TrueGentleman

I believe Ch'p, B'dg, B'Shi, Dkrtzy RRR, and Zghithii would like to have a word once the premiere of the Green Lantern movie has let out.

Actually, that's not the case in either example I was thinking of.

Your mileage may vary, especially if your tongue doesn't fit comfortably in your cheek*. For my tastes, it's less silly than the average Bond girl. Add an illustration by Howard Chaykin or Brian Bolland, and hey presto, a post-modern neo-noir heroine.

EDIT: And here she is, freshly created on Virtue (where, go figure, the name "Carrot" has already been taken).


My basic point is that what might seem like an obstacle may turn into a springboard.


* And if so, why play a fundamentally unrealistic game like a superhero MMO?

"Codename Carrot-top" - This buxom flame-haired femme fatale may seem like a girl who's only looking for a good man and good time, but any enemy agent who's caught on the wrong side of her twin forty-fives can expect to be planted in the ground before morning.

It's all in the execution. An ironic name can work just as well as a standard-issue Something Person construction.

As opposed to Mxyzptlk the fifth-dimensional sorcerer? In my own limited experience, I've played a couple of fantasy MMOs with very specific qualities to their IP that actually gave me more trouble with names than anything I've encountered in the comparative freedom of the superhero genre. When literally anything can be a superhero name*, it seems a pity to detract from one's potential fun by getting hung up on a handful of them.


* Off the top of my head, I can think of two that have "Carrot" in them. Try getting away with that in a typical "orcs 'n' dorks" fantasy setting.

And that's a perfectly valid personal position to take. If the name purge issue were a customer service complaint, Zwillinger has handled the official response with professional aplomb (confirming the company is listening to the customer, stating clearly the company's course of action, and then ending the communication without escalation). The OP's petition, however, was made on behalf of "many people", which turns out to be much more varied, both here on the forums and in the wider population of subscribers, former subscribers, and potential subscribers that Paragon has to take into account when making a business decision.

This is what "noncustomers" referred to:
Others have taken this line in this thread, and it was an oversimplification then too.

Lumping former customers and people who have never been customers into the single term "noncustomer" for the purposes of making an argument of "us vs. them" is strictly for muddying forum debates, not surviving the business world.

Calling a former subscriber a noncustomer implies they're persona non grata because their subscriptions have lapsed. Such a wrongheaded attitude would result in automatic rejection at a job interview in the circulation or membership department.

Moreover, this presupposes that enough players will quit over not being able to come up with available names to outweigh how many returning players Paragon has determined won't come back without their original character names. It's just a business decision, just as the devs weighed how much they'd save by merging server lists vs. how many EU players would quit because their global names weren't available. Evidently, the devs have decided that running the name-purge script regularly isn't worth it, one way or another.

Ironically, I thought it would be easier to outline the real-world factors in the business decision whether or not to run the name purge script - which we now have official confirmation that they have no immediate plans to do - rather than debate the entirely subjective issue of what makes a "good" superhero name. Maybe after this I'll switch...

There isn't, but then the plan has to include how to promote the policy change so that it won't alienate potentially returning players. While your system is only somewhat complicated, the p.r. angle becomes entangled very quickly. Should there be a press release and follow-up on MMO news sites? Should former players get an automatic e-mail informing them of the general policy or one that includes a countdown until their old account starts shedding names? I'd genuinely like to hear from Black Pebble about Paragon's approach in such cases since I regularly see news items but literally never got e-mails (which I do from other MMOs I've taken a hiatus from).

If the fact is simple, can you provide figures for retention rates and attrition? It's precisely because we don't have all the facts that it's rash to make business decisions that could have long-term effects.

A certain amount of devil's advocacy comes with the territory (marketers are "Satan's little helpers", as Bill Hicks once joked). I've avoided introducing my own stance on whether or not to quit over a name purge since the bigger picture is what counts. In the final sum, whatever that may be, your preferences and mine are only two datapoints.

It's a shame that someone took the forum name "Strawman" years ago but isn't using it. I'd love adopt it myself and formally post "name-purge = DOOOOM" in this thread.

For my part, I've outlined a scenario likely to result in paperwork, headaches, and unwelcome distractions for Paragon Studios and defy anyone to enterain why they would choose this in their 9-to-5 jobs without sufficient reason for the bottom line.

"We're working round the clock to launch new Incarnate trials, prepare a space station expansion for announcement, and update graphics on the steampunk booster pack! Do they want to take time away from these in order to put 'Kltpzyxm123' up for grabs?"

"Don't worry. Once I post in the latest name-purge thread, it'll dwindle away before the weekend starts. Besides, it's not like anyone's going read 'imminent cross-server teaming' into a standard-issue 'no comment'."

And some of us loathe and despise Facebook and question why Paragon would want to be beholden to them. Please see this essay on dealing with Facebook as a partner (hint: "Facebook is a kinder, gentler version of a dotcom strategy that's been with us for years, called Give Us Your List.").

As for the Steampunk pack, I've been enjoying it greatly, although I don't have yet any sufficiently eye-catching designs to post here.

Good lord, yes, our profile pages might have seemed generous back in the old days, but compared to contemporary competitors' boards, they're significantly lacking in many respects.

This is a decision that potentially affects the bottom line, so no, it doesn't take place in the office equivalent of a frictionless void.
You haven't established the rules.
And if they want to be known as arbitrary jerks, they can just go ahead and implement a complicated new policy and write off potential return business. That's a superb method of simultaneously losing good will and returning customers. Is that from the Jack Emmert playbook?

Since this plan doesn't have any provisions to be applied retroactively, yes.

EDIT: For clarity's sake (not that this thread hasn't grown muddy enough), I mean Since this plan doesn't have any specific provision for how to apply this retroactively to former subscribers, if at all.

Because attracting back former customers can be ignored? Honestly, this is not the way subscription or association memberships work in the business world.

Did they run the script prior to any kind of welcome back promotion? That's a necessary factor in attempting to determine how a name purge could impact attracting former players.

Evidently you're interested only in the technical aspect of this, not the business nor management ones. (And unless you've seen the script's code and know how Paragon's player database is structured, then you're making assumptions of your own.) But in a real company, a supervisor would have to sign off on this and justify it to their boss, who then would have to coordinate with other departments, such as customer service and sales and marketing departments. And even then, IT is going to have to double-check everything before hitting "run" because this is making a change to the player database, the most valuable piece of software on Paragon's servers (yes, more vaulable than the game engine). Database management is, by necessity, a conservative and slow-moving enterprise.

No, I've been saying that it's a potential factor, borne out by individual experiences, that can't be handwaved away since we don't have any actual data (and I bet NCSoft doesn't have especially solid numbers either). It's more intellectually supportable than the proposition that "the good names are running out", though.

Here's an experiment Paragon could run, if they had the time, staff, and money:

A) Announce a reactivation weekend and a name purge in advance
B) Run the name-purge script beforehand to allow current subscribers to pick from the results
C) Some period of time after the reactivation weekend, tally how many returning players' accounts were re-subscribed out of the total and compare to previous reactivation weekends' results
D) Of the resubscribers, flag those accounts with generic'ed character names and track how long their subscriptions last against the average attrition rate
E) Print out that analysis for marketing to use in their weekly paper airplane dogfight contest

It's not a question of whether or not players try to make characters with pre-existing names, it's whether that problem is sufficiently important to dedicate limited resources to addressing.

The Magic 8-Ball says "signs point to no".

Thank you for your response, Zwillinger.

Aaaand


/thread

GET OFF MY WORLD!

That's all well and good, but I was discussing second-hand accounts of players getting character names purged, particularly those quitting over getting generic'ed (or being unable to find a "good" name). It's becoming evident that at this point in the thread, posters aren't reading the counter-arguments very closely...

I've already outlined the likely reasons it's not going to, if you'd like to re-read those posts. If you want a real answer, you might as well PM Zwillinger too:

I'll defer to a red name's explanation of the situation, but my hunch is that the topic is too contentious for them to address unless absolutely necessary.

What do you mean? That trailer was AWESOME!

Oh, you weren't talking about the fan-made one with Nathan Fillion that came out while Ryan Reynolds was still in negotiations...

Yet precisely because this is a self-selecting group, we're never going to hear from players who have quit because they're names were generic'ed when they tried to come back (or, similarly, those who did because they couldn't get the exact name they wanted).

Oh well, a single first-hand account is less unreliable than "my buddies told me that..." anecdotage.

"Sherlock's success means less Doctor Who in 2012"? That's not a headline anyone here wants to read.

Meanwhile, BBC Head of Communications Sam Hodges has tweeted, "situation stays the same - 14 episodes commissioned, starting in 2012. How they will play out will be revealed at a later date."