Guild Wars 2

Hello Arenanet / guildwars2

So I joined a guild with one character thinking I could try out guild mechanics while still playing another character without being bothered by guild life. Today I get a tell from a guild person directly to my other character (which I thought was unguilded).
Which quite frankly really surprised me.

is this really how it is? if I join 1 character to a guild, they all join it, and can be seen by the guild. :| If so, not cool IMO.

Just some feedback to Arenanet…

[Moderator note: thread title changed for clarity/to better reflect the issue.]

No, you can have multiple characters in multiple guilds. You got a tell because they could see your account logged on in the guild roster even though you weren’t representing.

Yeah, your character’s not really the one joining the Guilds; it’s your account, so everything is linked. I agree that it’s “not cool”, and can be rather bothersome at times, but it can also be an advantage if you’re on one character and simply want to relay info, items, or whatever between Guilds that you only use on certain characters.

Anyway to prevent that sort of tracking?

swordfish.7089:

Anyway to prevent that sort of tracking?

I think maybe if you set your status to “Invisible” (not certain that’s what it’s called; whichever the grey one is) in the contacts panel. Not sure that works, though. Just an idea.

Some other aspects of the social system can influence this too.

If you’re on a friend’s list with one character, you’re on with all your characters.

If a person send a whisper to your main (or a party invite or a mail) while you’re on an alt, your alt will get it.

Everything social is account-based, rather than character.

Yep they can see who’s reping and who’s not .Personally i find this a better system than having to have 5 or 6 alts taking up slots that could otherwise be filled by other members. Think how much faster the 500 man roster would fill up if each person in a guild had all 8 classes in it .

swordfish.7089:

Anyway to prevent that sort of tracking?

It’s not just guilds. In case you haven’t noticed, you can track any player (and any player can track you) simply by adding that player to your “friends” list. That tells you their full account id (which is also their name here in the forum), informs you of when they’re online, tells you which server they’re on and which area of the world they’re at, and shows you the name of their characters – all without requiring any sort of authorisation on their part.

And then Arena Net is surprised at how easily hackers manage to match characters to real people and figure out where to look for passwords, etc..

This was mentioned again and again by testers during the beta period, but I guess whoever handles GW2’s privacy and security follows the Facebook school of software design.

Adine.2184:

Yep they can see who’s reping and who’s not .Personally i find this a better system than having to have 5 or 6 alts taking up slots that could otherwise be filled by other members. Think how much faster the 500 man roster would fill up if each person in a guild had all 8 classes in it.

If the limit was by character, obviously it could be higher, since no player would ever be logged in with two characters from the same account at the same time. In fact, there’s no reason why the guilds could not have a limit to the number of players while still displaying only the character names, and not the full account information. It’s trivial to code.

Only “mutual friends” (people who are on your friends list and who have you on their friends list) should be able to see each other’s account details and the names of all characters. The current system is stalker / hacker heaven.

Account.9832:

Adine.2184:

Yep they can see who’s reping and who’s not .Personally i find this a better system than having to have 5 or 6 alts taking up slots that could otherwise be filled by other members. Think how much faster the 500 man roster would fill up if each person in a guild had all 8 classes in it.

If the limit was by character, obviously it could be higher, since no player would ever be logged in with two characters from the same account at the same time. In fact, there’s no reason why the guilds could not have a limit to the number of players while still displaying only the character names, and not the full account information. It’s trivial to code.

Only “mutual friends” (people who are on your friends list and who have you on their friends list) should be able to see each other’s account details and the names of all characters. The current system is stalker / hacker heaven.

I was just playing today and a the co-leader (or something like that) of a guild I had joined whispered me on a character I just made yesterday and asked why I wasn’t repping the guild and basically insisting that I repped on that character and all others or left. This system of accounts joining guilds removes all anonymity from playing the game; I didn’t even feel like I could escape to another character after that because everyone who has ever seen me in game (or on the forums) can contact me whenever they feel like it (until I report/block them, but that’s beside the point. I don’t want to be /ignore-ing everybody).

Worst.Idea.Ever.

Nice username, btw, Acc.

MethodicMockingbird.6520:

Account.9832:

Adine.2184:

Yep they can see who’s reping and who’s not .Personally i find this a better system than having to have 5 or 6 alts taking up slots that could otherwise be filled by other members. Think how much faster the 500 man roster would fill up if each person in a guild had all 8 classes in it.

If the limit was by character, obviously it could be higher, since no player would ever be logged in with two characters from the same account at the same time. In fact, there’s no reason why the guilds could not have a limit to the number of players while still displaying only the character names, and not the full account information. It’s trivial to code.

Only “mutual friends” (people who are on your friends list and who have you on their friends list) should be able to see each other’s account details and the names of all characters. The current system is stalker / hacker heaven.

I was just playing today and a the co-leader (or something like that) of a guild I had joined whispered me on a character I just made yesterday and asked why I wasn’t repping the guild and basically insisting that I repped on that character and all others or left. This system of accounts joining guilds removes all anonymity from playing the game; I didn’t even feel like I could escape to another character after that because everyone who has ever seen me in game (or on the forums) can contact me whenever they feel like it (until I report/block them, but that’s beside the point. I don’t want to be /ignore-ing everybody).

Worst.Idea.Ever.

Nice username, btw, Acc.

I agree with this completely. There has to be a fix for this. It’s sometimes not fun playing the game knowing that although you have the option to go invisible, others in guild can still see your updated map changes and therefore know you’re actually online. Sometimes it’s just nice to play alone and enjoy the game, taking a break from everything else.

At least reading stuff like this makes me feel fine not having joined a ‘serious’ guild after leaving WoW. I get bossed around quite enough to get the wage package in, and since you don’t need to join a guild to do any of the content, there’s little reason to put up with armchair führers, IMO.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of this Hey Everybody I’m On An Alt system. I’d rather have each character be completely independent, with separate ‘character friends’ (whatever random person friends that character can see when that character and only that character is online) and ‘account friends’ (both players must agree to be account friends and only then can they see each others alts).

Further, I do not like the guild system that allows one character to be in multiple guilds. I’d much rather it be thus: this character is in this guild, this other character is in this other guild, and never the twain shall meet.

I also wish we could have characters on multiple servers instead of all on one.

There was another game under the NCSoft banner that had these options. Alas. It is no more.