Feedback:User/Jette/Import old characters

I know no less than 7 people (and for me, talking to seven people is like talking to ~45 for most people) who will not be buying GW2 entirely because they cannot import their old characters. Before anyone says or thinks anything about it "not making sense," it's not supposed to make sense. Letting players use their old characters is fan service, which is not at all supposed to make sense. It's "a wizard did it" no matter what justification you use, but for convenience, I have prepared a list (but if you don't like these, look here for some more, but be prepared to lose half your day if you click that link):
 * Asuran cryonics.
 * Renew Life.
 * Summoning from the Hall of Heroes.
 * Back in pog form.
 * GM wankery.
 * I have more, just ask.

It's not like you'd be pioneering some brave new frontier, either; look at brawl, SvC, Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia, they're based entirely on bringing characters from entirely different universes (and companies) together for shenanigans (though I should point out I avoid console games like the fucking plague, for a variety of reasons). My point here is that a lot of players are somewhat attached to their characters and refusing to allow them to be imported (even at low level, with only the equipment you're allowed to grab from the HoM, or whatever beginner equipment you feel like) is going to push a lot of your current players away, even if you can use the same names.

Implementation
After some none additional thought, I thought it might be good to mention that this could be sort of a "second way in" to the game: importing a character at level 20 might be thought of as approximately equivalent to entering Istan from Lion's Arch. You start in a high-end part of the game, missing the "scrub-friendly" areas. If necessary, you could require a person to either beat the game or at least get to this "merge point" once on a fresh GW2-only character before allowing them to import characters, so that people, y'know, figure out how the game works.

I'd also like the time to ask who thought it was a good idea to put the Hall of Monuments on ice? I mean, what the hell? You walk up to the thing and it's like "oh look, somebody build this giant-ass golden monolith on a frozen lake. THIS LOOKS STRUCTURALLY SOUND!  LET'S TAKE A LOOK INSIDE!" Yeah, okay. –Jette 23:39, 18 October 2009 (UTC)