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

I'd like privacy, so I would not want people who friend me to know who my other alts are unless I tell them the names myself.

Sorry, not interested in creepy stalkers. Been there and it is not fun. I don't want that type of behavior to be facilitated.

Of the choices you list, I'd have to say the second. It should be up to the person whether others see their alts or not.

Of course, that does complicate things more by making the requests an "Approve/Deny/Character Only" choice rather than yes/no.

It also begs the question of what happens if you change your mind in the future. You once said yes to all, but now you have a new character that you want to be your getawayfromitall toon. Can you go to a setting somewhere and remove it? Or are new toons not included... etc.

The details will dictate more of the real choices once it happens. Personally I would prefer it to be a setting on the user's end where they can dictate that. They decide in their options if requests for all will be done, or to just ignore those requests and only allow character requests. And also the ability to on a by character basis remove themselves from the "all characters" list for that account, both during creation and afterwards. And to be able to remove characters from any friends list where that character wasn't specifically friended.

I favor the idea that you "friend" someone and request an 'account' link to show ANY character they are on or, if refused, then it would only show a toon by toon listing.
As friendships evolve you could later enable / disable the features to allow greater 'friend tracking', or limit it to a single toon, as the relationship warrants.
MMO means social (arguably), and Social has positive and negative connotations. Personally, I garner HUGE friend lists and lament the use of Ignore ( /shudder), but Social needs all kinds and each kind impacts a Community and those impacts should be manageable case-by-case.
In my opinion. 'nuff said.

What is there to vote for when you have the best of both world in your second answer? Approval you see their alts, Denial is only the alt. Everyone is happy. Nothing to vote about here. Next question please.

I am talking to persons behind the character - agreed - but sometimes my char is freind of a toon whose owner i definetely do not want to see my alts - especially not my other crafters, even if he could put 2+2 together and guess which these are.

That's the situation I'm in, basically. I would like to be given the -option- to show people all of my characters, or set characters, but sometimes I just want to log on to an alt no one knows about and craft.

Personally i like adding by character, sometimes is nice to hide out on a lowbie alt and not be bothered, but what i would like is for unlimited friends on your list, on eq2 my friends list is full and if i want to add anyone i have to delete somebody, not a fan of soe telling me how many friends im allowed.

Being able to join guilds with multiple characters at once is a great idea. I really like that. Sometimes it's a pain in the *** to get alts into guilds - you should also be able to rank up people's accounts in the guild, as -well- as the individual character. Good for those guilds that have alts the same rank, OR the ones that have them set to alt/lesser status. *snort* Notes of course, are a must.

As far as account based.. I think it should be an option on which characters I show to which person. *shrug* Account based is great, but there's some toons I don't want people to know about so I can go do other stuff or peacefully craft if I'm just not feeling the group thing.

I would like the ability to friend all the characters on my friends accounts, either automatically or given the options if I want to friend all characters or not. However, I would also like the ability to personally hide certain characters from being able to be friended. Sometimes I just want to play a character that no one else really knows.

Definitely this. It's annoying to write down the names, log on to each character and /friend them. Let us import our friends list, at the least.

I would also like my friends list to show which character of MINE that person is friends with.

Say my Druid makes friends with a Mage...if my alt doesn't know that Mage, I would like to introduce myself first...more from a roleplaying standpoint than anything else.

I know a lot of people think roleplaying is stupid, but I think it really adds to the game. I also hope Everquest sticks to it's previously very strict naming policy so we don't have to see people running around named "WienerButt3957"

I'm for option two. I'm talking to the person playing the character, not the character themselves. But there are also times where some privacy might be needed. So it should be a permission based optional scenario.

In my opinion it is best to have options to add friends through their character's name, in which you will only get to see the status (online or offline) of that character only, not the alts and...

another option to add account name. If added through this, you will be able to see your friend's other alternate characters.

What do you mean by invisible mode? So people can't see you if you're online at all? Hm. I'm not sure how I feel about that, honestly. I know the Guides and GMs have been able to do so, but giving that to players might cause issues.

This is slightly different - but I would like the friends I add to my friends list to show on all of my alts, not just the character I used to add them. In EQ2 I have to add them to every alt's friends list. I don't think most people share their accounts, they have separate ones for their other family members especially now with f2p.

I didn't really see the option I would have liked, though I may have misread the available options.

I like the option of playing privately if I'm not feeling particularly social, but I'd like the convenience of having friends I add appear across all my characters rather than having to log into each one and add them manually. If I want my friends to know about my alts, I'll let them know about them.

I read some comments suggesting that it's being dishonest by not being completely up front with all your characters, but it's not that at all for me. I've had more than a few friends that can get overly... I suppose you could kind of say "aggressive" with their desire to chat. And while that's fine normally, I do have my moods where I just don't want to talk to anyone, but they'll keep pushing to the point where I get fed up and quit my gaming session because I don't want to talk and it's making my friends upset that I'm not talking to them.

Alternatively, I can get behind the idea of having all my alts added to friends lists and vice versa as long as I have some sort of "appear offline" option for when I don't want to talk to people and just play.

It's kind of an odd question, isn't it? Although to me, the second option seems to be the obvious one, so I suspect we'll end up seeing debates and such in this thread, too. Still, I wonder if after the hornet's nest they kicked with the gun question, if they were going for an easier question less likely to cause strife.

As with everything else UI related, this should be made optional.

Some people would prefer to keep their characters distinctly separate from each other. Especially if you're say... letting your kid, or spouse play a toon on your account.

Some people don't mind if all their characters on one account are publicly linked.

Provided the option for both.

I would like to see a check list, personally. Give players a couple of options, one for just this character, one for all characters, and for each person you can open up the 'all characters' option and select which toons you want them to be able to see you on. *shrug*