Merge accounts / Characters transfer

soulspiritx

Many of us have more than one account.
This has never been a problem, until Strongholds came out.
Now, guilds care a lot about the number of their members, 'cause of the 150 accounts limit. Mine allows only 1 account per person, and disallows having characters in other guilds. I think many guilds act like this.
Thus, people with more than a single account, have to make a choice: keeping an account live, and using all other accounts as leadership-farmers only, even if they would play with those characters.

Months ago, my girlfriend opened a ticket asking for a merge between her 2 accounts, but cryptic/perfect world answered it was impossible. Now, she can no more use her second account, due to guild constraints.

I understand account merging's could be troublesome for many factor, but transferring a character from an account to another could be very easy: cryptic/perfect world already allows it between live server and test server.

I'm asking why cryptic/perfect world won't put a little effort on helping players in such a situation, and why.

Thanks.

Unknown

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dsn1118

You will use your second account as leadership and what?Transfering items or other currencies between accounts which use same IP is bannable offense on my knowledge and that character transfer will only work for the benefit of botters.They will get one character BIS and sell to another account. This idea will give me nightmares

kvet

It always was a bad idea to use more than one account to get alts. If you want more than 2, don't skimp - just pony up the Zen and buy the slots. Using more than one account is just a terrible idea, and this guild limit thing is just another reason why. I realize that doesn't answer your question, but its one of those things that just shouldn't be a problem, and when it is, it's really your own fault rather than Cryptic's. It's unlikely they'll ever implement an account merge system, especially since it would just provide a way for people to get around paying for the slots, plus, it would be pretty easy to steal people's accounts if you're email address got compromised. At least the way it is now, if that happens, you still have your account even if it's been gutted... Nah... way too much trouble and way too much risk for very little return.

By the way - any guild that demands you not be in any other guild isn't a very cool guild.. that's more like a cult. IMO: You should kick them to the curb if you don't like draconian and unfriendly rules like that and find a guild that's not so demanding.

mafoi1515

Merge Guilds, wuold be nice feature, Guild Alliance in Stronghold too, but "Merge accounts"... I think it is not good idea.

kreatyve

One of the many, many problems with this is that they have a bit of a hard time verifying your identity, especially if you are free to play. Yes, they can see that both accounts are logging in from the same IP address, however that could be different family members playing the game.

kvet

(Or someone connected to the same network at Starbucks or your school or you name it)

putzboy78

lol, so a person tries to get around buying character slots.

Pays the penalty in mod 3 by not having access to the sigils from characters on the other account. Doesn't realize they should consolidate to one account.

Now mod 6 they want a feature to consolidate the accounts.

If i was a business I would say no. A person tries to work around giving them money. It doesn't work so you want them to fix it. If they did do it, there would have to be a fee associated with it and it should exceed the cost of the character slots (I'd penalize the activity, plus the administrative costs would exceed the cost of a simple character slot creation).

sockmunkey

Being able to transfer characters from account to account will only end up giving gold sellers a new and easy tool for selling characters and leveling services. For this reason alone, its a bad idea.

myles08807

The potential downside to account merging is enormous. This will never happen.

aulduron

I'd love to merge my accounts. I'd hate if someone merged my accounts into theirs. FYI, my 2nd account was made accidentally, not to get around buying character slots.

zebular

I've been suggesting this to them for a while. I hope they do find a way to allow secure mergers of accounts. Just because something "could" be abused, doesn't mean it shouldn't ever be implemented. That's an easy cop-out of an excuse to not have anything added to a game. Instead of not adding things because of <--insert some possible future security issue here-->, such things should be made more secure to allow for such. Just to name a couple - Turbine does Account Mergers and Blizzard does Account Mergers and Character Transfers between Accounts (I know because both companies have done such for me). They found a way both technically and securely, Cryptic can too.

soulspiritx

I'm not saying it should be an automated process accessible from anyone, like character copy to the test server.
It could be a feature made avaiable by support ticket, so human verification could be put in place.
It's pretty easy for a human to figure out if the request is legit or not, by comparing IPs, login times and such.

About account selling, it has always been possible. There's no one preventing name-a-chinese to sell me his account.

A security step could be made by requesting the user to link his accounts to the same facebook profile. This would prevent account stealing, to some degree.

Terms of service never mention an user could only have a single account, so it seemed a legit thing to do. Players couldn't know in advance the drawbacks of their choice.

plasticbat

x

soulspiritx said:

I'm not saying it should be an automated process accessible from anyone, like character copy to the test server.
It could be a feature made avaiable by support ticket, so human verification could be put in place.
It's pretty easy for a human to figure out if the request is legit or not, by comparing IPs, login times and such.

About account selling, it has always been possible. There's no one preventing name-a-chinese to sell me his account.

A security step could be made by requesting the user to link his accounts to the same facebook profile. This would prevent account stealing, to some degree.

Terms of service never mention an user could only have a single account, so it seemed a legit thing to do. Players couldn't know in advance the drawbacks of their choice.

Too much work to do those checking. If it needs human interaction, it is too much chance to have human error and it is not really needed.

The simple solution is:

1. The main account needs to purchase something such as enough empty character slots and may be a merging token.

2. The system send email to both account with a different verification password. To merge, fill in both account name, account passwords and verification passwords. Human interaction from Cryptic is not required because If one has real physical access to an account (regardless if it is really his or not) and to account owner's email, he could do a lot of damage regardless.

hoofit

I dont think they will do account merging for the simple fact it would be to easy for people who steal accounts then to just transfer characters strip you bare and spit you out, it's as simple as that probably

plasticbat

hoofit said:

I dont think they will do account merging for the simple fact it would be to easy for people who steal accounts then to just transfer characters strip you bare and spit you out, it's as simple as that probably

I don't think they will do account merge neither but that is not the reason.

If you steal an account, you would try to do so without trace.
Using merge to steal account will leave trace as you expose your own account.
There is better and "safer" way to steal account.

kismetric

zebular said:

I've been suggesting this to them for a while. I hope they do find a way to allow secure mergers of accounts. Just because something "could" be abused, doesn't mean it shouldn't ever be implemented. That's an easy cop-out of an excuse to not have anything added to a game. Instead of not adding things because of <--insert some possible future security issue here-->, such things should be made more secure to allow for such. Just to name a couple - Turbine does Account Mergers and Blizzard does Account Mergers and Character Transfers between Accounts (I know because both companies have done such for me). They found a way both technically and securely, Cryptic can too.

Agreed.