Moving Characters to Diff Accounts/Playing 2 characters on Same Account?

So I've been playing FFXI since about late 04' to early '05... Before then when I created an account, I also created an account for my little brother thinking we could play at the same time on the same account. My question is: Is there anyway the development team would be able to let us either access the same account and be able to play two different characters at the same time, or to be able to move an already created character to a different account so that he doesn't want to lose all of his progress thus far?

Feedback would be very much appreciated!

Also, if anyone is confused on what I am talking about feel free to post questions so I can further explain.

It would be really nice, but I think POL prevents this from happening.

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Originally Posted by Elexia

It would be really nice, but I think POL prevents this from happening.

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You're right it would be nice, but I think I remember hearing that it would be possible to do, just at the time I heard it, which was a few years back, that the development team would not consider something like that at this time and that I should continue looking at the FFXI Online website to look for any updates regarding something like that.

This would be an Exploit pure and simple. Let's say my Friend wants to play FFXI. I can just give him one of my leveled up mules, and then switch it to his account. I know some people can play 2 characters at the same time, but they do so on 2 different accounts, why would SE lose that potential Revenue. Also an easy way to transfer Rare / Ex gear etc.

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Originally Posted by Teraniku

This would be an Exploit pure and simple. Let's say my Friend wants to play FFXI. I can just give him one of my leveled up mules, and then switch it to his account. I know some people can play 2 characters at the same time, but they do so on 2 different accounts, why would SE lose that potential Revenue. Also an easy way to transfer Rare / Ex gear etc.

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True, although like changing servers you can only move the a character to/from an account once every so often (1 year maybe?). Also IF you move the character to a new account, that account of course would not have all the expansion unless bought on that new account. On top of that, by doing this instead of someone paying the base amount a month plus the one character, you have now split it up, and now have two people paying the base price. So the revenue would actually increase.

*Or stay the same, 'cause if he does end up creating that new character, I would end up deleting it from my account after he moved the majority of his equipment to his new account.

Another idea would to pay a little extra a month to be able to play two or more (price depends on how many playable characters you want to use at the same time) different characters on the same account.

They won't do this it woukd be nice. No developer would do this with any mmo. It would mean you wouldn't have to buy a second account.

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Originally Posted by svengalis

They won't do this it woukd be nice. No developer would do this with any mmo. It would mean you wouldn't have to buy a second account.

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I wouldn't expect SE to allow you to play 2 characters on the same account, but I don't think it's unreasonable to let people split a character off into a new account.

I think if done right it wouldn't hinder their revenues at all. It's not like it costs a lot to buy the game these days, I recently picked it up for $10 including all expansions, the first 3 add on scenarios, and the first abyssea add on.

I will admit they're missing out on monthly fees, if for example people abuse it by leveling up a character on an existing account and splitting it off only when it's sufficiently leveled to be useful, and of course the possibility of them selling the split off character.

However charging something like $50 would ensure the only people who really want it would do it, those people who thought they would be fine with one account but then both players ended up wanting to play more. They can restrict how often you can do it, and even, one time only per account no exceptions, and split off accounts can never split again. They can even restrict when it's done, like when they allow character reactivation every so often.

In my case, a few years ago I got bored with my main and started leveling a 2nd character up on the same account just for fun. She's only level 50, but I invested a lot of time into her, and would love to be able to split her off my main account and play them both at the same time. In the end though I suppose SE is the winner in my case, because I've since then leveled up 2 other accounts in addition to my main that I dual/triple box with. I'd still give them more money to be able to play the character on my main account, although I'd probably then cancel my 3rd account instead of having 4.

The reason you can't has to do with the rule for PlayOnline accounts that it is suppoed to only ever be one person using an account and they aren't supposed to be transferrable. You weren't supposed to create a character for a family member on your account, they were supposed to get their own account. That should have been obvious from not being able to play both characters on the account at the same time, and you should have gone out and bough another copy of the game when you noticed that, before you had invested months/years of time in the character. SE IDs and security tokens further enforce that rule.

So now you've been leveling multiple characters on the cheap (not paying a full monthly fee per character), and want to be able to use them all at once now?

I have talked to SE personaly on the issue of seperating characters onto different accouts and they stated that it was not logistically possible even knowing that people would pay the price of the addition content ID and other fees. Other MMOs have and have had this option, so we all know that it is possible to do so. It just seems more like SE doesn't have the drive to do so. They may also give some kind of poor RMT excuse as well.