Guild Wars 2

With the recent sales, many have alt accounts now. I, myself have 2. I would like a way to permanently link my alt accounts to my main account for the purpose of freely emailing gold, mats, and items, including account bound items, between my accounts. This won’t let you see or access the other accounts directly, this is for transferring by email only.

Reasons
1) email spam stop. When I’m emailing mats between accounts, the spam filter kicks in quickly. I can get around it by using the shared guild bank, but it’s more tedious.
2) gold can be sent freely between accounts without the time or quantity limits the game now has and the 500 gold limit/week being suggested.
3) my alt accounts have account bound items they don’t need (dark matter) and my main has account bound items it could loan or give, examples: toys, black lion salvage kits, boosters (such as exp boosters that my low level chars on an alt account could use).
4) one possible use is to use your alt accounts as a savings account where a person could send them a good portion of their gold for the alt account to hold until they need it. Safer than a guild bank, because if your guild bank is stripped by a hacker, any gold and items in it or lost.
5) allows family members such as husband and wives to transfer account bound items items between their account and their spouse’s. They won’t be able to access the other’s account directly. Again, this is for emailed items only.
6) only allow it for accounts with the same credit card address. This will stop people from linking up with gold sellers or with friends to transfer items.

Once linked, it’s irreversible.

Pros? Cons?

The only reason you have multiple accounts is to get around limitations that Anet have put on accounts.

Why would they create all these extra loopholes for you to get around the new system they’ve just added to curb a source of problems for them?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

2) gold can be sent freely between accounts without the time or quantity limits the game now has and the 500 gold limit/week being suggested.

I believe the limit being suggested is 500 gold per single item of mail, not per week.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

The only reason you have multiple accounts is to get around limitations that Anet have put on accounts.

Why would they create all these extra loopholes for you to get around the new system they’ve just added to curb a source of problems for them?

One big reason I got extra accounts is for guild bank security. When you are solo with a personal bank and accidentally leave it, that bank and everything in it is gone (one guy who posted on the forum did that. He was saving up mats for a Legendary and lost it all). With an alt account, your alt can be co leader and invite you back.

I got my first for that reason, and then I got a second one because of multiple other benefits such as being able to play invisibly when I’m not feeling social. (Invisible mode doesn’t always work on your main account as friends enabling chat messages can still know when you log on or off). In addition, your alt accounts can be on different servers, including one on an NA server and one on an EU server. You get access to more character slots as well, on each of my alts accounts I’m leveling 1 to 80. The other 4 on each are PvP chars.

Having excess money stored on alt accounts is also of use. If you’re hacked and wiped out for a second time so that an account rollback isn’t an option, then you have something to fall back on.

Lorgus.6148:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

2) gold can be sent freely between accounts without the time or quantity limits the game now has and the 500 gold limit/week being suggested.

I believe the limit being suggested is 500 gold per single item of mail, not per week.

“The maximum total amount of gold that an individual player account can accept in a week will be 500 gold.”

I like the idea, but am not sure Anet would go for sharing account bound items. After all, they want you to buy goodies for each account to keep the cash flowing.

I really like this idea. I bought an alt account i havent touched at all that i wanted to play on eu with. The main reason i want them to be linked is because if you can send account bound items i may be able to send ascended armor and weapons to that account. I love fractals and one of the main reasons i wanted to have an eu account was i heard there are some wonderful players there. But its too much of a pain to get crafting to 500 and craft it all over again. There are probably some cons tho with account linking.

on a side note i would suggest they create a dual home thing for accounts so you can have a home server in NA and EU instead of having to create two separate accounts.

Wetpaw.3487:

Lorgus.6148:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

2) gold can be sent freely between accounts without the time or quantity limits the game now has and the 500 gold limit/week being suggested.

I believe the limit being suggested is 500 gold per single item of mail, not per week.

“The maximum total amount of gold that an individual player account can accept in a week will be 500 gold.”

Yep, I’m wrong. Dunno why they even have point 5 as “The maximum amount of gold that can be sent via a single in-game mail will be 500 gold.” then >.>

This seems like a bad idea in the sense it would make a lot of work for CS for not much return.

You suggested Husbands/Wives being able to link accounts. What about these scenarios:
-A couple connect their accounts, end up breaking up and can’t now separate their accounts.
-A goldseller connects their head account to multiple hacked accounts. (So the original user of the hacked account always has to worry about the fact that the gold seller has direct contact with him. It also means that a goldseller could bypass the new “No more than 500g a week” mechanic). Sure, you said with the same credit card address, surely a hacked account could just add a credit card to the compromised account.

I’ll also say here that using credit card details as a method of security seems like a bad idea to me. I’m not an expert on internet security, but my guess is that it requires a lot of expensive encryption to store credit card details safely. Once again, this would be a cost that Anet would have to consider.

So, if there was no security behind a credit card, black market trading of account-bound goods would become a thing. A group of guildies or friends (heck, even strangers) could create a ring whereby Dark Matter, BL Ticket Scraps, etc could be exchanged for gold. Because this would rely on player-to-player trading, there’d be more opportunity for scamming.

All of this results in a lot more work for CS and could cause disruption in the economy.

On a different note, what about accountbound weapons and armour? Surely this would mean somebody could accountbound a legendary (thus unlocking the skin) and trade (sell it) to somebody else? (This is especially important considering how the upcoming precursors will work). Somebody could even create ascended armour and sell it to another.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

This seems like a bad idea in the sense it would make a lot of work for CS for not much return.

You suggested Husbands/Wives being able to link accounts. What about these scenarios:
-A couple connect their accounts, end up breaking up and can’t now separate their accounts.
-A goldseller connects their head account to multiple hacked accounts. (So the original user of the hacked account always has to worry about the fact that the gold seller has direct contact with him. It also means that a goldseller could bypass the new “No more than 500g a week” mechanic). Sure, you said with the same credit card address, surely a hacked account could just add a credit card to the compromised account.

I’ll also say here that using credit card details as a method of security seems like a bad idea to me. I’m not an expert on internet security, but my guess is that it requires a lot of expensive encryption to store credit card details safely. Once again, this would be a cost that Anet would have to consider.

So, if there was no security behind a credit card, black market trading of account-bound goods would become a thing. A group of guildies or friends (heck, even strangers) could create a ring whereby Dark Matter, BL Ticket Scraps, etc could be exchanged for gold. Because this would rely on player-to-player trading, there’d be more opportunity for scamming.

All of this results in a lot more work for CS and could cause disruption in the economy.

On a different note, what about accountbound weapons and armour? Surely this would mean somebody could accountbound a legendary (thus unlocking the skin) and trade (sell it) to somebody else? (This is especially important considering how the upcoming precursors will work). Somebody could even create ascended armour and sell it to another.

Husbands and wives: linking the accounts is only for transferring through email. If they stop transferring by email and they block the other person so that that person can’t email to them, I don’t see that linking is a problem after a divorce. This isn’t something that will be visible to either account or a means to access the other’s account.

As for the credit cards, if that’s a problem then possibly some other way to verify ownership. Perhaps the accounts must be shown to be located in the same IP as well as credit card addresses?

One thing I’ve noticed is that the my accounts are partially linked already at the trading post. I just listed an Exquisite Ruby Jewel and a major sigil of corruption on my main account in the trading post. I switched to an alt account and realized I could see those 2 items as “recently viewed” so it appears that ANet already links to a small degree accounts that were purchased with the same credit card.

More likely information stored in a cache.

I am guessing, if such a ‘linking’ occurred, that the CS Team would lock down all ‘linked’ accounts if one became compromised. I don’t think it would have the advantages you would like in that case.

Regardless, I’m doubtful they will allow anyone to link multiple accounts. If nothing else, it would be more work keeping things like the HoM rewards separated. Not to mention data center information.

Good luck, though.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

One thing I’ve noticed is that the my accounts are partially linked already at the trading post. I just listed an Exquisite Ruby Jewel and a major sigil of corruption on my main account in the trading post. I switched to an alt account and realized I could see those 2 items as “recently viewed” so it appears that ANet already links to a small degree accounts that were purchased with the same credit card.

It’s because the TP works using a different programme to gw2.exe . It used to be called awesomium.exe but now it’s coherentUI.exe. From what I understand, these programmes use separate servers to the ones that run the main game.

It’s nothing to do with the same credit card- it’s the fact that the same application (on the same computer) is being used to run two different accounts gw2.exe

EDIT: Also regarding your idea of using IP as a way to verify accounts- I’m fairly sure IPs can be masked and changed using proxys. That means that somebody in a different country could proxy their IP to be same as yours and link accounts with you. If somebody could hack your e-mail/account info, they could probably find out your IP too.

IP address can change, too. Sometimes it can happen relatively frequently depending on your network and maintenance. I’ve had to verify my IP 4 times in one day, probably because of maintenance.