If you buy additional copies of Guild Wars, can you combine the accounts?

I've put a lot of work into unlocking skills and runes, and due to that I currently have four PVE characters, and I'm getting close to having unlocked all runes and skills. Having four PVE characters means that I have no slots left for making PVP characters. I noticed in the Guild Wars Edit Account screen there's a field for adding additional keys. Could I go out and buy a second copy of Guild Wars for an additional key so I can have up to eight characters?

No, I asked AreaNet the same question. I would be more than happy to pay $50 for 4 more character slots, but at the moment there is no way to share unlocks.

-Diomedes

Ah well, thank you. I would think that it'd be in their best interests to allow that, but hey, who am I to judge?

I agree. The fact that I need to axe one of my characters is not a happy thought in my mind. With my luck, I'll axe one and within a week the new update will allow you to have up to 6 characters

-Diomedes

This would allow the botters and farmers who sell on e-bay to acquire greater strength than the casual player, thus creating an imbalance.

A-net boasted of a balanced game that did not require a grind to be competitive in PvP. They certainly do not want to be known as a money-grabbing thug that would require you to buy the game multiple times just to achieve the status quo.

Actually it would not give any more power to Farmers or botters, correct me I am wrong.

A. A "hardcore farmer" will already have a second account to do nothing but store good items on. In essence, this is four more characters storage and you can bring them to your favorite farming town and trade with them without having to change characters on your farming account.

B. A botter will have several instances of Guild Wars running with thier bots. This would not be possible if thier accounts were connected into one.

I really don't see how having more characters than four would destroy game balance. At least not any more that having two accounts that are seperate.

Enlighten me.

Smitty, I doubt merging a new account with an old one has anything to do with botters/farmers. Right now anybody can buy as many copies of Guild Wars as they want, and get four character slots for each of them. The only thing the OP requested (which I whole-heartedly support) is to merge a new account with an existing one to have more character creation space, but without having to unlock everything all over again.

The only 'imbalance' is that richer people can afford multiple copies, but that imbalance is exactly the same as it is now - even more so, because merging two accounts actually destroys some of its usefulness (such as giving it to a friend so you can both play at the same time). Thankfully, there are more ways of making money in this world than selling virtual items and gold on eBay, so this would be a perfectly legitimate request.

-edit- Oh! Would also like double Xunlai storage space with a merged account, but that's not too big an issue.

I still don't understand why you can't "exchange" items among your accounts.

You just need EITHER:
- someone you trust to hold the item for you while you switch accounts; and give back the item to the new character;
OR:
- having a nother computer running at the same time and do a trade among yourself.

This only proves that if combine account is to thwart unholy scheme, it fails

I has less to do with actual gold wealth accumulation and more to do with unlocking skills and upgrades.

Yeah, hardcore farmers and botters can have multiple accounts, and probably do by now, but the fact that the items are not transferable between accounts and the fact that unlocks for 10 bot accounts, for example, do not compliment each other is what limits the power of each account.

This is foresight for the PvP aspect of the game. A merge would be very bad.

I do agree however, that there should be 6 PvE slots withn one default PvP character slot. That way pure PvE players can try all primary classes and builds and acquire their desired unlocks without having to delete a character.

Temporal secondary professions are nice, but having to buy another copy of the game to play all primary classes is absurd.

Therefore, increase the account to six PvE slots, and forget the multiple game copy account merger nonsense. That, is a losing proposition for the masses. There would be entire bot driven guilds with all unlocks and the best gear in the game. If they were missing something they wanted, their immeasureable merged account's wealth would make any tradeable item easily attainable.

Does that make sense?

Your friend can't hold unlocks for you. They are not transferrable. The limit on gold carry is also a very good feature. Their is no reason for merging accounts if one were to read my post.

I still don't understand why you have to "unlock" stuffs in PvE to go against PvP (in the sense that why the dev force you to do that in the first place).

Thanks Smitty-gw for the clarification. I didn't think about PvP unlocked skills.

On a practical note.

In their interests or not, the database might not be built for more than 4 character slots per account yet (I seem to remember something about extra slots per account with expansions, so that assumption may already be wrong)

About being able to merge making botters more powerful, I still can't see it, if someone works hard for alot of unlocks they will inevitably unlock all skills on both accounts anyway. With the ability to merge accounts it makes it simpler for the average joe to get the lot too so a more even playing field, so less differance between the two.

If some-one cheats/exploits to get their unlocks, they should get caught and banned either way I should hope, so it being more advantageous to botters or not should be a mute point.

It is less advantageous to botters IMO.. would you want to risk your 4 access key account worth $160?

Or just have throwaway $50 accounts?

Botters take a lot of risk, MONETARY (real world) risk, they exist only to make money, and no, they don't give a darned about PvP.

I'd prefer to have a way to merge accounts too, currently it is quite a hassle to switch.

There is one thing if you wanted more char. you could buy another one and in that one use the slots to mke up more char.Hopefully you could still belong to the same guild?It would be interstig to find out though.

Please god in heaven give to us six character slots!!!

let me clarify monitary risk for botters. From what i read in a PC-Gamer a few days ago, they botters dont care about their accounts being banned, they make more than enough money to cover the new account. The guys that run the asian sweatshops get 6-figure incomes in US dollars.

and IMO, if accounts merged, it would be easier for anet in the long run, because they done need to store everyones email's and passwords.