it's hard to understand why they continue to make people pay for something, when privacy settings are constantly getting cranked up by the users. why let people hide stuff? it's just general character information. if hiding alts is a concern, then just remove the alts feature.
and look, WoW has a better version that is completely free:
The World of Warcraft Armory
you don't even need to login an account to check out their cool items and see the characters. there's even a "search for upgrade" link next to each piece of gear a player is wearing.
p.s. the WoW armory is still in beta, and it rocks the buggy eq2players site's world. the WoW community site (
World of Warcraft Community Site) is so much more useful and interesting than the eq2 website. go check it out.