Last time they did it datamining revealed that very few names actually got reclaimed.
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It's not going to free as many names as you think it will. |
Originally Posted by Yogurt
Almost four years ago, the names were freed from accounts that have been inactive for a very long time under certain character level restrictions, and I feel like it is long overdue for this glorious event to take place again. Four years is a long time ago. Can we please see this happen again? It would make so many people happy! |
Most of the people who have the "iconic" names you're talking about are either still playing, or the characters are high enough level to be immune from the name freeing script.
The first time they ran the script, they discovered that the vast majority of the names freed that way were characters under level 6. The second time they ran it they restricted it to level 6 and under because of that.
Unless you want to suggest they free names on all inactive accounts regardless of character level, you're probably not going to get the names you want. And you still won't get them if the account is still active.
If they free names regardless of level, it is likely to piss of quite a few people who may just be taking a beak for a few months as well.
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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. |
Oh dear, this again? The established character name database is a challenge for our collective creativity - and one player's "iconic" name is another's cliche.
From my own experience, when the European servers opened up, I naturally took the opportunity to re-create some of my characters there, and a few of their names turned out to have already occurred to prior players. Coming up with alternative variations and completely new ones was far more satisfying than petitioning the devs to override other players' pre-existing superheroic nomenclature.
Besides, the high-population servers all have active "name exchange" threads in case people have their hearts set set on particular ones. (Incidentally, ASBOman is free on Union again.)
I'd rather see a @Globalname purge. Because I'm damn sure my REAL name (@Techbot ALPHA, not @TechbotALPHA) is held by a long since dead account.
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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I'd like it if they snagged the name system from Cryptics game.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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Amen, amen, amen.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I'd rather see a @Globalname purge. Because I'm damn sure my REAL name (@Techbot ALPHA, not @TechbotALPHA) is held by a long since dead account.
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After playing that game all I can say is this... No, no, no and NO. I play a hero not an email address.
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Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
I'd like it if they snagged the name system from Cryptics game.
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The Justiciars
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Originally Posted by DocArcus
After playing that game all I can say is this... No, no, no and NO. I play a hero not an email address.
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You did know you could turn the @global part of the names off right?
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
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ALL of them? The Quantity Theory of Superhero Naming is a shaky enough proposition from which to start this debate, but this is a transparent overexaggeration.|
Originally Posted by Yogurt
All of the good names are taken. All of them.
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Meanwhile, there are enough superhero name generators on the web that Paragon Studios could incorporate one into the game if this were truly an extensive issue.
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That would actually be really fun. Sometimes I just want to make a new character and I'm stumped for a concept, and random name generators are a great source of inspiration.
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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Meanwhile, there are enough superhero name generators on the web that Paragon Studios could incorporate one into the game if this were truly an extensive issue.
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That's not really a reason not to do it though. "I can flip this switch and feed 1000 hungry people. Oops, turns out only 50 hungry people got fed... let's never flip that switch again."|
Originally Posted by Zikar
Last time they did it datamining revealed that very few names actually got reclaimed.
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Really, it says to me that they should cast a wider net when purging names. All trials expired for longer than 90 days would be a good start. Then perhaps a scaling purge of level vs time expired such as "Under level 20, expired for 1+ years", "Under level 25 expired for 2+ years", etc.
Blah, blah... "But I know a guy who knew a guy who was in the Congo saving orphans before going to war in the Middle East and then he had to train nuns in South Asia and he's only coming home next week and talks about playing his level 7 guy named FireGirl every day!" Something that has a few outlier cases shouldn't be a reason to avoid potentially benefiting a number of real, paying customers. I lost names in one of the purges because I wasn't subscribed at the time. You get over it remarkably quickly.
Finally, because someone always brings it up, name purges only "take away" the name if someone else asks for it post-purge. If no one asks for "Purple Debblebopper", then it stays happily with its original owners should they ever return from their Orphan/War/Nun-training journey.
If they haven't been playing for 5+ years, they've probably forgotten they even had those names in the first place, and trial accounts shouldn't be able to hold a name for more than a year if they don't upgrade.
"Ooo! A little fight in you! I like that..."
"Then you're going to love me."
Once again though, you're assuming all the "good names" are taken by people who would be eligible to release their names.
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And if they're not? No harm, no foul. This isn't a good reason to not run a script.
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Originally Posted by Zikar
Once again though, you're assuming all the "good names" are taken by people who would be eligible to release their names.
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Long since dead? Now how did you come to access such information, Techbot Alpha. That death always had suspicions circumstances. Was it MURDER? Where were you averylongtimeago? Did you happen to know the victim? Hmm... Ok, I think we have all the evidence we need.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I'd rather see a @Globalname purge. Because I'm damn sure my REAL name (@Techbot ALPHA, not @TechbotALPHA) is held by a long since dead account.
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I say it was @TechbotALPHA at the crime scene with a lead pipe!*
*Unless, of course, this predates weapon customization. In that case, it was just a mace.
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Sure there is.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
And if they're not? No harm, no foul. This isn't a good reason to not run a script.
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Every time this is done, it is prefaced by an announcement to all current and prior CoH customers explaining what is being done and when.
No matter how well worded, there will be a good percentage of the population that will misunderstand it and get alarmed by it. A great number of people are irrational idiots, and most of them have internet accounts. They will either post (and repost) incorrect information about it in their rants or they will call and complain.
Managing that takes up CSR time, and that costs the company money.
So, if you have a system that DID NOT meet its stated goals last time but did have a cost of CSR time, why WOULD you do it again?
I'm of the opinion that if your account lapses for three months, your names should be fair game.
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Running a script always has a chance of causing more harm than good. There has to be very clear benefit to warrant the possibility of a bug making things worse and putting aside programmer time to run the script correctly.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
And if they're not? No harm, no foul. This isn't a good reason to not run a script.
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That's why there's the counter argument of 'not enough names would be released' to not warrant doing it... for now.
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If the "risks" are CSR time to shoot out an email, accusations of potential nerd rage and some nebulous "There's always a risk" statements, consider me unimpressed at the supposed "harm".
I'm also unimpressed because the size of the net directly affects the benefits. Including all expired trial accounts past 90 days, for instance, opens a larger pool. Raising the level bar for longer expired accounts opens a larger pool. Having done it before using weak half-measures and not seeing a great response is, again, not a good reason to avoid doing it again.
All that said, someone(s) managed to grab some of my expired names last time. So however small that supposed pool was, you can't claim that no one benefited from it.
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This.|
Originally Posted by CactusBrawler
I'd like it if they snagged the name system from Cryptics game.
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This is clever and it works.
I hate the part of choosing a name...
The player who has "Antares" on Virtue has had it for years and their Global Name is @Antares1
Not relinquish it anytime soon. 
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No. Absolutely not. I am the only Dechs Kaison, the only Soulburn Sands and the only Thompson Ninja out there. No one probably wants my names, and that's fine with me. But what about these "good" names people keep rambling on about?|
Originally Posted by Angelxman81
This.
This is clever and it works. I hate the part of choosing a name... |
How good is a name like Cyclops when you team with another Cyclops every other day?
I fully support the idea of releasing names of characters who are no longer in use on inactive accounts. I see absolutely no reason to allow multiple people to have the same name.
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I wouldn't mind the "several characters, same name" 'problem'. Those who still want unique names can still find them.
That said, I think name@global would be ... cumbersome, at best, for 90% of purposes, and only make it easier to name characters. So I don't think that's a good route.
Other than a few characters, I've never had difficulty finding good names. I often use [Adjective] [Name] (often alliterative), though, which I've found most people want to avoid.
So, "...what names problem?" would be my response. I'm not opposed to "freeing up" names - but I think the "problem" would continue to exist, because it's mostly a perception issue.
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Ahhh, names. Yes, it's time for another Copypasta! I really need theme music for these. I'm going to skip the "How to search" info on this and just tell you, yes, you've brought up something mentioned frequently. This copypasta was created to go over some of the relevant and often brought up points about names, freeing names and the like. |
Originally Posted by Yogurt
So, it hasn't been discussed and or addressed in a while, and I really think it needs to...
All of the good names are taken. All of them. And by "good names" I mean iconic heroic names that you could see on the cover of a comic. |
The usual arguments:
1. "All the good names are gone."
First, you will probably not ever get agreement from me on this. But, "Good" is also a very subjective term. Quite often, though, the rule is "Something that would be brought up on a comic book cover."
Let's look at some of what's been on comic book covers:
Superman's Friend Jimmy Olson
Archie
Agent (insert name or number here.)
<rank> <name> - such as Sgt. Fury.
Squirrel Girl
Dead Meat
Cyber Crush (I swear I've seen this sort in game.)
Cyberrad
Congorilla
(moving out of the Cs...)
Dark Wolf
Fish Police
Flamingo
... I mean, come on, I'm not even halfway through the alphabet in a random sampling from here.
The point of this? That "Being on a comic book cover" is not limited to the most... let's call it "simplified" (or "duh obvious") and serious names. And yet, you should be able to get some wheels churning on names just from that short list.
2. "All the good names are gone, the sequel: The Script Shall Free Us All."
Yes, NCSoft has a script they can *manually* run to mark names meeting a certain level and inactivity threshhold as free. They've run it twice. Once, it was "Under level 35, 90 days inactivity on the account." The second time, due to the results of what was freed/taken, it was reduced to "Under level 6." Apparently not many names were freed up.
HOWEVER:
Go to Pinnacle, even if it's not your home server. Check on the name "That guy with bots." I created that on a temp account long ago, and use it to see if the script has been run without an announcement. It's a level 1 character on an inactive account - in any run of the script, that name should be freed up. As of the time of writing, it's been inactive (and unavailable) for 1292 days.
That said, the assumption that's often made is that running this script will free up all sorts of new and wonderful names that "everyone" wants - well, not necessarily.
On the one hand, time wise, it's been longer since they ran the script than the time the game had *existed* before.
On the other, those names could (and often are) held by people who are currently playing the game. or they're copyrighted (but someone lucked into it early before it was taken on the "Not authorized" list.) Running it *may* do more good - we don't know.
3. "I have them on my friends list/sent them an email and they never replied, they're obviously gone!"
No, not true. Unless you're on 24/7/365, you don't know that that person is on. Even if they ARE on, they may be on /hide and not showing up for various reasons (or forgot to go off of hide after doign a bunch of crafting or whatever other reason they had.) Or they may play more frequently on another server. Your email could have been missed - or just deleted as "spam" (or just "I don't know them, they're gone.")
For instance, if you wanted (for some sick reason) "Memphis Bill," well... I don't stick with one character. I'm on every server, two accounts, 290-some characters. My email has stuff I'm transferring between characters, so just having the "Email" bit red doesn't really tell me anything. A tell? I get so much stuff scrolling by it's likely I'd miss an offline tell. And depending on the server, I may not play "Memphis Bill" very often.
So, you may check on "Memphis Bill" on Freedom (where I rarely play) and decide, hey, that's actually inactive, why can't I have the name? Sorry, it's not - you just don't *see* me on there. (That character tends to stay on /hide, as well.)
Now, you can use /getglobalname (thanks for the reminder) - if the character doesn't have one, no, they haven't been on in a long, long time. (Globals came in sometime after I started back in I3 (so about the I4 timeframe, IIRC.) However, that's also a high level character (35+) which NCSoft decided to leave alone the first script run, figuring people would be more upset and *not* come back if they lost their high levels names. Plus:
4. It's been X long, they're obviously not coming back!
I'd ask you to watch the boards and the game. It's not *in*frequent to see "hey, I've been gone 3-4-5 years, what's changed?" Not a daily occurance, but certainly not rare.
5. Use Cryptic's system, so anyone can use the same name!
I detest Cryptic's system. Besides, we have 11... wait, Euro-merge, 15 servers, unlike Cryptic's single-big-server setup. I happen to *like* knowing that I'm the only one of my character on a server, and can't be confused with anyone else. I'm strongly against a change to this.
Now, about that script and if it should be run or not....
I'm actually in favor of running the script - or rather, making multiple scripts and running them.
Script 1: Trial accounts that haven't converted in 90 days.
I figure 90 days from the end of a trial is enough to tell, hey, they're not coming back. Run this regularly, say, every six months, and clear everything - including global.
Script 2: Voluntary deletion
Sent out to inactive accounts after a year, this allows you to say "Yes, I want you to clear my character names" if you really feel you're not coming back. (With plenty of "This will not be undone.")
Script 3: Level 14 and lower, 180 days inactive
Mostly bumping up the level since it HAS been so long. Run once a year.
What about the no-Globals? Put them in the "Send an email." Send a followup 90 days later with a message about the names getting freed up. If both bounce, mark as available. If there's no reply to either, mark as available.
And about names:
There are plenty of ways to get names. I don't agree that "All the good ones are gone." And I don't mean "Go into the dictionary/thesaruus and turn "Red Man" into "russet homosapien male." But the thesaurus can help.
Consider your character - who they are, what they are, their powers.
- Go ahead and try the obvious. I've been surprised to get "Clair de Lune" and (much more recently) "Home Guard," for instance.
- Were they former military, are they a mercenary? Then give them a rank! "Mindripper" taken? Well, you're a superpowered mercenary. See if Major (or Maj.) Mindripper is free. And VEATs should give you any number of examples of Agent this-that.
- Are you a scientist? Doctor (or Dr.) something's pretty common there.
- Color: You can't (obviously) get the Green Arrow? How about Pointed Jade, for the mystic arrowheads you found that led to this life of a hero (or villain?) Or Distant Jade for both the range of your power and your character's aloofness?
- "Name" names do work, too.
- Name + Descriptor - descriptor can be anything. Just look at my forum name - Memphis Bill. Pick something distinctive - though yeah, assume the obvious will be taken ("Red Robin" probably isn't available.)
- Use synonyms. "Red" something isn't available? Try Scarlet.
- Turn it around, play with spacing. "Red Ripper" isn't available, how about Ripper Red? Or Rip-Red? Heck, capitalize it for your assassin and work the R.I.P. side of it. RIP-Red.
- Use all of the above. "Black Hole" isn't available, how about Ebon Void, which adds a touch of the exotic - or Ebonvoid, or the leader of a stellar expedition, Dr. Ebonvoid, who was empowered by the experience even as his mind was twisted... and so forth.
So, it hasn't been discussed and or addressed in a while, and I really think it needs to...
All of the good names are taken. All of them. And by "good names" I mean iconic heroic names that you could see on the cover of a comic.
I am not saying that all of the names that are obscure words that required an hour in the thesaurus to find, words or names from another language, or horribly misspelled names are all taken as well, but a lot of those are taken too.
Almost four years ago, the names were freed from accounts that have been inactive for a very long time under certain character level restrictions, and I feel like it is long overdue for this glorious event to take place again. Four years is a long time ago. Can we please see this happen again? It would make so many people happy!