cast spells, for example), and a player may want to create several characters to explore all of the possibilities. Multis can also help a player accumulate loot for his main character more quickly. The act of playing several characters at once is called multiing. Multiing creates several gameplay problems, especially if these characters begin to interact with each other. Weaker multis could gather items in several areas and send them to the main character, so that the main character would get much more loot than if he would search for it singly. In the games where multiing can get serious benefits for a player, it is looked down upon by purists and is considered a form of cheating. For example, in Kingdom of Loathing using multis for profit is a punishable offense. Mules One of the most common uses for a multi is to act as a beast of burden, a "mule", for a main character. Rather than using this character to actively participate in the game, the player who controls it just needs a way to hold and transport goods, and perhaps to obtain more of some resources which are limited for each character by the game rules. Many gamers regard the need for or use of mules in a game as a design flaw. In the game Diablo II 'mules' are sometimes used to 'smuggle' items from Diablo II Classic to Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, the game's expansion—some items do not exist in both games. This type of smuggling is a one-way venture, as characters cannot make the return trip from Lord of Destruction to the 'classic version'. The use of mules in this manner circumvents the intended inability of characters to move freely from one version to the other, and some players consider this a 'cheat'. However, the use of mules is not universally frowned upon. In fact, in games such as Final Fantasy XI, it may be considered a marketing scheme. Final Fantasy XI permits one character for the monthly rate, and additional characters for $1.00 per month, whereas most games provide multiple character slots for no additional fee. The use of mules in Eve Online is commonplace for a variety of reasons, one common purpose is to allow players whose main character is involved in piracy to transport and trade the spoils of their piracy in high security trading systems, where the pirate character