hopeful part.

even though you have to purchase Factions to get access to A/Rit it says that the characters will have full access to both worlds

surely they will have things for your Assasin to do otherwise all they could do is run around.

which goes with the statement that people who own both will be able to choose where the character they create will be born.

i can at least dream cant i

if it comes true i gain and if it doesnt i havent actually lost anything i expected to get

i would be pleased with 4 + 2 = 6 PvE slots (as it in currently) then perhaps a lil icon in the korner thats ONLY FOR PVP CHARATER. which you ONLY get 1.


[edit]
and i am more for more storage space than for more character slots, saying i have two gw's already. but im still contemplating if i should go purchase myself two expansions or just have one account with it. :|

You're trying to tell me the primary goal of any business is denying the customer services he wants? You know, here in Germany businesses often try to adapt to the customers to make them come back, so I am kinda used to that

I agree completely with what you ahve written. Now, however, the thing that bothers me starts:

Yes. I get 2 additional slots by installing a game that offers 4. Not going further into that, just try to understand my POV, please

Planescape: Torment was (to my mind) near perfect. I urge everyone to play this game because I utterly love it to bits. Only thing missing is a Multiplayer. Also Master of Orion 2 had no part that bugged me.

That is no reason. Telling me that playing the game for x hours is nothing at all, not even an excuse...

OK, I can kind of follow you there. But how can it be an advantage to somebody if everybody had 2 more character slots? The playing field is still level, right?

Any character out of Pre can be used as a mule, so your space argument is void. More weapons access? Like, uh, how? Everybody can tachnically find the same weapons. Trend conformity - can't accept that one either. Who cares what I play in PVE and PVP characters can be redone whenever you like because they are ready "out of the box".

I suppose you're talking about linking two Prophecies accounts, not Prophecies and Factions. OK, I agree. It's no reason not to add slots though.

I don't actually get what you're trying to tell me, but after years of study I can confirm that 100+100 equals 200.

OK, no linking. I see your argument.

"I have the option to add another account, I better quit"? I severely doubt that.

I have the feeling that your argument is "The game was not programmed for you".

If that was the reason ANet would probably allow you to add serials to your existing account. Two accounts have severe and obvious drawbacks that have already been explained by FrogDevourer.

...
......

The primary goal of any business is to MAKE MONEY. I totally just said that.

Arenanet is accomplishing this by giving us more character slots, but not -quite- the amount that most people would like to have--thereby creating an incentive for people to buy more accounts. This is a gamble, because Anet is hoping that the majority of people will follow this path--though I'm sure they're well aware that not everyone is going to do so, and not buy Factions at all. Odds are, however, that the majority will indeed follow the former path.

I have two Prophecies accounts. I fully intend on purchasing two copies of Factions to link with each of them, the day the game is released.

Yes, I know. But I still do not like the product they are offering. Also they make it unnecessarily hard to get more character slots.

Well, I'm not going to repeat myself again.

... It's like parts of my posts are invisible recently. What the hell.

Kakumei, we`re trying to say the same thing. If I may be allowed to quote myself:

The problem with people having a problem with this math (which includes Anet's fuzzy reasoning) is that it appears opponents to it count content as the explorable area of the game only. When I use the above math, my definition of content includes:
1) Explorable areas
2) Quests & Missions
3) Usable items (armor and weapons)
4) Character Stats & Skills
5) Game Play Strategy

The only thing that we get 100% of with four slots is the explorable area. Everything else has primary profession limits, therefore limiting the number of primary professions we can play (unless we delete the precious time we spent on previous professions), does not equate to 100% of the content being playable. None of my characters from Chapter One will be able to explore the tutorial world in Chap Two - a whole bunch of content I am missing, and will only have two chances to play with the two new slots. Using those two slots for Factions characters will not allow those characters to explore the tutorial of Chap One. So either way, there is even more content being missed, which in effect lowers that 75% for linked accounts back down to 67%, if not lower.

I've said before, I don't begrudge Anet their money, and in the short term, the business model makes sense if you break down the cost of an account into a montly cycle, we are saving money, even with two accounts. but referring to one of my earlier posts in this thread, Anet will now have to raise the standards bar with every chapter they release because consumer expectations with be higher with each chapter. If they want to continue to succeed in this market, they will at some point, have to give us enough character slots to match the number of primary professions.

Hanok Odbrook
Real Millennium Group Guild
Truth * Knowledge * Peace

actually what they are doing and have been doing is more sharpely define their product as they go along.

examples

the hardcore pvp person unwilling to do more than make a few click character adjustments was shaken out by Anets refusal to cave in on the UAS/ALL issue

the hardcore leveling people who actually define themselves by having a higher level number to SHOW people (like a rank emote) how much superior they are were shaken out by Anets refusal to budge on the level cap

the hardcore item people who live for the next super stat item that will one hit kill anything were shaken out by Anet refusing to put the balance destroying stat items in the game

the hardcore crafting/fishing people left when they decided smith/logger/basketweaver/etc were not going to be added

now some more (not many) hardcore i must have one of each or i leave shaking out is happening.

this is more for someone to play for a bit, do something else (i have some good books on preorder), and return as they feel like it.

and unless they are lying the number of active accounts is going up not down and the various tracking services show continued good sales.

i guess it will actually have to wait for sales results to be in for a bit to see if they are right or wrong as my chrystal ball is foggy