Character Slots/Merging Accounts

I have seen many things while playing Guild Wars that hints twards the stupidity of those working at ArenaNet and NCSoft, but I play it because over all it is a good game.

Please note that the following are my opinion, and I fully understand that I may be incorrect on some or all of it, however, I have seen nothing to disprove any of this, and I have searched.

From personal experiance, as well as that of many others (friends and those read on forums) the Guild Wars support is, put simply, crap. They use only automated responces for reports, many reports require you to send in multiple emails before anything is done, and I have almost never been told that something acualy was done. They frequently ban accounts of legit players for "contributing to ebayers" or something along those lines, with no apeal proccess.

The vast majority of their skill "balance" updates do little more than nerf one slightly overpowered build into oblivion, often destroying skills that, other than that single build, where fine, and bring into play previously worthless builds that take its place. There is no balancing involved - simply "nerf this so its unplayable, and make this one overpowered so people acualy use it for a little while".

In their supposed attemts to nullify bots, and those that sell gold on ebay, they destroy, once again, otherwise fine builds, as well as make money more difficult to come buy, increasing inflation of the game economy.

In attempts to bring high end items to general users, they implemented things such as the green items, which simply created more farm spots and another way to destroy the game economy, as high end perfect items could be obtained from collectors in the desert and southern shiverpeaks, as well as crafters in Droknars Forge. Granted, the upgrades could not be obtained in this manner, however the fact that their is not an item upgrade trader to moderate the market, further inflation is occuring with these items.

Although the merging of Prophecies and Factions accounts was well thought out, and over all, well implemented, they did an increadably bad job at balancing Prophecies Only accounts against Factions Only accounts. For reasons I will not go into here, other than to say the options available, Factions Only accounts hold an extream advantage over Prophecies Only accounts in PvP play, as well as general PvE game content.



However, this last thing they did went far beyond mere stupidity.

My reasoning of why:

When Guild Wars was released, there where four character slots available per account. At this time, and until recently, I never saw anyone complaining about this. Those of us that wanted more character slots purchased a second account.
Then, the merging information for Prophecies and Factions was released. All of a sudden people hated the idea of not having enough character slots on a single account for all the primary character profesions. Someone during this time brings up the idea of allowing players to purchase character slots. This item was supported by a great many people who simply did not want to purchase another copy of the game, and instead decided to b**ch about it on forums.
ArenaNet or NCSoft, whichever one makes such decesions, decided to go with the idea, but are allowing no merging of existing accounts. Now, this would have been a good thing if it was implemented at the release of the original Prophecies campain, but implemented now, it nets the following results:

1) Loyal customers who, instead of griefing further supported the company by purchasing an additional account for extra character slots are now being punished for doing so.
2) The griefers are now being awarded for their complaining instead of supporting a good game and its creators.

Now, their are several things to consider if merging accounts is to be allowed in the near future.

1) Their must be a set time limit on when you can merge your accounts buy, or a set date that your accounts to be merged must have been created by. This is to prevent people from, in the near future, purchasing low cost copies of Prophecies as a cheaper alternative to purchasing extra character slots.
2) Their are different types of accounts available, and as such, should have different effects from merging

2 Prophecies Regular accounts should be merged for 8 character slots with features available normaly to Prophecies Regular accounts

1 Prophecies Regular + 1 Prophecies Collectors accounts should be merged for 8 character slots with features available normaly to Prophecies Collectors accounts

2 Prophecies Collectors accounts should be merged for 10-12 character slots with features available normaly to Prophecies Collectors accounts.

The reasoning for the slot alocation for merging accounts comes from the aproximate value of each type of account, and how it fits with the current pricing for additional character slots ($40-50 for Prophecies Regular, $60-80 for Prophecies Collectors, depending on the date and location of purchase)


If something is not implemented for merging accounts, the option for purchasing additional character slots should be cancled/removed.


Please do NOT post criticism or flaming here - suggestions for this problem are welcome, as well as any signiture for solving it.

I, for one, will NOT be purchasing any further products or features from NCSoft or ArenaNet until something is implemented to solve this obvious flaw of their logic, and would recomend everyone who understands the situation and/or is affected by this desision to do the same.

Prehaps you should consider the Technical aspects of what your asking


its not a case of just glueing one account to the other, im sure it would take a significant amount of work, and with the current system , it may not even be possible without a rehaul (as seen by the fact you must add a key to an old account, not make a new one)


I have two accounts, and now to keep both of them fully able i must buy two copys of every expansion, i gambled with the possiblity of buying more slots, now i must bite the bullet, didums

"Please do NOT post criticism or flaming here - suggestions for this problem are welcome, as well as any signiture for solving it."

This is a public forum, not a mailing list

Alright... it was well thought out, but I completely disagree.

In my opinion AreaNet is very involved with the game and actually listens to many players' suggestions (they read this forum and forums similar to these often) and does their best to please the community. But as we all know, you can please everybody some of the time, and some people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Most of the nerfs taken place took place because players wouldn't stop crying for them. Don't blame AreaNet for that.

And as far as I know, AreaNet does offer ways of appealing your account, I know several people that have been banned and got their account back after talking to them.

That's not inflation. Inflation is when there is more money floating around in the economy and the value of money drops. That's deflation, when the value of money increases. Basically if you have a lot of money stored away, deflation is good and if you don't then it doesn't really do anything to you. Well, unless you owe someone money, then deflation hurts you.

I don't believe that is cheaper... Prophecies is 50$ (4 slots) and a new slot will be 6$ (6x4=24) so you'd save 26$ by buying the slots. Which is enough for another four.

The main problem with that is that if you wanted to PvE and PvP you're screwed with two accounts because they don't share the unlocks. That's the main reason I never considered buying a second account.

Since when is making a suggestion "griefing"? You yourself are making a suggestion right now, though I must admit a lot of it seems to be complaining. Hypocrite?

Anyways, adding character slots would help players whether or not they could merge accounts, I don't see why you're so upset by this. Yes it makes you feel like you wasted money before, but would you rather not have it?

To the OP, have you ever considered the security ramifications of merging accounts? Without the proper preparations, we'll have every hacked account no longer existing, because it was merged with either another hacked account or with the hacker's own account. To be honest, I'm not ANet and don't know how their technology works, so for all I know it could literally be impossible to protect against that kind of garbage.

So what then? Unmerge accounts? How many times can we merge and unmerge before this whole thing is absolutely ludicrous?

On the contrary, it's actually fairly simple to set the difficulty arbitrarily high for hackers to play havoc with merges: ask for email confirmation from both account email addresses.

I blame the system they are using. EVE Online had the exact same support system in use, and you never got real support on the first reply email, but one of the closest answers to your question. EVE on the other hand, had just super community<->developers link that I haven't seen anywhere, and it was on monthly pay so I suppose they had more incentive to help..

I always wanted more slots after I filled my account. Never concidered second account tho due to the skill/item locks being account only.

Why is Collectors edition worth more in slots? Collectors edition has more stuff as is, loaded with some extra junk on the box and some bonus ingame items which "balances" the higher pricetag. What would be the sense in buying a Regular kit, when you get less slots than Collectors, and buying those two additional slots Collectors has, doesn't give you the extra stuff those who bought Collectors did, but costs the same amount.

Plus, if you buy a car now, you won't get omgnew widget added to the same car model's 2007 edition anyways...

sigh. This has been addressed a number of times already and without the flaming.

With 1,000,000+ users, an automated response system is the best way that a company can direct the flow of support enquiries and ensure that everything is being followed up on. Direct emails could potentially be ignored, this is a kind of quality control, and many online companies have moved to this. It feels less personal perhaps, but is a pragmatic approach.

You will not be told the response to scamming complaints in just the same way that you will not be told the results of a police investigation, until it gets to a court stage. They could 1) open themselves to slander, 2) reveal how the scams occur, which could spread and inspire more scamming, 3) reveal their investigative tools, which could also spread and lead to the scammers becoming smarter.

And as pointed out, A.net has in fact reinvestigated and restored some accounts banned in error, so there is an appeal process, even if not stated.

... are what the players have been screaming for. "OMG, nerf IWAY." "OMG, nerf Orders." "OMG, nerf AoE." "OMG, nerf 55 farming." Next one up will be Spiteful Spirit, not because the skill is imbalanced, but because players have been asking for it.

The game economy is ruled by supply and demand. The prices go up because there are players out there who have that much money and are willing to spend it on those items for sale. The prices do not go up because there is less money -- a seller would never sell anything in that case. Any time gold drops or you sell some junk to a merchant, gold enters the economy. Any time you trade for an item rather than buy it, gold does not exit the economy. This devalues the cash. If anything, A.net has been trying to bring down selling prices and create more gold sinks by introducing the rune trader, dye trader, rare materials trader, etc. In some cases it helped (sigils), in some cases it stabilized items that were at one point over 30k in trading value and climbing (black dye), and in some cases it still has a ways to go (superior vigor runes).

Problems with merging existing accounts:
1) the potential for account stealing, which is already a big problem of late. Any mergers would have to be verified in a process using the original email addresses used to create the accounts, and even that might not provide total security.

2) the release of Factions will likely be accompanied by a price drop on Prophecies, so any mergers will have to involve accounts created before a certain date.

3) Hierarchial decisions: if you merge a 10,000 Fame account with a 10 Fame account, do you get 10,010 Fame or 5,005? What happens to everything in storage -- where does the stuff from the second storage go? How do you write the code into the first account so that the unlocks from the second account all trigger?

There are more. There is a lot more involved in this process than you realize. Now, A.net does not want everyone's second accounts popping up on eBay either, so you can be sure that there is some discussion going on right now. The trouble is, they had no idea how widespread multiple account buying had been, and the purchasable slot was announced to keep it from getting worse with the release of Factions.

Excuse me? Not all of the requests for extra slots came from griefers and complainers.

I'm betting they're sorry they brought up the purchasable slot at all when they hear things like this.

A new slot will be $10. You might have seen the report listing a price in Brit Pounds Sterling.

Why cant people see that Anet is trying to please as many people as possible.
poeple asked for the purchase of extra char slots, now they are about to get it and people still have to complain.

ive got 3 accounts and indeed, its irritating having to use a middleman to trade items between accounts. but its still done easily enough. lets all try to look at the brighter side of life a bit more:-)


btw: good words SisterMercy

You never saw anyone complaining about the lack of character slots until recently? Which rock have you been under for the past year?

that says it all.

when will you open the next thread on this?

Ohhh god not again! Sigh..

You were right..you were wrong, for reasons posted in the other 2,854,422 threads about this..