Your City of Heroes account has a new name!
By
Angelxman81,
Posted on: 2011-05-02 13:10 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Solution: Action my support ticket and delete (or rename if you have to) my US Trial account *before* the DB merge even takes place.|
Originally Posted by CuppaManga
I *am* a DB admin (though not for Paragon or NC). Though every DB is different I'll offer my best guess why it was done this way.
The EU global server is being merged *into* the US one. In order to do so at maximum speed, to keep the maintenance window small, there has to be minimal failure conditions and solutions. In this case, records are copied over, and if one produces an error it's assumed that's because a field required to be unique (the global name or account name) is duplicated. Since this is an automated process and no human will be there to interpret every conflict, the incoming name is changed. Checking the last login date of each of two conflicting accounts causes too many possible problems. What if they're the same? What if they're within a few hours or a few days? What if both accounts are inactive? All these checks eat away at the maintenace window and produce the possibility of failure. The who logs in first method would require keeping the old EU database running somewhere, possibly forever, waiting for each EU player to log in to be copied over. |
Simple.
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Oh, I'm pretty sure I know the technical reasons; I'm a developer and work with SQL Server constantly. What you say is almost certainly the case, but there's no excuse for not looking at the individual cases as the account owners raise a ticket, and change the inactive accounts on request (assuming it's owned by the person raising the ticket). |
Originally Posted by CuppaManga
I *am* a DB admin (though not for Paragon or NC). Though every DB is different I'll offer my best guess why it was done this way.
The EU global server is being merged *into* the US one. In order to do so at maximum speed, to keep the maintenance window small, there has to be minimal failure conditions and solutions. In this case, records are copied over, and if one produces an error it's assumed that's because a field required to be unique (the global name or account name) is duplicated. Since this is an automated process and no human will be there to interpret every conflict, the incoming name is changed. |
There's only ONE reason I can think of why this can't be done, and can only be done as part of a data import; the account name is part of the primary key.
IF that's the case, then whoever designed the database needs to taken out back and summarily shot. You NEVER use a textual descriptive field such as a name, as a primary key. It breaks just about every rule of database design there is!
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I assume they didn't really care back 2004 or 2005. They just wanted to get it up and running when the game started.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Oh, I'm pretty sure I know the technical reasons; I'm a developer and work with SQL Server constantly. What you say is almost certainly the case, but there's no excuse for not looking at the individual cases as the account owners raise a ticket, and change the inactive accounts on request (assuming it's owned by the person raising the ticket).
There's only ONE reason I can think of why this can't be done, and can only be done as part of a data import; the account name is part of the primary key. IF that's the case, then whoever designed the database needs to taken out back and summarily shot. You NEVER use a textual descriptive field such as a name, as a primary key. It breaks just about every rule of database design there is! |
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Im sorry I still dont get it.
Why they can change my account name, being an active and loyal customer, 45 months veteran, but they cant change a trial account name, which is unusable, closed, temporal, obsolete and even forgotten?
Im sorry, but I see it plain silly.
Of course, I rather have "EUWhatevername"as account name and enjoy the GSA, but I dont understand why is so hard for the devs to fix this.
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This is purely conjecture, as I don't know if their tables are configured this way, however, it's possible that, for some insane reason, when they designed the table structure, they set the account name as part of the primary key.|
Originally Posted by Angelxman81
Im sorry I still dont get it.
Why they can change my account name, being an active and loyal customer, 45 months veteran, but they cant change a trial account name, which is unusable, closed, temporal, obsolete and even forgotten? Im sorry, but I see it plain silly. Of course, I rather have "EUWhatevername"as account name and enjoy the GSA, but I dont understand why is so hard for the devs to fix this. |
Primary key fields are always unique, form the main index on the table, and cannot be changed at all. To "change" it, you have to basically create an entire new record with a new key, and delete the old one. You'd have to do this for every single linked table as well, which could result in a LOT of table changes.
It's easy to do when importing records into the tables, as will be the case with all EU accounts, as any key collisions can be detected during the import process, and changed before insert into the destination tables.
Beastyle: Can you confirm if the tables ARE configured this way? If so, then we'll just have to accept the change as there's little that can be done in any real sense. If not, then there's no valid technical excuse for not doing it and the decision is purely for support reasons.
@FloatingFatMan
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Originally Posted by Angelxman81
Im sorry I still dont get it.
Why they can change my account name, being an active and loyal customer, 45 months veteran, but they cant change a trial account name, which is unusable, closed, temporal, obsolete and even forgotten? Im sorry, but I see it plain silly. Of course, I rather have "EUWhatevername"as account name and enjoy the GSA, but I dont understand why is so hard for the devs to fix this. |
They ought to delete trial accounts once they hit 90 days past the end of the trial to avoid conflicts.
They should certainly delete one on your master account if you request it.
Heck, they ought to offer to merge full NA/EU accounts under the same master account - as a chargeable service if necessary.
There's a lot of things they could do if they really wanted to, but they're all time+money+hassle, so don't hold your breath.
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This basically. It doesn't really affect me, but there would be options available if it wasn't that they've decided to do this as easily and cheaply as possibly, rather than doing it properly.
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Originally Posted by Bull Throttle
They ought to delete trial accounts once they hit 90 days past the end of the trial to avoid conflicts.
They should certainly delete one on your master account if you request it. Heck, they ought to offer to merge full NA/EU accounts under the same master account - as a chargeable service if necessary. There's a lot of things they could do if they really wanted to, but they're all time+money+hassle, so don't hold your breath. |
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There are TWO reasons I can think of, and that's not one of them. |
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
There's only ONE reason I can think of why this can't be done, and can only be done as part of a data import; the account name is part of the primary key.
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1) It's a different department - the servers are operated by a completely different department *and* location than Support. Support personnel are limited by the tools they're given.
2) Timing - the server maintenance will probably take place during a time when support isn't active. Additionally, reading through thousands of tickets and performing those actions first would delay the maintenance for several hours.
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Ah, but neither of those reasons make it technically impossible to do. They just require a little additional support.
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Originally Posted by CuppaManga
There are TWO reasons I can think of, and that's not one of them.
1) It's a different department - the servers are operated by a completely different department *and* location than Support. Support personnel are limited by the tools they're given. 2) Timing - the server maintenance will probably take place during a time when support isn't active. Additionally, reading through thousands of tickets and performing those actions first would delay the maintenance for several hours. |
@FloatingFatMan
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They don't delete accounts though. I've never heard of an account being deleted, only locked/banned. |
Originally Posted by Bull Throttle
They ought to delete trial accounts once they hit 90 days past the end of the trial to avoid conflicts.
They should certainly delete one on your master account if you request it. |
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Ah, but neither of those reasons make it technically impossible to do. They just require a little additional support.
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Hey, not here to defend the process, but some thoughts on some of the considerations for this challenging merger:|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
Hi Beast. Just out of curiosity is there any reason why you guys can't do the name changes like I asked below? It's okay if you don't have an answer tho.
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Generally speaking, changing account names is bad. I think we can all agree with this. Unfortunately, someone is going to take a hit here, and at first glance it makes more sense to let your loyal CURRENT customers get first dibs here. It seems kinda appropriate, no?
1) So what happens if we change the existing inactive/trial account names? These are the people that aren't currently really following what goes on at CoH, but they might come back. When they do, they'll try their old username and password, unaware of the rename change. They then find that their account doesn't work... and neither does the "forgot email" request... Incorrect "HEY! My account's been hacked!" calls don't need to take up much time to tie up your $15/month, so you try to avoid them... and avoid the potential of human error really botching up account ownership.
... and that's two calls to the CSR's if the person makes so many attempts that the game locks the account due to a potential hacking attempt...
2) So, instead you change the accounts of all EU personnel. Not entirely ideal-- expired accounts run into issue #1 above, but numerically, there are fewer of them. The rest of the accounts are active users that will be easier to contact regarding this change, more available to communicate with, and more likely to immediately bring up transition issues. This, as counterproductive as it is to "punish" the current customer (if you consider a login change punishment) makes this a much more operational issue. You simply have less risk of returning players interfering with migrated accounts that now have THEIR name.
so, in a nutshell:
- existing customers are more likely to get the message and less likely to mess things up if the change is applied to them.
- many returning customers will never hear about the change, so they'll mess this up and possibly even lock other users accounts accidentally, so you go with the option that has the least of these.
- (not mentioned above) you European types are so much more pleasant to deal with than us belligerent, obnoxious Americans, so if the customer support personnel are gonna have to deal with some irate customer, its much better to be you. Besides... many of us americans can just hop into a car and harass their offices- you guys have a long plane flight or a swim ahead of ya.
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I know; as far as I know this is standard throughout the industry - heck even for website databases we generally only put in a 'soft delete' option - database people generally hate deleting records as it can muck things up (especialy if FFM is right about the schema being less than ideal), but from this side of the fence, it would solve a lot of issues - and I was only talking about long dead trials, not full accounts of course.|
Originally Posted by Rajani Isa
They don't delete accounts though. I've never heard of an account being deleted, only locked/banned.
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Still it's all moot; it's their system, they've already decided the procedure, I wouldn't expect them to change anything now - but it would be nice if they offered people with conflicting accounts under the same master account some way of resolving this that didn't leave a bad taste in the mouth.
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Which makes sense if it is two different people involved. However,the cases people are annoyed about here is when under the same Master Account they have two account names that are the same, one of which is an active EU account and the other an inactive US account. |
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
so, in a nutshell:
- existing customers are more likely to get the message and less likely to mess things up if the change is applied to them. - many returning customers will never hear about the change, so they'll mess this up and possibly even lock other users accounts accidentally, so you go with the option that has the least of these. - (not mentioned above) you European types are so much more pleasant to deal with than us belligerent, obnoxious Americans, so if the customer support personnel are gonna have to deal with some irate customer, its much better to be you. Besides... many of us americans can just hop into a car and harass their offices- you guys have a long plane flight or a swim ahead of ya. |
So despite those that own both an US and EU account they aren't being given the option to change the US account name despite it being under the same Master Account and being inactive. I am going to be in the same position with my second account which shares it's name with an inactive US trial account.
Unless there are severe technical issues involved as described above those that are in the position above it would be good customer service to allow those in this position be given the oppurtunity to raise a ticket and have the inactive US account name changed before the server list merge.
Edit - apologies for my terrible use of English there! Its never wise to post after being awake less than an hour!
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
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Raise a ticket. Despite what Beastyle says, it's worth a shot. If enough people do that and ask nicely for something to be done, it might help push them to change their minds.|
Originally Posted by Tired Angel
Unless there are severe technical issues involved as described above those that are in the position above it would be good customer service to allow those in this position be given the oppurtunity to raise a ticket and have the inactive US account name changed before the server list merge.
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Just make sure you make it clear that the inactive account is on the same master account. It's probably the only incidence where we have a chance of persuading them to change policy.
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I wish you the best of luck.|
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Raise a ticket. Despite what Beastyle says, it's worth a shot. If enough people do that and ask nicely for something to be done, it might help push them to change their minds.
Just make sure you make it clear that the inactive account is on the same master account. It's probably the only incidence where we have a chance of persuading them to change policy. |
I don't see this as an option, but I don't have hands on with any part of it.
God Speed.
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Mine's been "escalated", haven't heard anything more since. Fingers crossed.
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Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Raise a ticket. Despite what Beastyle says, it's worth a shot. If enough people do that and ask nicely for something to be done, it might help push them to change their minds.
Just make sure you make it clear that the inactive account is on the same master account. It's probably the only incidence where we have a chance of persuading them to change policy. |
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This is exactly what I have done. My NA account was only open for the 30days it came with as I only opened it for the Passport badge. My EU account has been active continually for the last 5 1/2 years. It baffles me that they can't rename my NA account instead of my EU one.|
Originally Posted by FloatingFatMan
Raise a ticket. Despite what Beastyle says, it's worth a shot. If enough people do that and ask nicely for something to be done, it might help push them to change their minds.
Just make sure you make it clear that the inactive account is on the same master account. It's probably the only incidence where we have a chance of persuading them to change policy. |
I understand not deleting accounts, as an application dev myself I never delete records, just mark them inactive, but a simple text field edit shouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility unless as FFM speculated they have been spectacularly stupid and used the name field as the primary key and account identifier.
So far I have been pointed at the KB article telling me I can't change my account name and informed they can't delete my account "To maintain the continuity and accuracy of the user database".
I've asked them politely to escalate my request for account renaming, we'll see where it gets to.
Yup.. made a new incident and crossreferenced it to my old one they closed without my say-so... As you can see I removed my accountname for this post. See below for some weird answers! I didn't even include the auto responces which are even worse. I am talking Game account here! Not global as somethink.
--------------------- Read below for a part of the remarks.------------------------
In follow-up on Reference Number 110317-000770 - which was closed without my say-so.
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Customer Erik E. via CSS Web 17/03/2011 06:58 Hello,
I would like to have my old trial account for City of Heroes removed with the future in sight. The Game account has been created only to test and has not been used for more then a day. It is non-playable.
xxxxxxxxx
Trial 03 Aug 2008 XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-CSA4
I can not do it myself or I would have done so already.
Thanks,
Erik
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The answer was ...
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Response Steve via Email 19/03/2011 16:47 Hi Erik,
Thanks for updating us.
Game accounts cannot be deleted once they are created. We are unable to remove or change this account. However, your "xxxxxxxxx" account will not effect any of your other game accounts.
Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Thanks,
Steve
NCsoft Account Support
---
Now I got the e-mail that NCSOFT is renaming my eu game account to EUxxxxxxxxx in order to stop the clash with my inactive only 2 days used trial game account on the us! This shows that renaming is possible. Something that was already logical. The man behind the server console in the us can rename or delete game accounts at will.
I ask you all to make an exception on your basic rules for all who have clashing names between inactive us trial game accounts and active eu game accounts! If deletion is not what you want... then rename my us trial game account to USxxxxxxxxx... and keep my eu game account untouched!
The final respons I mentioned above is not valid in this matter. My main game account 'xxxxxxxxx' on eu IS being effected! As it is being renamed in favor of my inactive US account!
Thanks in advance,
Erik
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An account's name can always be viewed from the owner's PlayNC Master Account, which is where one would go to retrieve a lost password anyway. As well, most sites I've been a member of have systems in place for retrieving forgotten account names, as well.
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Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
2) So, instead you change the accounts of all EU personnel. Not entirely ideal-- expired accounts run into issue #1 above, but numerically, there are fewer of them. The rest of the accounts are active users that will be easier to contact regarding this change, more available to communicate with, and more likely to immediately bring up transition issues. This, as counterproductive as it is to "punish" the current customer (if you consider a login change punishment) makes this a much more operational issue. You simply have less risk of returning players interfering with migrated accounts that now have THEIR name.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Erm, sorry to say this but AFAIK...|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
An account's name can always be viewed from the owner's PlayNC Master Account, which is where one would go to retrieve a lost password anyway. As well, most sites I've been a member of have systems in place for retrieving forgotten account names, as well.
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Inactive Trials do NOT show up on your Master Account.
Nuff Said...
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Originally Posted by Coolio
Erm, sorry to say this but AFAIK...
Inactive Trials do NOT show up on your Master Account. |
Mine do, US and EU ones (I've one of each)
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Um... If an inactive account doesn't show up on my Master Account, how I can I access it to reactivate it? The only way I know of to access my PlayNC game accounts is through my PlayNC Master Account that they're tied to.
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Originally Posted by Coolio
Erm, sorry to say this but AFAIK...
Inactive Trials do NOT show up on your Master Account. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I *am* a DB admin (though not for Paragon or NC). Though every DB is different I'll offer my best guess why it was done this way.
The EU global server is being merged *into* the US one. In order to do so at maximum speed, to keep the maintenance window small, there has to be minimal failure conditions and solutions. In this case, records are copied over, and if one produces an error it's assumed that's because a field required to be unique (the global name or account name) is duplicated. Since this is an automated process and no human will be there to interpret every conflict, the incoming name is changed.
Checking the last login date of each of two conflicting accounts causes too many possible problems. What if they're the same? What if they're within a few hours or a few days? What if both accounts are inactive? All these checks eat away at the maintenace window and produce the possibility of failure.
The who logs in first method would require keeping the old EU database running somewhere, possibly forever, waiting for each EU player to log in to be copied over.
Manga @ Triumph
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Save Paragon City! Efforts Coordination