What a Second Account Costs in Forever
A second game licence is one of the few roster decisions that is bought rather than played. It adds profession slots and a character that can stand next to your main instead of waiting in the mailbox. This is what it separates, what can cross between the 2 accounts, and which Legacy questions are still unanswered.
A second licence is a second character list
A second account in Forever is a second game licence sitting under the same Battle.net login. It has its own character list, its own bank, its own mail queue and its own subscription line. Nothing on it starts ahead: every character begins at level 1, in the same world, under the same rules as the first one. What it buys is not progress but parallel capacity - more slots to hold professions, and characters that can be online at the same time as the ones you already play.
The profession arithmetic is the part most rosters look at first. One account already allows a spread of gathering and crafting across its characters, and professions spread across an alt roster is the usual way of covering a supply chain without paying another player for materials. A second licence widens that spread rather than deepening it: the same trades, in more hands, feeding the same crafter. Whether that is worth a second subscription depends mostly on how much of your own supply you are currently buying off the shelf.
What can move between the 2 accounts
Mail is the main channel, and it is narrower than people expect. Gold and bind-on-equip goods travel; anything soulbound does not, so gear a character has already equipped stays where it is. Inside a single account, mail across your own roster is the cheap internal transport most bank setups are built on. Between 2 separate licences the parcel is an ordinary player-to-player letter, which in the Classic line means a delivery delay rather than an instant hand-off. We have not seen the Forever timing confirmed and will not state a figure for it.
The structural difference runs the other way as well. Characters on one account can never be online together, so every hand-off between them goes through the mailbox. Two licences can both be logged in, which makes face-to-face trade, in-person buffs and 2-character groups possible. That is what turns a second account into a farming partner rather than a storage shed: a gatherer and a crafter in the same zone, a warlock summon between characters, or a pair clearing what a solo character cannot. How far that is taken is a multiboxing rules in Forever question, and that is policy rather than economics.
What the second account costs before it pays
The bill has 3 parts and only one of them is the subscription. The second is time: every character on the new licence has to be levelled before it gathers anything worth mailing, and levelling pace against gold earned decides how many evenings that takes. The third is equipment - bags, bank slots and the small purchases any working character needs before a route pays for itself. That third line is the one people forget, and what starting an alt costs applies per character rather than per account.
Against that sits the income side. A second licence lets a bank character hold auction duty while the main is out of town, which is the role a network of bank characters already plays on a single account, only without the login swap. It also changes what a farming hour looks like, since farming in a pair against solo returns a different amount on the same route. Our reading is that the second account pays for players who craft in volume and sits idle for players who do not.
What we have not seen confirmed
Forever carries a second ledger beside gold: Legacy Points, earned by playing and spent inside the systems that recognise them. Whether that ledger is held per character, per licence, or shared across everything under one login is the question that decides most of this page, and we have not seen it answered in a form we would quote. What Legacy Points and gold sets out is the ledger itself; its scope across 2 accounts is still open, and we are not going to guess at it.
The same gap applies to the profession side. Legacy perks attached to professions are described as something a character carries forward, and carrying forward across a licence boundary is a different claim from carrying forward across characters on one account. Until there is a published answer, the steady plan is to treat a second account as extra hands with no shared progress attached, and to count any wider ledger as a bonus if it turns up after 4 November.
Questions
Does a second account share Legacy progress with the first?
We do not know. The scope of the Legacy ledger across separate game licences has not been published in a form we would quote, so the safe assumption is that a second account starts with nothing carried over, and anything wider is a bonus rather than a plan.
Can I mail soulbound gear to my other account?
No. Soulbound items do not leave the character that bound them, on either account. Gold and bind-on-equip goods can be mailed, which covers materials, stock and coin but not the gear a character is already wearing.
Can both accounts be online at the same time?
Yes, 2 separate licences can be logged in together, and that is the main practical difference from alts on one account. It allows face-to-face trade, buffs, summons and 2-character groups, none of which are possible between characters sharing a single licence.
Is a second account cheaper than buying materials from other players?
That depends on how much you currently buy and how many evenings you can give to levelling the new characters. We publish no figures for either side of that comparison, so treat it as a question about your own crafting volume rather than a rule that holds for everyone.
Sources
- Blizzard account documentation, for how separate game licences sit under one Battle.net login — Blizzard Support.
- Classic discussion forum, where beta players compare notes on how Legacy progression is held — WoW Classic forums.