Rewards should be account wide.

[Jojoya]

If Square Enix were to do this I think it would encourage people to make alts, thereby spending more time in the game leveling and gearing up said alts.

This makes no sense. How does SE benefit by having players spend more time in the game considering it's a flat monthly fee to play?

Not to mention most players are probably already spending as much time in the game as they have available to play. Making things account wide doesn't suddenly increase the length of a day from 24 to 28 hours.

As an altoholic, I've never been in favor of things being account wide. If I want a reward on a character, I'll play the character to earn what I want.

The only exceptions I could see would be some of the achievements that require hundreds of hours of grinding (like the hunt mounts). Even then, I'm fine with them being as they are.

In fact, if anything it should have the opposite effect. More people will want to buy story and level skips because most of you can't be bothered to level an alt the free way.

What's the point of having all those alts if you aren't actively playing them? Extra storage space? Does a pack mule really need to have all the bling its owner has?