I agree to a point. The reason Square is charging for extra characters is to keep the conquest system as preserved as possible. During the beta people would make extra characters and join an opposing nation and then set themselves up in a "death loop" in an area controlled by that nation. This would cause that nation, after enough deaths, to lose to lose control of that area to the beastmen, and thus help their "true" nation become first in the conquest system. Square's hope is that people won't want to spend the extra $1 to do that. I'm sure people still will, but it should act as somewhat of a deterence.

It's also important to keep in mind that race is the ONLY thing that can't be changed. Job, nation, etc., are all things that a character can change, and so the variety of having multiple characters can exist in having only one.

A lot of people think that Square charges the extra $1 because it takes up more space on their harddrives or that Square is only out to make money and doesn't care that we're poor. These aren't the really the case. Extra characters don't take up any noticable space or really cost any extra money for Square to deal with them, and while I'm sure Square isn't complaining about getting an extra $1 from it's subscribers, I have too much respect for Square to think of them as profiteering gluttons.

This is not by any means a perfect solution because it penalizes those of us who aren't going to use exra characters to "cheat" the conquest system in this manner. But at the same time it's not overly unreasonable either. So yeah, I'm sick of typing now.

Leighton