I like them in theory, but not so much in practice. A few reasons:

1) Barrier to entry: If someone pops by, you don't want them to have to spend a ton of time registering. You want them to start doing the fun stuff. This can be waived by making the account system optional or delayed, but then the account system loses the utility of keeping away griefers, etc.

2) The Rich Get Richer: Experienced players already have a tremendous advantage over newer players. I don't want to supplement this advantage by letting them start new characters with built-in character perks (the extra race, equipment, status, etc. you mention) which would further exaggerate the gap in player skill.

3) Preaching to the Choir: The kinds of players who would make use of the account system aren't the ones who cause you to put one in. Anyone who cheats, griefs, harasses, or otherwise detracts from the game is just going to register multiple accounts, or ignore the system if it's optional. You can make this painful by linking rewards to a "clean", established account, but then you run into the aforementioned rich-get-richer effect that much harder.

4) The Black Cloud: As Nepenthe recently mentioned on the Battlefield, we make it deliberately difficult to track a player from one character to the next. (Some players give themselves away by repeating the same mistakes, but that's not our problem.) Only a few Immortals have the archival access to reliably do that sort of thing. If you do this too well, you create a system where people can coast on reputation, or can't recover from their mistakes. Countless examples exist of players who were on a ####list at one point, but later quietly turned into well-respected members of the CF community. On the flip side, if an otherwise solid player makes a "throwaway" character, he or she shouldn't be protected from being, well, thrown away.

I like account systems from an organizational standpoint, but I feel like if we implemented one that was safe from the above four concerns, it would end up being a product with only cosmetic utility, and I can't justify committing the resources which it would require.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com