Free the names!

And there are far more non-50s. So why poke that wasp's nest by disturbing old 50s instead of the lower level characters first?

(Again, with the opt-in sent with reactivation weekend emails to allow people to wipe all their characters if they choose.)

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Subs lapse for any number of reasons. If my names were taken from me for being absent from a game for any length of time, never mind a paltry 90 days, I'd never come back. So yes, I see it as silly an assertion to free up every name on every inactive account as saying that you clearly don't need your belongings if you've gone on holiday.

I find most people who complain about not having enough names aren't being creative. I recently got both "Animal Trainer" and "Only Child" on Freedom. Two days ago I made "The Quick Red Fox" on a UK server, but it's available on both Freedom and Virtue. Not terribly long ago I snagged "Mighty Lad" on Virtue, as well as "Whipper-Snapper", "Sea Devil" and "Superbull." Plus "Dynosaur" on Infinity. It's not like it's hard to get cool names.

I don't think it's especially useful to say one side isn't being creative or the other side is picking stupid names no one else would want anyway. If someone is set on "Thundercloud" for their character and it's taken by someone who unsubbed in 2008 at level 9, then it's a problem for that current player that could pretty easily be fixed. Granted, if it's being used by an active player then there isn't an easy fix but that's not what's being discussed and I don't see cause to dismiss an easy fix because of a different situation.

For every name someone thinks is awesome, someone else thinks it's trite or cliché or silly or too punny or just plain stupid. That doesn't change the fact that the first guy still thinks it's awesome.

The binary paying vs. non-paying is merely a variation on entitled vs. unentitled, or just plain old us vs. them. From a limited perspective - "the customer is always right" - that might work (if one is the customer, of course), but it's actually a terrible way to keep a business going. I've elaborated on all the factors likely involved in the decision-making process going into a name purge (again) if only because of my congenital aversion to oversimplification and hyperbole.

Until a red name posts here, I'm not making the assumption that they're even reading this thread to get feedback on something that's apparently not even in the works...

If I wanted to give helpful feedback to the devs, I'd be posting bug reports.

The analogous situation is not "going on holidays" but "ceasing rent/mortgage payments and vacating the premises."

I challenge that assertion as inherently biassed and one-sided. I can't recall the last time I've run into a name in use, and I've made quite a few characters recently. Granted, none of them had "obvious" names, by which I mean Something Person. There's nothing inherently wrong with these names, they're just obvious and so much more likely to be taken and I, personally, happen to dislike them for aesthetic reasons.

Recently, I've snagged names like "Sphyra," (an apparent misspelling of Final Fantasy X's "Spira" because I've never seen it written), Lurian (the name of the space station from Advent Rising) and Tenebrious (an alternate but valid spelling of "tenebrous") and "Blige," a personal name, which I'm reconsidering swapping for the "made up" name "Elaniel" which appears in the character's story. That's not to say those are GOOD names, but it is to say that most of those were my first choices for names and they went on the first try.

I have additionally tried to make a ripoff of Darksiders' War, but "War" is obviously taken and "God of War" would be even more obviously snagged. I tried Strife, but that's taken and a Marvel character, to boot. I tried Conflict, that was taken. I tried a few more, I forget what they are, and finally settled on "Attack," which was free on Victory, though if it still is I cannot say. The character's necessary powerset combo didn't exist within the same AT, so I deleted him when I ran out of room. If I do resurrect him, he'll be named something else, as I don't want to rip off other people's intellectual work.

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.

But they are presumably reading the thread to make sure we behave. I'll accept some feedback splash-off as a result

Have you been reading the posts by people favoring the name sweep? It's not hyperbole. As Memphis Bill pointed out, the criterion for the sweeps last time was 3-6 months.

Yeah, I feel the same way. I've stopped playing games which "idle out" characters before. Which leads me to what Forbin says about this ...

That's very presumptuous of you. Look at the bit from Ironik I posted. People get attached to the characters they had, and as True Gentlemen's been saying, there are often circumstances beyond a person's control which keep them out of the game up to three months or longer.

Players don't have to be playing every day of every month of every year to like playing the character and want to continue playing it. Coming back after a hiatus, even one as short as three months, only to find the character was renamed due to this script, would be a massive killjoy.

Smug much?

Given your previous statements, I can't take your word for this. I'd like to see a post where they said that, if it still exists, because I know that on Guardian I've seen characters running around higher than the trial level cap that use punctuation or typos in their names.

That's another big assumption with little evidence to back it up.

How many City of Heroes players actually read the forums, or frequent them? How many of its players are aware of this name sweep? I wasn't until I saw this thread. The last name sweep, apparently, came some time before I started playing.

Had I not been reading the forums these past few days to catch this thread, would that mean I too am happy with having unique names and have no reason to complain about this possible name sweep?

Because I'm not.

No, I haven't. Then again, I've had an unbroken subscription since I started (3 months after a trial period).

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You cannot prove this.

If someone after the hypothetical purge tries to get "Memphis Bill," they still won't be able to. If I roll the blaster and just can't *think* of a name, I'm not assisted by the name purge.

Even with supporting running the script again, I can't let an assumption like this slide by. Will it make some names available again? Sure. Will it make it easier for you to find "Blaster Boy?" Probably not. There are many reasons (besides "inactive account") the name may not be available.

One does not discount the other. People use punctuation or typos for many reasons - I have one friend/SG mate that seems to have most of his character as word-space-dash-space-word, for instance. I have tech characters named Nuria.net and Sys.link - I didn't put those in because I couldn't get the name otherwise, but because they were appropriate. Others may just *like* putting characters in front of or behind names - go down to the screenshot/fanart forum and find almost any thread started by VexXxa (think that's how it's spelled,) and they seem to start with a *~* (or was it ~*~ - something like that.) oR tH3y cAn uS3 iT b3c4uSe th3y tH1nK 1T5 c00l (or appropriate for a freakshow character.)

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Yes.

Almost certainly.


Or did you mean participating in this thread?


Because if so, a bigger dataset would be necessary for a meaningful survey.

No it's not. The devs flat out told us when they ran both name purges that almost all the names freed were along the lines of SGFiller1234, qwertyjkl, and ***Wul*ver*ine***.

No one is attached to garbage names like that.


Nope. But you apparently don't understand the use of emoticons.

And that's why I asked for a link to a post by a redname about it, you'll notice.

Which leads me to question why people want the name purge script run again if the bulk of names it got rid of in the past were like those.

Besides, "SGFiller1234," "qwertyjkl," "**Wul*ver*ine***" is a mite different than what I was talking about; I'm talking about seeing things like, oh, ".Flame Man." or "Flame-Man."

Nah, I do. Which is why your remark came off as incredibly smug.

Why would you need a redname post to tell you that people will create those sorts of names in the first place *regardless* of name availability, which was the point of what I said?

He didn't say "only." He said "The majority." And people want it run again for the same reason (among others) that I put in a few posts - it's been four years, at *least* 20 million new characters *plus* made, since it was last run. There are many inactive accounts - even just counting trials - and people would like to see if the name they want is being held by an account that is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

See my prior response. Just because you see .Flame Man. or Flame-Man does not mean they wanted "Flame Man" without those additions. Flame Man may well have been available when they made the character (though such a generic name specifically probably was not, which leads to calls to "be more creative.")

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No. It would not make sense to assume that. There may well be other reasons - having to schedule it specifically, for instance. Or the person who wrote it no longer works in the server maintenance area, and they didn't document it well. Or they just haven't paid attention to it. Or the current iteration of the dev team is philosophically against it.

It's part of why, in my PM to Zwillinger, I made a point of bringing up just how long it's been since it was run versus how old the game was when it was run previously, and how many characters have been created since then.

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I did.

While not statistically significant, it has been amusing to watch other assume to know what the reaction would be from ex-subscribers.

And you'll note my post now reads:

I'm seeing even fewer reasons to run the name purge script again, then, at least in the context of "freeing taken names."

What were the numbers I mentioned earlier - 48 million characters made? If nothing else, clearing detrius from unconverted trials would be worth it. Plus we could say, plainly, "Well, the script WAS run. Now what's your excuse?"

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Unconverted trials, maybe. But when I think "detrius" I think spambot characters and junk accounts used for that purpose. Getting rid of those would be okay by me, but freeing up names of actual customers, whether or not they've got an active subscription, not so much.

Besides, if the script was run again and got similar results to the last two times, it's not going to satisfy the people who want to use the popular, taken names. They'll just call for a wider net cast. Higher level requirements, shorter idle times, and whatnot.

It's why I still stand by my opinion that the only real way to solve the "taken names" issue is to just change what's considered unique. Global names, or some kind of player ID, something along those lines.

I have heard personal anecdotes from people who played during the timeline of the second name purge, and they did get a lot of names that they were looking for, they got the results they wanted. I can't imagine why we wouldn't get similar or better(considering it has been an even longer gap) results from a name purge done like the previous two, clearing the names of characters under level 35 or 6 or whatever the level was. If the results aren't what we wanted, we won't be able to blame anyone, because the devs did do what we were clamoring for them to do, run a name purge script.

Yeah there might be a larger number of "bad names" released in the purge, but that doesn't deter the fact that some "good names" will be released along with those "bad names."

Yet precisely because this is a self-selecting group, we're never going to hear from players who have quit because they're names were generic'ed when they tried to come back (or, similarly, those who did because they couldn't get the exact name they wanted).

Oh well, a single first-hand account is less unreliable than "my buddies told me that..." anecdotage.

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