Switching characters

I dunno about everyone else, but I'd like to have an option to switch characters without having to log out. I just find it irritating to have to enter my pass every time, especially when I'm just trying to move around items between my characters.

This has been brought up before, and shot down. Security reasons, Anet says. Highly unlikely it will ever be introduced, useful as it may be.

Damn, thought that might be the case.
Oh well, thanks for the quick reply, search function is down again.

Also it's to stop key loggers and extra protection on your account.

Having to retype your password in every time you switch characters helps against key loggers? That sounds a little wierd to me.

Indeed. It's not to prevent key loggers - it's to protect against a third party gaining access to all of your account.

This is important in two situations:
1) When playing on a public or semi-public computer, such as in an internet cafe.
2) When some rascal (Gaile used the example of an annoying little brother, for instance) is around and possibly interested in destroying your account as a sick joke.

In both cases, it's protection against someone destroying your entire account if, for whatever reason, you leave the computer unattended while logged in - without needing to relog, for example, an annoying little brother could delete all your characters in under a minute, and with a little more time and knowledge of the game, they can empty your storage and inventory (possibly handing it on to their own characters, either directly or through an intermediary) and *then* delete your characters. With the requirement to relog, the worst that can happen is that you lose the inventory of one character and your storage - still bad, I know, especially if (as I do) you keep most of your wealth in storage, but somewhat easier to recover from. Especially if it wasn't one of your high-income characters that got stripped.

I'd agree that an option for easier character-switching would be useful for those who can be certain about their computer security, but on the whole once you've been doing it for a while it only takes a moment to enter your password.