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Tim Tan: The goal was to actually get a bunch of these features in before the end of the year (2007), but unfortunately there was a delay.

In general, we wanted to bring these account services live because they were features that the players were asking for. The three services that we are talking about are character name changes, character gender change, and character server transfers. With character name and gender change being implemented first, we've already made those services live and are giving players the opportunity to implement these in the game.

Players can now switch the genders of their characters.

Concerning the basic rules for each of these account services, gender changes are pretty generic. You can change your character from male to female (or vice versa) and you're free to do that when you want.

Name changes are a bit different from the gender change simply because a player's name (and their clan name) are a bit more important in certain aspects of the game. It means a bit more than being a simple name, especially when you've really done a lot of leveling or PKing with your character. Players earn reputations for themselves, and one of the stipulations the player base really clamored for when we were introducing this service was to give them a look-up feature so they could track down players that have changed their names. At first we'll have a simple list, but as that gets populated we'll eventually have an integrated search feature to find those names.

You see, we want to offer these services to players, but we also want to make sure that the existing customers have some way of tracking down someone that has harassed them in the past. By giving players this option to look up player names, it makes people who want to change their name think twice before actually doing so.

For those individuals that are interested, we've actually put up a pair of pages that feature in-depth looks at how to go about doing both the gender change and the name change. These pages will give you step-by-step instructions on how to purchase the service and implement them on your Lineage II character.

Tim: When you switch over, you'll actually be defaulted to the "A" face/hair selection. However, you can get potions in the game to change your hair and face looks. Players will have a chance to switch their look up in game, thankfully.

Tim: Right now the gender changes is set at $9.99 and the name change is set at $29.99

Tim: Yup. We offer the service, but at the same time we want to protect the player base. It's meant to make players think about it before they go and do something like that.

In the future, if we don't think it's a problem, I can definitely see that price going down. We'll see.

Tim: The big one - character server transfers - will be going live in February. I'm trying to make it earlier than later, but the only target I have right now is February. The rules for character server transfers will be available very soon - before I even announce the actual date - and they'll be available on the website along with the other two rules pages. We can definitely go over some of the basics for your readers.

Once every six months you'll be able to transfer a character to a different server. Unlike some other MMORPGs, you will have to transfer each character individually. Depending on the level of the character, there will be a restriction on the amount of items and Adena that a character can transfer over to a different server. The higher your character level, the more Adena over to a different server. As of right now, there's a pretty heavy restriction on the number of items that can be transferred between servers.

Tim: Anything beyond what they currently have, will be removed. It is in their best interest to warehouse the items and Adena over to another character. The restrictions were designed to pretty much protect the server economies of the servers that are getting the influx of people. There's actually a pretty extensive list of things, but there's a couple other restrictions that are systematically not allowed (clan ties will be severed, etc.).

Tim: Unfortunately, we don't have that in just yet. We'll pretty much have to do that on a case-by-case basis.

Tim: Yes and this will change on a week-by-week basis. For example, if populations are too high on a particular server, we will close off character transfers to that particular server. We will personally determine how these population shifts are going and we'll make our decisions accordingly.

Tim: Correct. Again, the main goal is to protect the players that are currently on the destination server. We do want people to get where they want to be, but at the same time we're going to protect the players that are already playing on those servers. However, this will be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Tim: At this current time, no. There were some theoretical talks about doing character account transfers - transferring a character from one account to another - but that was pretty much rejected because of folks worrying about selling characters. There are times when players might have a secondary character on a different account that they suddenly want to play with more regularly. That'd be one of the reasons to switch accounts with a character.

However, if these current services are popular, we'll see about implementing another round of account services based on our player feedback.

Tim: We had a pretty good mix of new players coming into the world and older players that had taken a break from the game for awhile. It was a pretty large influx of those players coming in and checking it out again.

In my opinion, it has been a successful launch.

Tim: We'll definitely be having more conversations in the coming weeks, so make sure you check back in with us to find out what's going on!

What do you think about the "gender change" account service option? Does a gender change really influence enough people to make it part of the game? Let us know on the forums!