Some of you may remember a certain blog post on a certain BnB member’s blog awhile (okay so it’s over a year old) ago titled One step in the right direction. This was a post from our friendly neighborhood Queen which described a great improvement which Jagex should could, and darn well better add sometime (preferably before we’re all dead).

Her idea? Multiple characters on one account.

It’s really a remarkable idea, and one which Jagex could implement and (I bet) would solve a few problems.

I’m sure we all know of great online Multi-player games such as Guild Wars, WoW, Ever Quest, Flyff, and the rest. All or most of these have you create an account and then create a character. They usually allow anywheres from 2-5 characters per account. This allows a player to easily switch between characters.

MQ wrote:
“Your main account name (in my case, Extremewench) would be reserved along with your character. So, both the account name and the character name are reserved. Then, you’d have the choice to make another character of any name you wish, providing it’s not someone else’s character/account name. Upon login, you’ll be allowed to select which character you want to play with.”

This would be a great way for it to work. One change to this that I would do would be instead of having the first character be named after the account, have the account name be independent. This adds a whole new level of security because now someone must guess the account name, then crack the password (and, as we’ve seen in my article Pass the Word, that’s not necessarily easy), then they can login to the character.

If Jagex wanted to ensure an even greater level of security they would have character names and account names not be allowed to match. They could also allow the user to set an independent password for each character. The passwords could be the same but would be even more secure if they were different. Of course not everyone is going to want to type in two passwords just to access their character. That’s why the character password would be optional. It could also be removed, but the owner must first type the character password in to verify that they are the owner but are wishing for the password to be removed.

If the character password had been forgotten then the owner could login to account management on the RuneScape.com site and go to ‘My Characters’, choose the character, enter the account password again and then choose the character they wanted the new password to be sent to (if the user had multiple characters on that account). If they only had one character then they could login to the account management section of the site again the next day and reset that characters password. The next time that character is logged in, whether before or after its password is reset, an in-game message would say, “Someone has tried to changed this character’s password. If this was not you then we suggest you change your account password immediately and then change all of your character passwords.”

Multiple characters per account could add up to two levels of additional security: One for an account name known only by the owner, and two for individual character passwords.

Now how would items be transferred between accounts?

MQ wrote:
“Since Jagex have introduced draconian measures to deal with RWIT (real world item trading), people can’t trade their items to another account. I find this to be plainly wrong. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to have different characters? Why shouldn’t they be allowed to experience RuneScape in a different way by being a mage, ranger, or a skill pure. By giving paying members the chance to make more than one character, they can satisfy the desire of players to be able to have multiple characters without being disadvantaged by the new RWIT rules. There could be one central bank (with more bank space than previously) that interacts with all characters on an account. Things like quest items will not show up for characters that have not done the required quest, but everything else will remain.”

Unfortunately it has always been in the rules that you could not trade between accounts – yet everyone did it.

This is because there is no logical reason why it shouldn’t be allowed. The only possible, slight, minuscule reason could be that it would give low level secondaries an unfair advantage over other low levels. So what? Those secondaries have earned it, or rather, their mains have earned it. No matter what, the owner has spent the time to get one of their characters good enough to get those high level items, and they should be able to use them.

I really like MQ’s idea about the central bank here. Perhaps the central bank could hold like 600 items and each character had their own private bank that could hold 50. Or maybe instead of a set amount of central bank space there be extra space given per character. Say one, two, or three hundred per character? If someone ran out of bank space they could just create another character to get 100 more spaces. Of course with the system working like this people would have tons of characters on their account.

Most likely there would be a limit of 3, 5, or 8 characters per account. This would allow them to have a main, a skiller, and a something. Or possibly a main, a skiller, and 3 or 6 somethings (pures or questlings perhaps?).

Now here’s the most dashing question:

How would member’s work?

Good question, to which I have an answer.

You would pay 5 dollars (or rather $5.95 because they were mean and up’d it for no reason) for the membership of your first character, $5.50 for the second, $5 for the third, $4.50 for the fourth, etc decreasing by 50 cents each time with a minimum of $2.50. Of course these rates would all lower a bit when the respective characters have been a member for a year. When the first had been a member for a year it would lower to $5, which would in turn lower everything else by 50 cents. When the second reached a year it would lower from $5 to $4.50. Each time a new character had been a member for a year or more it would have its cost reduced by 50 cents.

Now there could also be a special which allowed all characters to be upgraded, whether you had that many characters currently or not. For 3 characters per account it would cost $15 per month, and after you’d had that for a year it would drop to $12.50. For 5 it would cost $22.50 initially and then drop to $17.50. For 8 it would cost $30 initially and then drop to $25. Certain would make it alot more affordable.

Of course these packages would be paying for non-existent characters unless you had 3, 5, or 8 characters. But then, who can play 8 characters?

Someone on MQ’s blog wrote:
“Also, the RWT have moved onto the next new thing, which is trading accounts. Your plan doesn’t say directly how this would be prevented.”

Hmm, Hmm, Hmm, how to prevent this? CAN’T. Idiots will be idiots, as I sometimes say. However since all the characters created on the account stay on the account people are much less likely to trade accounts because they’d (most likely) lose all of their progress. The only way they wouldn’t is if they had made a second account.

Now..

How do we get this implemented?

First we need brainwashing technology, a really good hacker, or a really, really, really BIG stick.

Hmm, since we seem to be fresh out of any of those (a Giant Redwood might suffice, oh bother, California won’t let us use any of those) we’ll have to use the next best thing.

PEER PRESSURE!

We need about 10,000 people to like this idea. Then we can post it on the Official RS forums Suggestion forum and state all the great reasons why this should, could, and darn well better be added.

Unfortunately it’s unlikely that this will ever be added due to Jagex’s inability to fully comprehend what the true users want.

If anyone ever wants to try to get this idea going please message me and I’ll write up a formal suggestion.

Well, I guess we can only do what they say: Dream on, Dream on…