Any way of making the login process less tedious?

[bungiefanNA]

There's probably not enough demand for it.

Also, you can only link 8 characters/Content IDs to a PlayOnline Handle, so if you have more than 8 characters, you need more than 1 handle, since you can have 16 character slots. You can only change handles and link Content IDs in PlayOnline Viewer. The Friend List also uses PlayOnline Viewer, which is still running in the background without a window. A whole lot of the systems were designed to intergrate into PlayOnline Viewer back in 2002, and the original development team isn't present anymore, while the current development team doesn't want to mess with certain older code that they don't fully understand.

Remember, the original idea for PlayOnline Viewer was to be a hub, like Xbox Live or PSN, for PS2 online games from SquareSoft, Namco, and a few other companies. At its largest in Japan, it had SIX games using it (JongHoLow, Tetra Master, Final Fantasy XI, Dirge of Cerberus, Front Mission Online, and Fantasy Earth) that all required Content IDs, and you could message people playing different games that were on your friend list. You can have up to four handles, and 8 Content IDs attached per handle. Just because they removed games from service doesn't mean they changed PlayOnline Viewer. Every single game they had using PlayOnline had to be launched from PlayOnline, and it integrated into the messaging, email, and Content ID system PlayOnline provides.

It would likely be a pretty big overhaul of the backend systems to remove PlayOnline Viewer from being a requirement to launch.