GreySquirrel

Agreed. I won't say I know their job better than them, but I manipulate database scripts all day, so barring the possibility that Cryptic built the database on a totally foreign platform from all existing ones, and used their own arcane language to do it where 'e' is typed as fbu%^%&b, then it shouldn't be -all- that much work. How much work that is though compared to what they have now, I won't guess at.

The other objection to this would be (and this is an assumption, but it seems a fairly safe one, given that it is made whenever CO's system comes up) that people don't really want to share names. Such as, you level a character named Death Knell to 50, and have a good reputation, and then someone else makes one, becomes a griefer, and unless someone can remember the full Dark Salacious Fearful Death Knell then the newer Dark Fearful Salacious Death Knell could ruin a reputation.

(Last reply for the night, as I'm up way too late and want to miss the sun. This argument against CO's system just came up tonight, which is why I'm mentioning it.)

So we're basically looking at a replacement of the title system that's in the game now, correct? It seems like it would be a bit unwieldy to have The Dark Salacious Fearful Death Knell. I can't remember if those are actual titles or not, but you get my drift?

Keep in mind, they'd have to miss every free reactivation weekend for two years to not have their names re-reserved. The amount of names we'd get back is an unknown factor, but with somewhere in the neighbourhood of at least 75,000 inactive accounts, I think we'd get a lot of names freed up. There are a lot of old accounts out there that don't even have globals still; its a fairly safe bet that they're not going to be coming back for the most part.

*resists the urge to be overly snarky*

This has all been addressed in the proposal Ascendant made, so it really serves no purpose to continue bringing it up. I realise not everyone reads every post on the thread though, so I've summarised it in the original post. You should take a look.

I see. Not quite what I was thinking. It sounds as though it would work,though. I only see one problem with this, and that is that every character a person has doesn't neccesarily work with one suffix. For instance. If I choose "The Fearful" as my suffix, I could have "The Fearful Night Stalker" and the "The Fearful Death Knell" but "The Fearful Sunflare" doesn't really work. I realise its a cosmetic thing, really, but that's the type of thing I think that would bug a lot of people, given the amount of talk I hear about the lack of certain types of titles.

One solution I see is that there could be an option not to have it show up, but that option would need to be on the players end, or else I'd see "Sunflare" and everyone else would see "The Fearful Sunflare". (Which is why CO's system didn't really work out.)

Both of these are actually good suggestions. I'd be up for both, actually. No reason to exclude more prefixes if it increases the available names. I'm not sure it would do a lot, but even if not, it would help. What type of prefixes are we actually talking about, just the normal Dr., Mrs., etc?

Again, the point of this thread is to come up with alternatives to the current system.

That is generally the first step in any process. You examine your alternatives, and once you have an alternative that seems workable, then you compare it to the current process. This is generally a step that is -always- going at most companies in one area or another. If it doesn't happen, things get outdated and sooner or later fall apart. Do things always change? No. But to assume that things don't always change means that no change is ever considered is not accurate.

No one who's actually involved in the actual topic of the thread is trying to make a decision for NCSoft, but much in the same vein as actually naming a character, the more people thinking about an issue, the more ideas you get, and the more likely you are to find an idea that you like.

If they're willing to use that, then sure, I see no problem with it. Anything is better than letting names languish for an indeterminate period of time for players who have no interest in coming back for them. This might be a little more complicated to implement, but then they've started up some other stuff recently that they said they'd never be able to do.

Exactly what I've been saying. Thanks.

Then perhaps your language use should improve as well as your grip on reality.

Your guess would be wrong. It is up to the person making each individual argument to prove the merit of the argument. If you don't like having to back up your side of the argument, then don't be surprised when it's pushed back on. However, you're also totally ignoring the other side of the argument. The proposal that Ascendant mentioned, and that's been added onto totally invalidates the entirety of what you've said. So, please, either stay on topic, or start another thread, but don't keep harping on the same point over and over again when its totally irrelevant anyway.

When someone who has an MBA and a red forum name comes and says 'this is a good business idea' or 'this isn't a good business idea' then that will be that, but until then, any claim to business sense is spurious at best.

In addition, if you're going to point to the status quo, then you need to come to terms with the status quo not being what you say it is. The Devs have done name releases in the past. They have never said they won't do it again. They have, however, stated they would only do one when they felt it was a good idea. So the status quo is this:

Name releases are done at irregular intervals.

If you feel inconsistency is better that a consistent system, then by all means, say so, but don't represent things as facts when they aren't.

And please, try to get back on topic.

Actually what you've been saying is that there's no need to get proof at all, since you're not wanting to change things. That is simply false, and rather naive. Proof is needed on both sides. If you could go out and get the info to prove that NCSoft than keeping the names is more beneficial than releasing them, that's fantastic.

And in this case there's miniscule risk at all that those players would be 'lost' because they more then likely won't come back anyway. They've pretty much shown that already. For there to be any real risk, there would need to be proof that a significant number would actually return. That proof doesn't exist at present. If and when it does, this argument becomes relevant again.

In a case where one was able to go out and find the info needed, there'd be no running around at all. However, this brings me back to the point I've stated several times previously. The purpose of this thread is to get people's opinions on it, not to try and make any business decision. It's a bit naive to think that any of us could make a good business decision with the facts in hand. This is just a first step in bringing the matter to the dev's attention, if they're not already thinking about it, and letting them make the decision. To think that we can make it it pointless without the kind of information that only they would be able to get. Keep posting though, because the more posts we have, and the longer we stay on the front page, the greater the likelihood is that it gets noticed!

Yes, I did. Problem is, the first bit of your post didn't agree with the second bit. When considering an issue, you should never have a 'default'. Whichever direction is chosen, whether to change, or not to change, should be made because its a good reason with supporting evidence. Not changing without a good reason is just as silly as changing without a good reason. Changing because of an hypothetical is the only time change ever happens. Even with surveys and polls and such, at the end of it all, you have an hypothetical, and it will remain that way until someone invents a time machine and goes to check for themselves what the results will be. Anyone who behaves otherwise is perfectly free to do so, but I like logic.

Actually, 'we should do it this way because we've always done it this way,' Is the type of attitude that caused the downfall of a lot of major companies. Ford lost the stranglehold it had on the auto-industry because of it. IBM lost its lion's share of the computer market because of it. We've all just seen the downfall of more than a few large banks because of this. In any scenario, it is of equal importance to consider why you want to keep things the same just as much as you should consider why you want to change them. 'We should do it this way because we've always done it this way,' is never a valid reason for anything.

I'll have to check that out, then. It sounds familiar, but I'm not sure...

This is why I've stated before that it would be better if this thread left 'business' out of it, and simply gave their opinion as to whether they would like to see a name release or not. I'm perfectly happy to leave the actual business decision up to NCSoft.

It'd be much more than that, actually, but its not really a potential loss. First of all, there's the assumption that all those players will come back. Since CoV launched, there's been only 3 quarters that have seen a net gain in players, and they were small gains at that. Anyone who counts on all those people coming back after that length of time is being overly-optimistic. At this point, those players that have left for over two years can safely be called a realised loss. To illustrate: If I bet you five dollars per person that those players wouldn't come back, I'd lose individually on some, but I'd gain in the end, because I'd win many more bets than I'd lose. If it were me, I'd try to keep the people here now happy, because that's guaranteed. The inability to grab a name may not be enough in and of itself to cause people to quit, but it will contribute to the general ennui that players feel after an extended time with any game.

I didn't count, but there were a good number that said that's why they'd taken breaks before, and came back when they a) had new ideas, or b) got bored with wherever they were at in the meantime. Not all of that lost revenue would have been saved by haveing more names available, but its likely that some of it would.

Very true. As with most large companies though, they don't look at everything all at once, and seeing the subject here in the forums, might serve to give them a reason to look at it themselves. That's why I started the thread. So keep contributing, whether you agree or not, and hopefully it will grab their attention sooner or later.