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

I believe friend's list should be both. Account for RL/good friends and guild mates... and character for people of whom you don't know to well and have just grouped with them every so often but have no real connection personally to that individual. You could impose a promotion system of sorts, Kind of like Facebook has the option for you to sort your friends out between close friends and regular friends, the better the friend status the more you follow that person so on and so forth.

I personally would prefer friends lists to be character based, the main reason for this is that I generally prefer to have my characters separate. An example of an issue that I have had in some games has been people bugging you to log into characters that you just do not want to play, at times you just want a break from your main and in old games if you played a healer/tank you were in high demand and once people got to know you, then people kept bugging you to play those characters....

In a game where one character can do everything and be every class and craft all the crafts it seems strange to have "account" based friends. You will likely spend a lot of time on your one main character because they are trying to get rid of the need or desire to play alts. Perhaps character based is best then since if I decide to switch toons it's either for aesthetic reasons or because I don't like the people that are currently on or perhaps I just want to change servers quick and experience the rally quest of that other server and what they are up to on my other dudes. I'm thinking character based is the way to go!

account based, I dont really see the need for people to be spying in the game...

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I think it would be that much better and easier if the friend list were account-wide.
There should be, however, a way of being invisible to some people, or on some characters.

Of course, if someone friends you, they would need your permission in order to become a friend and see if you are online or not.

Anything to help build a community is a plus but it should always be in control of the person being sent the invite!

It is also a way for people to avoid being spied on. If I don't want to be found, I can log in on a different toon. If it is account based, then I can't really disappear.

Personally, I have several accounts, but the idea is still there.

Friending accounts is convenient, But I also think a friend list unique to a character should be an option. People should have an option to hide their playing activity from friends.

I'm not sure why we can't have it all. I would like to be able to let guildies see me and all my alts when I am on in case they need to get a hold of me. But I also want the option of creating invisible toons that don't appear to be tied to my account. So if my guild is raiding and I choose not to go and don't want to get yelled at by officers, I can log on my invisible toon and play him. Have the option to add just this toon to a friends list and see him.

In this way you can choose to add either a specific character or an entire account ( minus the toons that have opted to be hidden from your account ) This shouldn't take that much more coding to put in.

character all the way!

I would like to have 2 separate friends lists, one that i add my real life friends and I get to see all their characters they make, and one in game that is that character specific and i add people I meet in game to that

Account based is great it saves a lot of hassle and effort, and out weighs the negatives imo.

Why not provide the user with the capability to add friends by either account or character?

Code:

/friend <friend> -add -account
/friend <friend> -add -character
/friend <friend> -remove -account
/friend <friend> -remove -character

Hmm. Won't they just do this with your main character anyways?
Ask you to switch to healer if you aren't playing a healer?

I see what you are saying here and my comment is actually more to Paynegiver than yours, but they are sort of connected.

In a game where a tank or a healer is in high demand, sure, they would ask you to either switch to that character or change your class (or spec).

But aren't we past that notion by now?

If you have two characters and your guild wants you to log in the one that have unlocked several top tier classes and he gear that goes with it, I dont think that would be totally out of place.

I agree with Whaxx.

I support having the option to participate in account-based friends list by invitation. That being said, not everyone wants to be sociable all the time (including myself).

A good way to accomplish this would be to have an "Include/Do NOT Include in Account-based Friends Lists" option right at Character Creation. That way, I can be online in a stealth kind of way if that's how I'm feeling at the time.

Too much work for too little payoff. And what if you want to have two groups - say crafter characters and adventure characters - which group do you make the 'account wide' friends? What if you want to change your mind?

Character based all the way. If I want to add you to all my characters' friends lists it only takes me a minute or two. If I want to tell you the names of other characters I play, I can. Character based is the only choice that leaves the choice in the hands of the player.

I don't see why it has to be one or the other. Why not have the option to add someone's account name or their character name? The UI should be able to tell the difference, or it can have separate methods for entering the two types of names. Pretty sure other games allow this now.

One thing I like that another game does account-wide is guild membership - it can be a pain to add every alt to a guild. I can see how some people would hate that, though. Maybe make that an option as well, to join your account, or just your character to a guild?

Also, especially for the account-level friends, it would be nice to have an option to log in as invisible, if we wanted to just hop in for a bit of solo time. Invisible to everyone, not specific friends, that'd get complicated, but just an "offline to everyone" checkbox somewhere during login, and in the game UI, would be nice.

Do that and lots of guild leaders with way too much ego will start requiring you to join as an account wide member (many try to now anyway, though it's not easily enforcable.). Everything you want to do with account wide friends lists can be done with bit more trouble with character friends lists.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.