Snow Globe

They can, and so can anyone that can look at some specific unmentionable (on these forums) files. I would say more, but that is specifically off-topic anywhere on these forums. See the following link as to why:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=112831

That is why the suggestion included an activity check.

You honestly can't tell me that there isn't a record of when the character or account has been last logged into. Especially since I can simply look at a SG roster and see characters that have 1,500+ days since their last on date. After 3+ years (approximately 1,100 days), it shouldn't be an issue if the usage rights expires so that another player can use it.

Only problem here is that I didn't start the 100k level 50s comment, Forbin did:
I was being generous in using peak subscription numbers in 2006, around 200k subscribers (info source here: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png ). If I were to use 2008-2009 numbers, the subscriber numbers at the time were 100k-150k, bringing the average number of 50s per account to 1 per subscriber - just under 1 per subscriber instead of 1 per two subscribers.

Thanks for improving my point.

Hey, I was only wrong in being more generous than I should have.

Edit:
And the last time NCsoft published CoH subscription numbers (Q3 2008 Report), the monthly access for September 2008 was 124,939.

It might not help at this point but read this new version of how to duplicate a CoH install:
[Guide] Installing City of Heroes, Beta, & Test From Scratch, the Short(ish) Version

Take a look at what he did with the test version install.

Doesn't solve the issue of there was 100,000 level 50s vs 200,000 accounts. I did not say 100,000 accounts had 100,000 level 50s, only that there was a level 50 for every 2 accounts. Obviously the distribution wasn't every other account having a level 50, and it would take a elementary student to figure that out.

I'll point out that it is a very common way of discussing statistical distribution.

Edit:
Or do you really believe that there were 2.67 persons per household in 1994 (http://www.census.gov/population/www...ile/hhfam.html)? My saying 1 in 2 accounts is a statistical observation, not me claiming that every other account had a level 50. To think that what I said was that every 2nd account had a level 50 is an epic failure to read.

The best way would be to go to their forums:

http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/

I'm sure that they can get the full (and I mean FULL) French and German texts now.

Thanks for the correction. Yes, I meant level 50s.

They didn't get to half a billion by 2008.

So 100,000 characters for approximately 200,000 accounts (at the time). Are you really saying that one 50 for every 2 accounts is a "very small portion"?

While you are not forced to change them the trial accounts have a global name change token available to them to change it. Any trial account could easily change their global name.

It was deliberately crippled from fully freeing up names. The later script runs were even more severely limited (level 5 was possible in under 2 hours).

Because the script was specifically designed to fail to fully address the problem.

As a regular part of server maintenance the database should be purged (not flagged, purged) of characters and global names of long-inactive accounts. 3+ years seems to be a reasonably generous amount of time. Doing so would speed up login as the game doesn't have to sift through an ever increasing amount of data just to go from the server selection to the character screen.

Yes, they deliberately crippled the script. Yes, changing it to 3 years of inactivity cripples the flagging in a different way but should open up more names on an ongoing basis without the need for intervention.

It took me around 500 hours to get to 50 back in Issue 5-7. Not exactly hard. Time consuming, yes, but not hard. Even back in 2005 there were a lot of people with 10+ level 50s. Kheldians weren't exactly hard to find.

Edit:
I mis-remembered when VEATs were introduced. So this part:

Even in the first month of Issue 7 VEATs were around.

Should be replaced with this:

Even in the first month of Issue 7, level 50 Villains were around.

I have at least one popmenu that is 512 lines long (1 popmenu with 13 sub-menus with 36 options).

I'll have to try my large scale test (1409 lines, 1 popmenu with 36 sub-menus with 36 options each) again, as I just noticed it had a formatting problem.

Life is arbitrary. It isn't full of absolutes. Even most things that people accept as absolutes aren't. However it is possible to suggest something that isn't black and white, as in this case.

So what do you want? A suggestion that is absolute or one that gives the developers a starting point to start researching feasibility?

With 3 years, they can query the database and see how many characters will be affected and how many accounts would be affected. They can then adjust the query. They might find out that players aren't returning after a year's absence and set the cutoff lower, they might find that players are gone for 4 just aren't returning, no matter what their hopes were. The game has gone from over 200k at its height, but now is around 100k-120k. If the potential exists as you are suggesting, the current numbers would be higher thanks to the new F2P hybrid model.

The reason that slippery slope arguments are fallacies is that they only see issues as being binary in nature and assume that there is a transition between points A and B.

People for the suggestion are saying 3 years is a middle ground between locking names forever and deleting accounts with more than 90 days of inactivity. It doesn't matter what names are freed up and quality is purely subjective. Quantity might be relevant, but only Paragon Studios will ever know exactly how many names are freed. However what Paragon Studios gets is good customer relations with their prime business target: subscribers. As long as a player subscribes, the player doesn't have to worry about the name policy. If the account doesn't log into the game for 3 years after they STOP subscribing then, and only then, will the name be freed.

Your points boil down to the statements that doing this will be a slippery slope and that 3 years is an arbitrary amount of time. That isn't making any point. All that you are doing is taking a logical fallacy and applying it to the suggestion. At best you are trying to demonize players making the suggestion by calling them thieves.

Character names don't belong to any player.

Lets look at a specific example: a character name is held by @TRIALXXXXX

To have a global name like that, they had to exist prior to the EU server merge. This means that this account has existed for at least a year as a trial account. This account hasn't been logged into or the name would have been changed. Why value this account more than an active account? You claim people are guilty of class discrimination. I'm saying that it just makes business sense to treat your prime customers (active players, especially subscribers [either actively playing or paying] ) better than players that have a non-existent to low chance of ever returning.

No.. By active, I mean that a player puts the minimal effort to log into the game/character once every 3 years. If they fail to do so, it demonstrates that they don't care about the game or the character anymore.

Pot meet kettle.

At this point I care less about your argument than your calling me a thief.

Likewise it isn't YOUR place either. This is the Suggestions & Ideas section, not "Hyperstrike's guard post".

No... you are slapping that label on it. And after 3 years, most people would consider something abandoned. Software lifespan is usually 5 years. After a 7 year absence most government bodies consider you legally dead.

What I'm saying is that Paragon Studios should have a policy that says that if you can't be bothered to log into the game once every 3 years, then your account gets closed without prejudice.

I don't know... I would think plenty of people would accept a 1 in 6 chance to get a name they'd want. It would only increase with time & people leaving the game. Shockingly people do leave the game.

Actually, no... I'm asking for Paragon Studios to reasonably set a minimum amount of activity for both accounts & characters. If the account doesn't show any amount of activity over a generous time span, it should be subject to purging on a regular basis.

Looks at forum section... Yup, Suggestions and Ideas. It isn't being the forum guard to protect Paragon Studios from all that you don't agree with. Th

You and Hyperstrike keep using the terms "stealing" and "theft" without proving any kind of ownership. The names do not belong to accounts. The names belong to Paragon Studios. If you can prove ownership, which the EULA says is grounds for getting the character genericced, then and only then can you show "theft".

After a 6 to 9 year absence I doubt he'd recognize any characters he had, just from a powers aspect. He'd make a new character to play with his son.

Under the suggestion, he'd also have ample opportunity to maintain his names. CoH IS free to play after all. All he'd have to do is log into the game once in a while to keep himself off the longtime inactive list.

For them to own it, they would have to purchase it. In the case of @TRIALXXXXX accounts, they have not purchased anything and they haven't spent any time in the game since their trial account expired. At any rate, no player really owns their character. Players only get a license to use a character (name and all) as long as Paragon Studios wishes. Everyone agrees with this every time the player logs into the game.

I'm not saying that Paragon Studios should take any names from active accounts. Active account = current lessee. If you don't make payments on your car, you get it repossessed. That is what players are asking for in this thread, that the company should repossess the names and make them available to active lessees. The same people are asking to give inactive lessees some consideration in case they are in financial difficulties or serving in the military.

And let's be clear here: the people with long-term inactive accounts are also taking potential away from active accounts. So who is stealing from who again?

Are these long term inactive accounts "customers", yes or no? It is a fairly simple question.

• If they aren't customers, then why are you wasting everyone's time defending them?
• If they are customers what, exactly, are they currently providing to offset delivery of service?
• If they were customers, but are not customers now, then can you offer any data that their worth would be greater than currently active subscribers?

Data storage is data storage.

Open channels give an indication of player activity.

They don't deserve the same consideration because they haven't invested anything into the game, speaking specifically of long inactive trial accounts.

The previously paid, but long dormant, inactive accounts do deserve some consideration. This is why people are suggesting 3+ years of being dormant. This gives consideration for those that might be down financially or serving in the military. It also gives more consideration to those that are currently and actively supporting the game either by paying a subscription, by buying from the Paragon Market, or even by providing player characters for the rest to interact with.

Unless their server contract provides an unlimited amount of storage space, records take space. They have approximately 1.5 million characters across all the servers, if I recall the numbers correctly. Are you trying to say that approximately 250k characters or 1/6th the total amount of characters isn't a waste of space?

I noticed you didn't actually say anything about this.

And to be blunt, I don't care. They are not customers. They aren't "owners" of anything. They do not have any rights to a name if they have abandoned the game. Heck, we don't have any rights to the names. The only group that does have rights in this is Paragon Studios.

Go to your business class and ask which is better: an existing customer or a low-to-nonexistent potential customer. I'm pretty sure the answer you'll get is to look to customer retention.

Customer acquisition is costly. Customer retention is fairly cheap, yet yields good results. This is why Paragon Studios is focused on subscribers as their main income source.

How would you know? All you are expressing is Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The problem with the previous name purges is that it was far too restrictive to be any good. It was designed to fail. It was designed from the ground up not to free a lot of names. They lacked the courage to do right by their actual customers at the time.

The current system is more prone to name-squatting (and I'm as guilty of this on some servers as others) than actual use.

Actually, in one case I do know the player is never returning to City of Heroes. I've been trying to convince him to do so for the last 2 years without success. I'm sure that a few players will be mad at losing a name they abandoned 3+ years ago. The same type of person will be annoyed that they lost a piece of paper after someone cleans up after they've hoarded piles of junk for years.

Can you give a single reason why these people should be catered to?

In your opinion. That opinion isn't universal to the game, or even a majority of the game. I'm not fooling myself in thinking that a majority share my opinion that long time inactive accounts should be purged either. Most players would likely fall between the two opinions. A minority would push beyond either opinion.

Freeing names would leave a more favorable impression on new players when they get a name they want rather than a name they've settled on.

So what? The company isn't obligated to keep that policy. Besides which, most people that kept names 6+ years have paid for that. That snowstorm company with the 800-pound orc in the MMO room has a 3 month "use it or lose it" policy.

It can't be taken from them if they are actively playing. You are making excuses for players that couldn't be bothered to play a free game. They aren't customers. They aren't even potential customers at this point. They are dead data.

And you should know better than to confuse active content usage with data storage.

Okay, the developers have put the channel timeout command in game to automatically purge channels of accounts that don't log in during a specified time. With a 6 month inactivity purge Triumph's largest channel went from nearly 2,500 accounts to well under 1,000. So roughly 1,500 accounts went dark. That is roughly 18,000 characters at 12 characters per account. Now multiply that by 14 servers. Now we're talking about a quarter-million characters, if not more.

No, I get that you believe that your definition of the argument is valid, however you have completely failed to establish why these former players (some not even customers) deserve any consideration. You are trying to say that these people should have more rights than an active player (whether paying or not).

Where, exactly, should Paragon Studios draw the line? Should they be forced to preserve a resource drain until they close the doors? Take a look at what they are doing with the localization to French & German, and those are active AND paying subscribers. You seem to think that more rights should be applied to accounts that have been essentially dead for the past 3+ years? Give me a break.

What if the player is dead? Are they ever coming back to play the game? Do they care if someone can get "their" name? Should we bar another player the use of the name?

Yeah, I should have been clearer.

From most to least rights:

1. Active Subscriber
2. Inactive, but paying subscriber (ie. still have an active account, but not playing currently)
3. Active non-paying player
   --------------------------
4. Inactive non-paying player
5. Inactive trial account

Groups 1-3 should have precedence over 4-5. Group 4 should have a grace period before being declared inactive, hence the 3 year time frame. This means that military personnel won't be subject to a purge (a sticking point in the past).

I'm saying that there should be a cut-off. I'm willing to pin down that cut-off because I don't think that Paragon Studios should continue to waste resources on accounts that will never come back. Even if they do come back it is unlikely that they will even remember the characters that were removed.

And to be really clear as to how I feel, groups 4 & 5 should have the characters purged from the database(s). The have ceased to be potential customers after 3+ years of inactivity.

I don't think anyone could reasonably expect to keep a name after 3 years of not playing the game. Especially with the free activation weekends and the Free2Play aspect that Issue 21 brought. If the player left due to financial reasons, they don't have an excuse for not coming back by now.

Edit:
A friend of mine left this game a couple years ago, but forgot to cancel auto-billing. He finally got around to doing so last summer. He is never coming back to CoH... Ever. He's pretty much told me that I can use the account as I see fit (I've left it alone).

I don't particularly want a name taken by an active player. However a trial account abandoned before the EU server merge? That account has no rights over a paying customer. Paragon Studios has no obligation to keep the trial account's names in perpetuity. Note: I didn't want the name I checked that had the @TRIALXXXXX account, but I didn't think it fair to other players that someone that couldn't be bothered to subscribe would prevent a paying subscriber from getting a name they might want.

Actually I'm talking almost purely from a fiscal standpoint for the well-being of Paragon Studios. After 3 years the player is not a customer. Other MMOs understand this. In fact the "big orc" on the MMO block purges accounts after 90 days of inactivity. Those accounts need to be played for 2 hours within the first 48 hours to be "registered". As to the characters, they need to be logged into once per 10 days until the character's time has exceeded 2 hours. After that the character needs to be logged into once per 90 days.

Characters take storage. Even though storage is a tiny cost to the servers, it is still a cost. This is an area that Paragon Studios can save money with. Almost everyone has run into a storage limit somewhere. At that point you have 2 choices: buy a larger amount of storage or purge something. At some point the company needs to cease being a hoarder and clear out dead accounts.

Right back at you.

Actually, no it isn't 5 minutes people are talking about. In this thread, it is 3 years. Before you say that isn't reasonable, I'll point out that if a car is "parked" out on a lawn and left to rust for 3 years, most jurisdictions will tow the car away as junk (and fine the "owner"). Just because you take something to a ludicrous extreme doesn't mean that your example applies.

No, your basic argument is insulting. It also doesn't apply to my argument in the slightest.

I'm glad that helped you solve the mystery. The assigned slots will stay on the server you have assigned them to. You have 3 slots to put on any server (except Exalted, unless you become a VIP again).

I would recommend to anyone to NOT assign slots to Exalted if you even think you might go Free2Play. The reason is that you can potentially assign slots you can't use in that case.

Not so, I recently stumbled across a name taken by a trialXXXXX account.

This.

The bottom line is that if someone can't be bothered to sign in after 3 years, they aren't coming back.

• They have ceased to be customers.
• They are costing Paragon Studios in storage space that Paragon Studios will never get back.
• They are gone longer than the maximum amount that a channel admin can set for auto-booting.

Last I've seen was "we have no plans to run it again at this time or in the near future"

Freedom gave 2 global slots, however once assigned they become server slots.

Questions for you to help everyone:

• How many slots did you buy?
• How many extra slots did you have before Issue 21?
• Can you do a /mypurchases command (check out "A guide to finding out what you have unlocked from the market." for how to use easier) in-game and look for the line "Character slots" It should tell you how many you've got vs how many used on your account.

Which I've been posting about whenever the subject comes up for at least 3 years now... With some directions.

Actually it is the Nemesis Rex mini-arc.

No, it has to do with how he has a ton of missions and the game randomizes which one he gives (other than the main arc).

Actually, with the difficulty sliders, you can set to -1, +1, or +3 and x8 to get the maximum number of Fake Nemesis and Fake Nemesis Rex (they count too) spawns.

Players don't have to quit the team, the mission can be reset as long as everyone is off the map. The mission holder (with the right difficulty) should enter the map first. Also with my method in the second link below, you can do it solo (though you do need someone to invite you back to the mission if you want it on another character on your account). It also works for both heroes AND villains, if the villain uses the zone portal from RWZ to the Rogue Isles (still counts as a transport hub). I suspect the new Tunnel System would work as well for villains.

Personally I've saved this mission on one character since late 2005 to help others with the badge (needed at least 4 players before the difficulty slider change). The best part with how missions work is that the mission stays at the level it was picked up, but the team is sk'd to the mission holder's current level. So a level 40-45 mission vs level 49-50 characters. It makes things quicker.

My previous posts on the subject:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3895360

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=3621130

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=2763410

The original poster might want to take a look at this post:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=2452610

It has tips where to find the critters for the various accolades.

These:

• Free players may now be invited into SuperGroups. (Free players still cannot create SuperGroups.)
• The Looking for Group chat channel has been added to the game.