Character Name Policy-- Thirty Day Notice!

Starting 8/29/2007 the City of Heroes and City of Villains Character Name Policy will be re-enacted with some changes. As previously announced last year, we are hereby giving players 30 days notice that this policy will be turned back on effective Wednesday, August 29, 2007.

Names for characters below level 6 on game retail accounts that have been *inactive for over 90 days will be changed to unreserved status. This means that those names will become available for new character names if picked by an active (subscribed) player. This policy is being enacted in order to free up character names based on player feedback and for our Character Transfer and Rename features.

If your game account is inactive for over 90 days and you reactivate your account you will need to log back in to any characters affected by this policy to move them out of unreserved name status. If your old character name has been taken by an active player, the game will prompt you to rename your character. You will be given only one opportunity to rename your character. It is possible that your character name may still be the same if an active player has not chosen to use that character name. Your global handle will not be affected.

If you have any characters with unreserved name status, you can identify them in the character select screen as those characters with no avatar (character model) displayed.

If you do not log in to the game with a character in unreserved name status, the character’s name will remain available to any active player until you log that character in to the game. Logging into the game with the affected character will change the character’s name status back to reserved.

Any questions about this policy can be directed to support@cityofheroes.com

*Inactive means that you have stopped billing and your subscription time has run out OR your account has been suspended.


Discussion on this topic is found here!

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As a clarification on this announcement, the current plan for the actual process that frees up these names is to run it during the same maintenance window that will launch the Character Rename and Character Transfer features.

As there is still more testing to be done with Character Rename and Character Transfer, the un-reserving of the names of characters below level 6 on accounts inactive for over 90 days will not happen on August 29th.

We are working hard to finalize the Character Rename and Character Transfer features and ensure they are robust and ready for prime time. If you are interested in checking out these features, please join us on the Training Room Test Server and provide your feedback on the Test Forum.

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Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

As another point of clarification, the check for old names is account based, not per character. Some people have mentioned to me that they were busily logging in all of their alt characters they hadn't played in a while. You don't need to do that. The check is based on the status of your account, not the characters themselves.

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Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager

If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.