By way of Ripten comes the story of "Bradster," who claims to play 36 separate World of Warcraft accounts on 11 computers, dropping nearly six grand per year in subscription fees.
If the picture at left is genuine, it's quite a hardware setup.
Of his obsession, Bradster writes:
A lot have asked me, why create so many? The main reason is to invade Stormwind and Ironforge when they reach top level. I’m sure the Alliance will put up a big fight when that happens. We’ll see how it goes...
It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule. Not bad considering I’m looking at it like it’s a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft... When Wrath of the Lich King is released, I plan to be at the store when it opens and will purchase 36 copies of it. With tax, it should be about $1500 for all of them...
Via: Gizmodo
GP: I've seen individual WoW players control a chain of characters before, but 36? Sounds almost superhuman.
Well, what do you expect? Play-on-demand is actually quite low in todays MMOs (not only WoW) since a lot of game time is actually spent waiting for people to gather (fly) - the solution in many games is to own more than one accounts.
In EVE Online you get the same thing if you subscribe for "the power of two", you get a secondary character which can haul the ore you mined with your primary acc. (just an example).
The underlying conflict of interest (again) is a particularly nasty one - if we are supposed to buy another acc. due to game mechanics, what is to stop all the game devs. out there from intentionally designing their games in such a way to make it practically impossible to play the bloody game without possessing additional accounts?
Once again a fine example of creating a need and then selling your product.
Once again it is disgusting.