One global one server list once more EU is told they are loosers!

People are getting confused a lot by this whole issue, so it's time for some clarity.

Game Login names, where there is a clash, will be prepended with EU. Therefore someone who logs in with the user name 'MrPlayer' will become 'EUMrPlayer' IF there is another 'MrPlayer' in the US.

Globals are being done differently. If two people have a global of '@MrPlayer', then the EU one will get a letter dropped, and will becomg '@MrPlaye'. This will continue until the name is unique. You will then get a global rename token so you can rename to what you want.

This is, in my opinion, a TERRIBLE way to deal with is as it can seriously mangle your name. If we HAVE to be the victims of this, at least make it '@MrPlayer.EU'

However, they can relieve a LOT of the potential problems by simply first renaming ALL inactive trial accounts (this takes care of people who tried the US and reused their global name, like me). Trial accounts need not be given any consideration as, if they've been inactive for say, 2 months, it's VERY unlikely they'll ever get upgraded. Anyone trying again is likely to get a new trial.

Doing that would then leave then with a FAR smaller pool of people to deal with.

After that, rename all active trial accounts. Paying customers trump potentials. Sorry, but that's the way of things.

Then, and only then, just do the big rename. By now you've already taken care of a good 95% of the clashes and the few left... Well, better 5% get shafted than 100%, no?

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Originally Posted by Lothic Working in a engineering/development environment always means having to balance doing the best job possible versus all of the costs/risks involved. Again all I'll say is that what the Devs are doing here with this server merge is not perfect, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that it's the closest thing to "realistically perfect" that this situation will allow.

I work as a developer too, and do a lot of SQL work. I don't know their table structures, but if I had that info, I could write the scripts to do it in half a day, easy.

Problem is FFM, some people have global names at the character limit, you wouldn't be able to just add EU to the ends of those ones.

That's true, but what if the GUI's artwork is coded with that limit in mind?

You'd end up with people having global names, a letter or two longer than the game could actually display.

It would look ugly, and unprofessional, and would remain doing so until they fixed it, which might take them an ice age, given that it seems literally everything in CoX is interlinked.

So they'd need to change the entry for globals in the email system, the global chat system, the note system, and god knows how much of the city vault system made it into the game code before that was scrapped.

While it sucks dingle berrys the drop a letter system is probably the best option they have, it just needs more thought on what accounts it'll be triggered on.

Here's the thing:

None of the solutions being proposed here and elsewhere are particularly mind-bending. Most of us who proposed a solution of one kind or another spent at most a few minutes coming up with that solution.

That makes it the height of absurdity to imagine that a roomful of Paragon Studios developers and/or program managers sitting down and discussing their options couldn't somehow come up with that very same idea.

The fact of their not implementing any of these player-sponsored suggestions is not evidence that the Paragon Studios people lack the imagination to add a tag to a global or to force both conflicting names to change and let them duke it out.

Neither is it evidence that they look down on the European audience as second-class rabble who have to take whatever crap they're given and like it.

It's evidence that they had what they felt were good reasons for rejecting obvious alternate courses of action in favor of the one they announced.

Anybody who has worked for a software design company of any sort knows how these things work. There are proposals made. Group meetings to consider alternatives. Pros and cons weighed. Decisions handed down and implemented.

This isn't something where Positron asked War Witch, "What about this name collision problem?" and she replied "No worries. We'll just screw the Euros. Let's get some espresso."

If you're dissatisfied then, by all means, express your displeasure. A large enough groundswell might prompt a change in plan. However, do it with intelligence, courtesy, and most of all with tact. Accusing the game devs/publishers (NCSoft probably had some input into this, you know) of treating you as "loosers" is a wonderful way of getting yourself dismissed as someone who is simply one of the emotional people who is part of the collatoral damage that they naturally expect to incur as a result of making this kind of decision.

Yeah, believe it or not, they knew they would make some people unhappy and they made that decision anyway. What does that tell you about the alternate strategies that they rejected?

In a like vein, taking your complaints to the official discussion thread is the most effective way to get your voice heard. You know someone is monitoring that where here you know nothing of the sort.

Speaking of NCSoft, consider that your anger at Paragon Studios may be misplaced. It's entirely possible that they have no choice in the matter of how the "list merge" is implemented.

Paragon Studios is a development studio. They don't run the servers. NCSoft does that. It's entirely conceivable that Matt said to someone at NCSoft, "How can we make this happen?" and they told him "This is how we can do it." and that's the only choice that was offered.

NCSoft does NOT care about the details of your globals. They care about network services, and keeping City of Heroes, and Lineage, and Lineage II and Aion up and running. Maybe they even keep an Auto Assault server up just for their own amusement.

The point is, your problems with your globals aren't their concern. They have one way of doing a list merge, and this is it. Otherwise, just don't do one.

Scream at Matt and the gang all you want but that isn't going to make a systems admin at NCSoft NA in Austin suddenly come up with a brilliant new way of doing things. His concern is managing the merger and keeping the systems running smoothly afterwards, at the lowest cost in time and resources to his department. From his point of view, somebody is going to lose their global so he's going with his idea of the simplest possible method of doing a merger - altering the data that is being added to his current database. Like it or not, that means the EU loses, based purely on practicality and there's little or nothing that Matt or Melissa or anyone else at Paragon Studios can do about it.

Maybe you need to bark up an entirely different tree.

Yeah?

And maybe you need to realise that people can and will express their annoyance at NCSoft pulling this ****.

I for one will almost certainly be having to change my global once the merge occurs. I have an EU after my board name already.

I don't mind so much but... losing a handle that has been my identity with the eu community for 6 years for something that won't even bear a resemblence -because all the 'good' names have been taken - will be very hard.

Appending EU and/or NA to names imho is not the best idea. Amongst other things its devisive. Probably not a huge amount given the friendliness of the CoX community, but it is. All labels are.

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Seriously. If NCSoft offered every player a $100 dollar bill, there'd be people complaining that it wasn't in smaller denominations.

I might complain. I'd have to pay to change it into usable currency