Alright so my brother tried to log on to his newly-created account and it gave him the error "You cannot create any more free accounts from this computer." Apparently the game (or server, I wouldn't know) logs which accounts have logged-on from a certain system and assumes that every account accessed from said system pertains to the same human being.
I was the first to log on to my own account from the computer (my computer), then my sister, but now my brother can't? I understand what the message is saying, but what I don't understand is how multiple players in the same house are supposed to play (on the same computer) if they can't even log on to their own account? I am not talking about all playing at once or playing from multiple accounts on the same computer, I'm talking about one person playing and logging off, then another at a different time, and so on.
Say a house has 3 kids but only one computer, for example. How are all 3 supposed to play? Luckily me and my siblings were able to get around this because we have multiple computers (it's not preferable but at least we can play). But is there a fair and efficient solution to this? If not, then how does one "remove" account access from a certain computer? Because my sister's is still "listed" on my computer, but she uses a different computer now and so it's pointless to waste that access slot on my computer. :/
Probably the easiest way is to send in 75 cents and change an account to paid.
The next way? YPP timed out the creation at 3 months. You could make any number of accounts you wanted, you could only make three accounts per machine per three months. If I recall correctly, the stated reason was to eliminate forage alts. Not only did it not do that, forage alts were eliminated with the forage puzzle, the changes to the floating system, the changes to where the foraging versus the sailing/selling took place, etc.
Frankly, I don't see any valid reason for restricting account creation.
"But someone can play the game without paying more". Yes. So?
High-end activity takes more than 100 energy. That's the item (game play) being sold. Not the introductory level stuff that is played on mist energy.
What if someone made a bunch of accounts, and built them all up to emberlight level, and "gold farms" a bunch of runs, none of which makes it to the core, but produce a large amount of crowns to then trade to one character, and toss at the exchange? Yea, that could be a problem.
What's the solution?
Frankly, I think the real problem isn't having tons of accounts or tons of characters.
I think the real problem is running tons of characters on one machine.
Limit mist recharge based on where the characters were run to spend it.
5 accounts running on one machine? They'll share that 100 mist per day recharge.
Play once a week? Drain all five accounts on a weekend, and then not touch the game until the next weekend? Then you've played 500 energy in a week. Someone else plays 700 energy in a week on one account. How is the 5 account multi-account user any worse than the single account daily player?