Should friends lists be account-based or character-based?

Add a true invisible mode also.

Account based but with the ability to be able to "Hide" or put "Offline" on a character that you don't want to be bothered on. It's annoying to add someone's character every time they make a new one.

I'm not sure why this is even a question or debated.

These are tools to build community, community increases players retention of the game.

As a content provider you have a business case to maximize player engagement and community is a big part of that. As such these tools should be persistent (all characters) and pervasive (shared to all my characters)

The only question to ask is if you need to make the list powerful enough that it shows me the character to character relationship when it was formed. Is, when I friended jack, I was on Jill, but jack is currently online on Robert.

How about some questions on gameplay though rather than fluff you've already collected data in from other titles?

We need the option to choose. Ideally with decent notes section. Some friends I am more than happy to know what I am doing all of the time, others not so.

@Twyxx made a great point about ignore being account wide. Let us ignore the trolls and spammers in one fell swoop!

As long as I have an option to hide on my less-than-social days, I'm happy with that.

Someone above made the comment that if you don't want to be seen, why are you friends. That's a little narrow minded in my opinion. I'd ask that person "have you ever seen an incoming call from a friend that you temporarily ignored?" Not being able to be social for a short period of time doesn't make me a bad friend. It makes me human.

Account Based!

The one thing I really liked about the original Everquest was the ability to go "Anonymous." It removed you from all /who and search filters so no one knew you were online. I believe this function also stayed after logging out so when you logged back in, you would still be Anon.

I am thinking more along the lines of, when i create a character i am given a checkbox should this character be able to be seen across servers or accounts with an option in settings to change it as needed, that is for the friend, for the one friending that person he/she as they are sending the friend/ignore request(yes this should apply for ignore lists too) they are given a small pop up that asks"do you want this friend across all of your characters on all servers with a list of my characters and checkboxes so i can choose which characters see which friends. that way the person who makes the character can choose whether it is ok for people to friend them and be able to turn it on and off as desired and for me to choose if i want to see that friend on all of my characters or not.

Account based, while granting to see characters as you choose. Everyone deserves some R&R time from time to time.

I would prefer accountbased with allowance on the alts - or denial. There are folks who rp out chars very nicely and strictly deny account-wide friendships between chars. I would not want those folks to expect me to keep a P&P List just because that is off.
I also know folks who have a mental structure that disallows too tight binds and thus want to be friend on one toon and be anonymous on the other so they feel free to "play different".
They do not want to feel the need to do someone within a certain guild a favour so they do not want to be known with all toons.

Account based with the option to choose is best. There are some friends that play a good tank, but may want to play a priest or whatever with no plans to do anything other than craft. I don't care to see that character when I check.

It would be nice to just see is that person is online and which character s/he is playing. SO my friend Tom is online, I can see he is on his alt, then if I could choose to private msg his account in-game, it would go to whatever character he is on. THAT WOULD BE AMAZING! I wouldn't have to memorize the name of his favorite character "Montegeogooglicon Tur".

So yeah, if possible PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let us have a choice of the old 'character' way and a new 'account' way of finding friends and talking to them.

The second option makes the most sense to me, there are times when we really don't want to be bothered by anyone, so asking for permission to see other characters via a freinds request gives us that option. Heck I do it myself when working on leveling some of my crafters on EQ2.

definitely option 2: I want the option to add friends by account. With approval I’d see all of their characters. Denial would show only the friended character.

I would love the option to enable this for each friend added. Sometimes I just want to add someone temporarily, which means I don't want them seeing all of my alts.

Yes, that would open the doors for socially abusive "you have to because you want to be my friend and i give a **** why you want to do housing now or are not interested in crafting for me" - it might be easy for you but it is shortsighted and drives off more complex personalities..

You brought up an interesting point, actually. Personally, I feel you should only be able to see characters I give you permission to see, but I -do- think ignoring someone should ignore their whole account. That would be an amazing feature, definitely.

Honestly, over my years of gaming I have had both options provided to me.

Perhaps create a level of privacy. Not that it matters all that much, but after doing both scenerios I enjoyed having the ability to let certain people know where I was at any point in time in game, and others to a lesser extent on certain characters. I always had one or two private alts that I could hop on, dink around on, and have my /whispers remain fairly few and far between. It's not a negative thing, simply a relaxation thing.

Especially for guild leaders and the like, when they just want to play alone a bit, or with a single friend.

I am all about options. I also do not feel that it is anyone else's -right- to know who I am playing at any certain time. If someone is being a creeper with various alts, that needs to be brought up to a GM and SoE. However, most of us are pretty benign in our alt creation, and when I make a different character, I want it just that. Different.

Sometimes people are in grumpy moods, or don't feel like talking to people, or just want to go off and do their own thing and not feel pressured to join groups or what not. *shrug* It's nice to just relax for a bit without people. Maybe it's just me, but especially as a healer if friends need one, I'm there whether I feel like it or not. Nice to just log on to an alt and craft or what not sometimes.

option 2 but i'd add on a side note we should have one list of friend that contains friend of both types "account and player name"

maybe add a row showing if the current character is part of there friend list.

I want my friend list to be account-wide but I also want the ability to go /anon and be seen by no one from time to time.