More on account services

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. Some of it has been constructive, some emotional, but all of it has shown how much feeling is attached to the game by those that play it.

Name and portrait changes are a common petition made to the GMs and a common request made to the Dev Team. It has been proven that name and/or appearance changes are a necessary part of any successful MMOG platform; it is just a matter of what time the ability to change names or appearances is implemented. However, as with any major changes to the identity of a character, there are issues that must be resolved. There are countless examples were a name change can be exploited. I am sure we can all agree that name changes need to be limited and placing a monetary value on it is a simple and effective way to achieve such a limitation. As this is an out of game action, it needs out of game limitations.

I agree with the statements here about portrait swap price being too high. There isn’t as much need to limit that as the name. Even though the portraits are a big part of your identity in EVE, the name is much bigger so we are more than willing looking into having portrait swap price lower than name change. Your identity in a virtual world is one of the few things that form the basis of a trusting relationship. Portrait swapping tampers with the identity of the character, so I didn’t feel an in-game limitation (i.e. charging ISK for a portrait swap) was sufficient. I feel that a portrait swap is also an out of game action and is in need of an out of game control. This is the reason that I feel a charge should be levied for the service.

The reason for banning account trading and offering paid character transfer is to counter a considerable load on our support for fraudulent activity surrounding account trading. We have many stories of broken friendships, relationships and much more. The process allowed by the EULA had some issues that didn’t work as well as we had hoped; therefore we are now removing it entirely. We understand that sometimes players want to stop playing EVE but wish to donate their character to a friend. This is still possible. However, there needs to be a deterrent for the abuses that have occurred in the past.

Just remember that the prices we have given is for limitation of use. Placing it at 40 was a guesstimate so I am more than willing to consider different values, just remember as the price goes down the chance of exploitation goes up.