Also don't forget when they do free up names, as long as nobody takes it, you don't lose it. It's not as if all your character's names are changed.
Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components
Tempus unum hominem manet
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This.|
Originally Posted by Lothic
I like that this game is mindful of trying to keep returning players as happy as possible as far as maintaining their names are concerned. But I'd have to agree that 5+ years exceeds any and all reasonable allowances this game should ever be accounting for in this situation.
I favor a staggered approach of releasing names based on level and time exceeding 5 years. Basically it's a variation of Backhand's idea, but shifted upward to start at the 5 year mark: 5 years inactive account - name purge of all characters level 10 and below 6 years inactive account - name purge of all characters level 25 and below 7 years inactive account - name purge of all characters level 35 and below 8+ years inactive account - name purge of all characters level 49 and below I think something like this is a reasonable compromise between all points of view here. |
I really like this staggered format.
Why level 50's protected and not level 49 and below? Because reaching top level is an achievement of sorts. For one thing, it is what unlocks your Epic AT's. Why not protect level 49's. Because, in my example, if I had reached level 49, I would have done everything in my power to reach level 50. In Lothic's stagged list, if by 8 years you have not reactivated your account, even though you are a stone's throw from level 50, it is most likely you will never come back.
There's also a possibility that no one has the name, but it's on the forbidden names list. What was the name?
Arc 55669 - Tales of the PPD: One Hell of a Deal (video trailer)
Arc 64511 - The Wrecking Ball
Arc 1745 - The Trouble With Trimbles
Arc 302901 - HappyCorpse
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Since you can now get the game from Steam, it's largely a non-issue.
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Originally Posted by Backhand
1. Has the same computer with the game still installed
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Issue 4, I believe. Mine's the character I was primarily playing at the time, who hit 50 in that issue.|
Originally Posted by Vitality
When did Global names come out?
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Originally Posted by Amy_Amp
Since you can now get the game from Steam, it's largely a non-issue.
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Global chat came with Issue 3
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
Vitality,
Virtue is one of the servers I don't currently play on.
I used it to create costume concepts and store them for recreating later.
I grew frustrated trying to find a throw away name to save the characters since x, xxx,yyy, aaa etc all seemed to be taken, so I started naming them with their intended name.
Now that we can save costumes I can save the costumes and delete the characters (I should have done it before, but its like moving your characters to a new day job location, I never remember!
There might not be any names you want, but if you like I can PM you with the list of names that will be reintroduced to the server.
Maybe one of them will work for you.
Feel The Burn
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Variant|
Originally Posted by Xyzyx
There's also a possibility that no one has the name, but it's on the forbidden names list. What was the name?
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It's not forbidden because I already have the character with that name on the Justice server.
Not necessarily...if the name was added to the off-limits list after you created the character on Justice, you wouldn't lose the name on Justice (until/unless someone petitioned you), but you'd be prevented from using it later on other servers.
Edit: but I see no reason why that name would be off-limits...someone probably does have it.
Arc 55669 - Tales of the PPD: One Hell of a Deal (video trailer)
Arc 64511 - The Wrecking Ball
Arc 1745 - The Trouble With Trimbles
Arc 302901 - HappyCorpse
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Yeah someone does have it.|
Originally Posted by Xyzyx
Not necessarily...if the name was added to the off-limits list after you created the character on Justice, you wouldn't lose the name on Justice (until/unless someone petitioned you), but you'd be prevented from using it later on other servers.
Edit: but I see no reason why that name would be off-limits...someone probably does have it. |
When you do the check name it will tell you if the name is being used or if its forbidden.
Try "Variant." then... ya should get away with that!
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.
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Or try Vari-Ant and make him insectoid.
I find it amusing that the OP either hasn't considered or won't use variants of "Variant." 
Soooo I buy the game at launch and give up on it after a month or two due to rampant mapserver disconnects, NPC spawning bugs and other problems but then years later I hear some good things about a new expansion (Villains, AE, etc.) and decide to give it a try again only to log in and find my perfect themed/designed character "Speed Force" has had his name deleted?
You know what happens then?
I delete the game from my computer, throw away the discs and NCSoft never sees a dime of my money again for anything they ever publish.
IMO all of you people whining that you can't get your "special name" are just too lazy to put any effort into coming up with something. What's worse are the people who just throw L33t speak, asterisks and other chaos into their names in order to (mis)spell what they want.
In the past three months I have added the following characters to my server:
Captain Galaxy
Bronze-Tiger
Steel-Dragon
Knight Shadow
Gravimite
Mass-Destruction
Lone-Star
Celestial Shadow
General Disorder
...and this is over five years after launch. If I can go to the trouble of using the Name Checking tools NC has provided us to come up with something decent then so can the rest of you.
Naw, I'm not whining, I have come up with great names recently, such as Necro-Mantis, Maiden Gold, The Kilted Celt and St. Valkyrie.
I repeat my statement, if, after 5+ years I reactivate my account and see a generic'd name in place of whatever name was there, I can I assue you (in my case for certain), I would not remember what name he had and I would not be upset that the name is gone. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't expect my character to even still be there, much less have the name available.
I tried WOW about 5 years ago, I have considered going back and giving it a try again. If I do so, and my character is not there, or the character is there but the name is gone, I am not petty enough to quit just because of that. I was raised to work for everything I have and to appreciate what I have. I am not entitled to anything but my freedom to do what I want, to make my own choices.
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Originally Posted by Kryhavoc
Naw, I'm not whining, I have come up with great names recently, such as Necro-Mantis, Maiden Gold, The Kilted Celt and St. Valkyrie.
I repeat my statement, if, after 5+ years I reactivate my account and see a generic'd name in place of whatever name was there, I can I assue you (in my case for certain), I would not remember what name he had and I would not be upset that the name is gone. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't expect my character to even still be there, much less have the name available. I tried WOW about 5 years ago, I have considered going back and giving it a try again. If I do so, and my character is not there, or the character is there but the name is gone, I am not petty enough to quit just because of that. I was raised to work for everything I have and to appreciate what I have. I am not entitled to anything but my freedom to do what I want, to make my own choices. |
Maybe you won't but I would. I know the name of all my WoW characters, EQ characters, Horizon characters, Auto Assault characters, Tabula Raza Characters, iRO characters, PSO characters, EvE characters, SWG characters. . . I am also pretty sure that all the way up to the date those games go down for good my characters will still be there. Most MMOs have recuriting pushes and advertise the fact that your characters are waiting for you. Heck EvE at one point sent me an E-Mail from my most played character complete with stats and an invitation for a free weekend. Name purges really are bad business choices for MMOs, because far more players will be driven away if they find out their characters have been modified then will quit over frustration that they can't get a name. Sure some games may end up with characters like Ohforf but people will still play.
Also there are lots of names floating around, I got Cattleya on Virtue for my plant controller, sure I couldn't get Phalaenopsis, Orchid or Dendrobium, but Miltonia, Orchidaceae, and Catasetum are all available.
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This, and if said player DOES return to the game, they get free rename tokens on all the characters thus genericized.
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Originally Posted by Sardan
I agree with your reasoning, but I'd extend it to level 50s. If you've been inactive for an unbroken 4+ years it's simply unreasonable to continue to reserve those names.
In general I like that NCsoft retains our characters' names and possessions. I think it's quite common for people to take breaks from MMOs, then return for a while. But anyone who has been inactive for over 4 years would have to have quite the sense of entitlement to feel any outrage over losing any character names. I say the balance should be tilted in favor of current paying customers. |
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
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It's not always about coming up with a name for a new character. I have a 50 I moved from one server to another, and the name he's had for 50 levels is taken, and apparently inactive, on the server I moved him to.|
Originally Posted by Speed_Force
IMO all of you people whining that you can't get your "special name" are just too lazy to put any effort into coming up with something. What's worse are the people who just throw L33t speak, asterisks and other chaos into their names in order to (mis)spell what they want.
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I'd kinda like to keep the name he's HAD for the entire 33 months of his existence.
Where to find me after the end:
The Secret World - Arcadia - Shinzo
Rift - Faeblight - Bloodspeaker
LotRO - Gladden - Aranelion
STO - Holodeck - @Captain_Thiraas
Obviously, I don't care about NCSoft's forum rules, now.
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Then perhaps you should have KEPT him on the server he had for the entire 33 months of his existence. You moved the character and created the problem, not the person who was using the same name you where using, regardless of if their account is canceled, they are taking a break or in some other way indisposed. Maybe it also would have been a good idea to make sure the name was available before you transferred the character.|
Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker
It's not always about coming up with a name for a new character. I have a 50 I moved from one server to another, and the name he's had for 50 levels is taken, and apparently inactive, on the server I moved him to.
I'd kinda like to keep the name he's HAD for the entire 33 months of his existence. |
As my old editor used to tell me, "Failure to prepare on your part should not constitute an emergency on my part." Just substitute "my" with "Devs" or "Other players".
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IMO you should have checked using the Naming tool for that server before moving the character. Someone else beat you to it, plain and simple. They paid the same money that you did to both purchase the game and to subscribe for as long as they were playing. The fact that you are playing right now doesn't "entitle" you to pirate names from people who choose to take a break for a while.|
Originally Posted by Bloodspeaker
It's not always about coming up with a name for a new character. I have a 50 I moved from one server to another, and the name he's had for 50 levels is taken, and apparently inactive, on the server I moved him to.
I'd kinda like to keep the name he's HAD for the entire 33 months of his existence. |
Who's to say that if they let you steal the name from a currently inactive account that three months from now you won't go inactive for a year or more yourself? While at the same time the person you just stole the name from may decide to come back and play from Jan. 2010 until the day the game is shut down?
Extreme example? True but possible.
I myself quit in 2006 and didn't come back until just a few months ago. But I certainly would never have re-upped my account if I had come back to find most of my characters had been renamed "Generic-112324".
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There is no memory to it. When you log in after a name purge, all of your characters are there, with their names. The ones that are vulnerable are faded out. You don't know if you lost the name until you log that character in. If nobody else took the name, you still have it. If someone else took it, you rename the character on the spot.|
Originally Posted by Kryhavoc
I repeat my statement, if, after 5+ years I reactivate my account and see a generic'd name in place of whatever name was there, I can I assue you (in my case for certain), I would not remember what name he had and I would not be upset that the name is gone.
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I lost a couple of names on the first name purge. I'm not complaining -- they sent me an e-mail saying they were doing it. I did lose two character names, though. I ended up deleting both characters. Seeing them on the log in screen brought back all of the old memories, and they just weren't the same.
If my main had been taken (her name was safe, since she was 36 at the time), I probably wouldn't have reactivated my account after the free weekend that drew me back. I've played for about two and a half years since I reactivated, so purging that name would have cost them $540 from me, so far.
The higher in level the character is, the higher the likelyhood of pissing someone off gets. If a character is level 5 and hasn't been played for 2 years they obviously weren't too attached to it, especially if the account has only been inactive for a year.
Come to think of it, I'm probably going to go through the servers I never play on and delete the toons there I never play, just so the names are available. I'll also be locking down my main's name everywhere it's available. I've wanted to try claws with other secondaries and that just sounds like a good excuse
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Haha, that's funny you said that.|
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
I find it amusing that the OP either hasn't considered or won't use variants of "Variant."
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I'm actually using Veriant right now...my actual reasoning behind it was that Veriant is a variant of Variant.
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Don't get the wrong idea...I'm not whining about this. I have played this game for almost 3 years now and I only use two characters...literally...I have a Tank and a Scrapper who have gone by the names of Vitality and Variant respectively ever since I created them. I recently transferred my scrapper to the Virtue server to join a SG. |
Originally Posted by Speed_Force
IMO all of you people whining that you can't get your "special name" are just too lazy to put any effort into coming up with something. What's worse are the people who just throw L33t speak, asterisks and other chaos into their names in order to (mis)spell what they want.
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I'm simply just exhausting all my options on this matter. If I can't get the name that's fine...I just want to make sure that I can't get the name before using something else.
1. Has the same computer with the game still installed
2. Has the same email address because you know...
3. Has forgotten the username/password
4. has the original install discs
5. Remembers the names of every toon on the account
I think they should scale the name purges.
1-2 years inactive account - name purge for toons lvl 10 and below
2-3 years inactive account - name purge for toons lvl 25 and below
4-5 years inactive account - name purge for toons lvl 35 and below
5+ years inactive account - name purge of all toons (minus lvl 50's)
My 2 inf...
Just curious - why does every proposal like this say "except level 50's"?
What makes a level 50 character inherently more valuable to keep than a level 49.5 character?
Not that I support name purging in general, but if it's going to be done, then why exempt the 50s?
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."