hmm on runescape I had one character since I could freely do everything with no restrictions whatsoever.
On trickster online, it was class base with gender lock. But depending on the skills you invested and your build.. you could make quite a few different character in the same class. The system had 4 main class, Power, Sence, Magic and Defence, each with eitheer a female and a male counterpart that had access to different skills and some similar skills. Because I just HATE playing males, I made 15 characters, 14 female and one male who looked like a girl. They were all very different than each others despite some been of the exact same character base. I also had a lot of fun going against the player design "Do-It-To-Win-The-Game" builds and still be very functionnal in the game.
in Grand chase, I mostly only played with Amy the Bard class character. But I was still effician with all the other class.
In Mabinogi, I came up to a current total of 15 characters, each different than the other in how they fight. While their level isn't all that high, togeter I get around 9850 lvls. I have a lot of fun with them and they teach me stuff people wouldn't learn by investing everything in one character only
Lol even on runescape I had more than one character!